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There's another aspect to security, where I believe mobile scores well over PC, although it calls for an application design mindset that leverages the full power of mobile technology instead of treating it merely as a mobile-version of a PC-based application. 

Let me recount my last three mobile "commerce" transactions from three different apps: (1) Check bank balance (2) View stock portfolio (3) Order an additional channel from my satellite TV provider.  

On thing is clear: Each of these transactions works ONLY from a registered mobile phone # (mine), which can emnate ONLY from one handset (mine, again).

Thanks to SIM, "device authentication" is elementary to mobile technology. Judging from my experience it seems possible to incorporate it easily into any mobile app. I doubt if this is the case with PC-based applications. Besides, mobile phones are on all the time and carried almost everywhere, so configuring a mobile app to only work on a single handset is hardly a restriction. This can't be said for PC-based applications. 

I don't remember if it was in Finextra or elsewhere, but I distinctly remember reading an announcement in 2004 or 2005 about the launch of a contactless payment pilot on the ferry service from Hoboken / Jersey City to Manhattan. On my next trip to the US in 2005, I wanted to try this out. Lo and behold, neither the attendant at the ticket counter nor any of the four - yes, only four - other fellow passengers had any clue what I was talking about!

Seven years later, interesting that another such pilot in the region is still in the "concept of operations" stage. Hope it goes into production while the concept of "contactless" is still in vogue! During a similar period, Oyster Card is poised to enter its second or third generation.

Wonder if there's a clue here for how quickly we can expect EMV and Mobile NFC to attain mass adoption in the US?

@Brett K:

I'm all for banks to reconfigure their investments in channels to keep pace with changing consumer preferences. For example, if more consumers want to open checking accounts online, then banks should make this functionality available online and provision for greater bandwidth for their datacenter. While there's scope for making their online - as well as branch - interactions more frictionless, I think banks everywhere are doing reasonably well on this count within the framework of the current regulatory environment. 

But, I believe that there are many customers who still prefer banking in person, at least to open new accounts or to buy new products if not to check balances and get a new check book. Dwindling as their tribe might be, they aren't extinct at this point, so I'm not in favor of a total shutdown of branches anytime soon.

As is often the case, it requires a high-profile case to highlight fundamental issues and raise the specter over the possibility of similar, albeit lower-profile, everyday occurrences all along.

Like I'd pointed out in an article titled "Taking Multilingual Support to the Next Level" published in TEC two years ago, we don't know how many Müllers have been transliterated to Muller by simplistically dropping the German umlaut character - instead of to Mueller by correctly adding an "e" in the place of the umlauted "u" - with the resultant possibilities of either (a) passing of a transaction that is meant to be blocked; or (b) blocking of a genuine transaction.

@Brett K:

Thank you for the clarifications. 

Sometimes, being late to the party has its own advantages e.g., late computerization in India and other emerging markets meant no mainframes, hence no Y2K problem. I think banks have a similar advantage now with their channels.

Let me explain with reference to the growing traction around "Omni-channel" retailing. Apparently, an increasingly large percentage of consumers prefer to research, price-compare and order gadgets, white goods and other products online, but prefer to pay and collect them from physical stores.

If this is happening with physical goods, I tend to believe that the banking industry, with the more complex nature of its products and services, will need to plan for omni-channel sooner or later. 

Maybe banks could leapfrog directly to an omni-channel landscape right away? In other words, freeze existing channel capabilities at their current states, spend their time and money on developing suitable integration pathways between multiple touchpoints spread across multiple channels. Personally, I don't think it's mandatory to reach the 100% mark in the current channel journey before jumping on to the omni-channel bandwagon, but that's a purely subjective view.      

There's an app for that!

I know of at least one called SilentBodyguard which is worth its free download for several reasons:  

1. It'll even work for the panic-striken, Facebook-impaired, set. 
2. It automatically supplies the rescuee's physical coordinates to their potential rescuers, so it's useful even when the rescuee needs rescuing outside their home.
3. But, perhaps most importantly, "if the home invaders bypass all the solid core doors...simply take a phone off the hook", I won't trust Laptop / Facebook / Twitter to be up and running at that metaphorical equivalent of an earthquake and hurricane striking together!

Until we reach the point when we're able to cite relevant examples from the banking industry - whatever happened to Metro Bank? - and not have to rely on Apple Store type of examples, banks are safe. Equality or inequality in the relationship, banks can draw comfort from the knowledge that people can't buy checking accounts, mortgages and other financial products from Apple Stores.

But, in all fairness to banks, let me narrate the experience of a business associate who visited the flagship Apple Store in Times Square, NYC, to buy an iPad 2. Although it was just three or four days after the launch, he was told that they had run out of stock of iPad 2s and that it would take two weeks for replenishment stocks to arrive*. With its storied commitment to superior customer experience and complete control of its supply chain, if this is the best that Apple could do, how can we expect a bank to explain why it had to decline someone's mortgage application? After all, the applicant's prior dealings with another bank or FI could've tarnished their credit rating, a factor that impacts the bank's decision but one over which it has little visibility or control. 

*: According to the store attendant, Apple was going to bring back stocks of iPad 2s previously shipped overseas so that they could meet local demand. When these consignments returned, they'd be used to restock the Times Square and other flagship stores in the US. That's how this store could commit two weeks delivery. So, if the customer journeyed via Broadway / 5th Avenue, Apple would be pleased to sell them an iPad 2. However, if they journey via Regent Street or rue de Rivoli, sorry, Apple would turn them back empty-handed. I'm not sure if I'd like this kind of attention to my journey from a bank!

@Candyce E:

Thank you for the feedback. As a firm that provides marketing solutions, we use email marketing heavily, so it's very much in our interest to find solutions to the issues that you've described. I've shared this page on a couple of pertinent groups in LinkedIn. If I get some more ideas from there, I'll past them as additional comments on to this Finextra page. 

@Duncan A:

Thank you for pointing out that there are many more factors than capital adequacy that determine the survivability of a bank. As I'd highlighted in this blog post, these include a payments landscape's technical stability, reference data, and other issues that fall outside the purview of capital adequacy ratios.

Banks are a part of the US isis payments JV that includes Discover and Barclays apart from Verizon, AT&T and other TELCOs. The origin of M-PESA will show that it was founded to cater to a market that banks didn't want to serve for ages for whatever reasons. Hemmed in by a combination of regulations (e.g, While MNOs might be able to serve the microfinance market in India profitably, they're not permitted to) and consumer trust issues (e.g., Who will buy a CD from a  non-FDIC insured institution in the US?), there's only so much that non-bank financial services providers can do. Personally, I think banks have a long way to go in exploiting mobile technologies in corporate and investment banking.