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Without debating about the merits and demerits of EMV - and I believe there are plenty of them - I wanted to touch upon the subject of business case for the typical American merchant who seems to be getting pushed in several directions to deploy Contactless, EMV and several other new technologies. Maybe there could a quid pro quo built into Durbin Amendment and other proposed regulation to reduce interchange fees in return for EMV / NFC deployment?

Last year, I received my IT refund from HMRC by electronic transfer to my bank account. It reached me by BACS and not FPS, for which I've to blame my bank for not having enabled FPS-reachability on the said sort code. At the time, I'd blogged about how we sometimes rush to blame the government for errors of omission and commission caused by others. 

At the same time, I think HMRC still uses only snail-mail for all communications involving Personally Identifiable Information (PII). Does appear a bit uncool under the circumstances.

Since the subject of promoting FPS has cropped up, I've contributed a few comments to another Finextra post in this subject and, coming to think of it, I'm not sure if the man on the street really needs any more promotion or education about backbone payment methods.

IMO, the best service that banks can provide to their customers is to make the whole backbone transparent: Simply ask the payer to provide the amount, and the beneficiary bank details, then use an automated engine to work out the various options available for putting through the given payment at the given time based on reachability, hours of operations, and any other considerations viz. 3 days at GBP 0 (BACS) OR 2 hours at GBP 5 (FPS) OR Instantly at GBP 35 (CHAPS). The customer should be asked to simply choose the option that best meets her timescale / cost considerations. The present method of asking the customer to select a payment method, then add payee valid only for that payment method, select another payment method, add the same payee again, etc. etc. is fraught with too much friction, and I wonder if any amount of promotion / education will bolster adoption of FPS (or ePayments in general) significantly. 

By making a comparison with checks, NRF raises a valid point in questioning why debit card payments should attract 1-2% transaction processing fees. 

However, I wonder how NRF plans to respond to the 30-40% fees that merchants have to cough up in the case of "GenY Mobile" Payments (ex: Boku, Zong) and "Walled Garden" Payments (ex: Apple AppStore). 

@SandraG: While it's impossible to find a solution to this problem via these comments, let me simply point out that there's a lesson to be learned from the drivers of the migration from checks to epayments in Europe. Having personally experienced the transition from DM to Euro in Germany, I can say that B2B ePayments were the norm in Europe well before the launch of Euro. The drivers lie not in the cost of checks versus epayments - as a matter of fact, the migration happened despite checks being free and epayments attracting fees in most parts of Europe - but in the potential of epayments to deliver efficiency gains in the end-to-end payments process. 

@Sandra G: This age-old saying has frustrated many a technology provider over the years, including me! But, there's an approach to counter the apathy resulting from it, and it is: "What if you don't know it's broken?" The technology provider needs to invest far more in creating an alternative packaging of their offering in order to carry off this counter approach. But, from personal experience, I can confirm that it has worked on many occasions, especially when the alternative packaging can be made to resonate well with industry hot topics and business pain areas.  

I don't think financial inclusivity was - or is - an attractive business proposition from the perspective of banks. This seems to be equally true in emerging markets (ex: India) as developed ones (ex: USA, UK).

MNOs can fill the gap only if they're permitted to take deposits and provide other financial services without any link to banks, like in the case of Kenya. However, where regulators only permit banks to carry out these activities (ex: India), I don't hold much hope for the spread of financial inclusion - MNOs can't do it, banks won't do it. Eliminating free checking - an intent articulated by a few large American banks in recent times - is a huge kicker for bringing in additional revenues. Under the circumstance, I'm not sure if they will change their approach towards financial inclusion.

There's no doubt that checks are easy. But, they're equally easy on both sides of the Atlantic. It is true that the supplier name and address - the two pieces of information required to cut a check - are readily available on the supplier's invoice. But, in Continental Europe, if not also in the UK, bank details are as easily available - not just in invoices but even in the footer section of company letterheads. This makes B2B ePayments fairly easy in Continental Europe.  

Why is it more difficult to get hold of bank details in the US? I presume it has to do with support of certain remote ACH payment types in the US, which force individuals and companies to keep their bank details confidential, unlike in Continental Europe.

Since we're seeing biometrics being proposed as an alternative to VbV and MasterCard SecureCode, it follows that the context is CNP / online. That being the case, are we to assume that webcam for iris scanning, fingerprint scanner for capturing fingerprint impressions, and all other types of biometrics authentication equipment are part of basic hardware? Otherwise, I'm not sure how biometrics will work without any additional hardware.

A few years ago, the datacenter of a leading bank located in West England was hit by flash floods, I asked their IT Director what their BCP was. With a twinkle in his eye, he replied, "mops and buckets"! 

Although cited in a lighter vein, the above example highlights one critical challenge posed by most prevailing BCP/DRP technologies, namely, the extremely high cost of network bandwidth required to keep the data between the primary and secondary sites in synch with each other in realtime. The telecom provider in this instance was simply unable to provide the required bandwidth within the required timescales, which meant the bank had to settle for a few hours of phase lag between the two sites.

Personally, I appreciate my bank's efforts at upselling and cross-selling - after all, I'll feel bad if my bank introduced new products and services and never bothered to communicate them to me.

However, I've realized that many people seemingly don't and have read about complaints giving examples of thoughtless and irrelevant offers they've received from banks.

To put things in perspective, it might help if readers can highlight a few concrete examples of what they believe their banks can do to help them and a majority of their customer base without selling additional products / services. I've really not come across any such examples of what people think banks can do right.

Although bulk discounts for frequent users is a good example, I'm not sure if this benefit would apply to the broad base of banking customers since many basic banking services are free anyway in many countries.