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Here in the Nordic has mobil based apps’s (mobilpay, Swish, Vipps) taken over much of the payments at flea markets, coffee-carts and other pop-up stores. Because “merchants” gets an instant terminal just by downloading an app. There has been no good alternative from the Card world towards this, because the dependency on hardware.

If an app and  a tap with the card, could solve this hardware dependency problem  – it could help increasing the number of card based payments even more – both in the very advanced payments marked as here in the Nordics – but also in marked where card payments is not as well distributed - any street vendor anyware in the world could be a receiver of card payments.

 As mentioned in other comments there could be problems – but it would be very narrow minded not to explore this opportunity, because there is some risk connected to this, thinking about the upsides of solving the hardware dependency for smaller merchants. The payment industry is very dynamic and with a high amount of resources – I am sure we can find a way to solve those issues. It will be very interesting to follow this ING's test.

In Scandinavia which is highly advanced in adapting to a cash free society the banks has been closing Branches for the last ten years. First the customers went online via PC, but recently has the "battlefield" moved to the Apps. However do you need to be a bank to make a good financial apps ?