Community

The Faster Payments System in the Uk is opening up to FinTechs as aggregators meaning PSP's will have more options rather than submitting transactions through a direct member bank. This type of model will become the norm in all markets in the future

The number of branches is likely to decrease but those that remain need effectivel a make over from their current format.

Across the globe there have been all sorts of branch improvements from Virtual tellers to ipads available etc. UK banks need to review the best of these and invest in delivering them to customers.

I wonder if these predictions include any factoring of Apple Pay entering the European market. Given the interchange caps and greater dominance of Android phones in Europe it is likely there will be a different business model to the US, but the impact on the quoted numbers couls be significant.

While this can be seen as a success and potentially the silver bullet for the contactless technology, the dominance of London in transaction volume following its choice for the original trial is still a concern.

I hope other transport organisations will also adopt contactless and the limit increase will promote greater usage generally.

McDonalds should be the case study for any fast food organisation wishing to implement contactless adoption

Its not really surprising awareness is low really, banks promoting the service would be like Turkeys voting for Christmas!

Full account number portability is a major step - and the real question is how important is this? It would be interesting to see some research on how many people know their sort code and account number and to ask them why that would be so vital for them to retain it if all directy debits etc were automatically switched if they changed bank.

The FCA and new PSR have to be careful they do not get railroaded into projects and investigations that are really peripheral to the functioning of UK Payments.

The effect of the interchange caps being imposed by Europe should perhaps be more worrying for them.

I can only agree with my esteemed colleagues above. Chip and signature will never be the solution.

Presumably this alos means the US wishes to retain magnetic stripe as a fallback particularly for the the US traveller community so it will be ages before we can finally remove it from cards. Bliss for the fraudster.

KYC has been touted as one of the reasons why branches survive. This move by Lloyds following on from their recently announced investment in digital suggests they do not subscribe to the same bank ethos as Santander recently advocated.

Having acquired Halifax they also probably have more branch duplication on high streets than the other banks so expect them to be selling some redundant branch sites soon - possibly to allow them to pay dividends to their long suffering shareholders on an ongoing basis?

An interesting debate. The fact that many other banks in Europe, the US and APAC are spending money on either increasing the technology in their branches, downsizing but increasing capabilities, virtual tellers etc - plus making them more 'green' and automated suggests Botin is not alone in her thinking at Bank Executive level.

The branch is a channel many people still want to use and it does complement other channels. The key is keeping them relevant to the customer base of all ages. Silver surfers are making greater use of the internet but also like to use a branch for some transactions

Americans have a hstory of magnetic stripe cards previously so adding them to the EMV cards should be an easy adoption.

The fact that retailers like McDonalds have led retailer adoption in the UK also means they have the experience to deliver contactless in the US.

The success of transit as a contactless application in London should also drive demand in the US where, for example in California there are stripe cards avaialble for use on trains and buses today. It will be interesting to see whether this follows the UK model of utilising the bank card itself to pay for transit in the contactless scenario or whether stand alone cards issued by the transit authority are retained

Thanks Andrew - a genius comic creation by Ronnie Barker. So thanks for saying I, too am a genius