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Suppliers of technology to financial services sector have been around for ages. For lack of a better term, let me call them "finserv tech". Then came along fintech. At their inception, they were competing with finserv sector for customers with allegedly superior offerings and CX. That "disruption" story pumped up their valuation and attracted huge amount of funding. But that movie didn't have a happy ending when they realized it's not so easy to disrupt finserv sector. So, suddently, fintech morphed into suppliers of tech to finserv sector aka finserv tech. Finserv tech has been profitable for ages and didn't require VC funding, barring a few exceptions. For some reason that I can't fathom, fintech does what finserv tech has been doing for ages but it still makes losses and needs VC funding.

All talk of merchant cost of handling cash is dubious and likely spread by banks, governments and fintechs who all have a vested interest in digital payments. How many people have seen a merchant hang out a sign saying "2% surcharge for cash payments" or "Cash payments accepted only above $5"? If digitization of payments removes costs, why're banks charging for digital payments?

My point is slightly different: When I say banks run credit decisioning process, it doesn't follow that the credit portfolio is healthy. It only follows that the credit risk is as healthy or unhealthy as it is. My original question remains.  

@JoãoBohner:

TY for your comment. 

In a B2B context, people have started using Google Pin / Lat Long Coordinates to indicate office locations. For my office it's https://goo.gl/maps/1Eaion4Mhz12 / 18.562772, 73.918031.

However, the context of ecommerce is B2C, where it's typically not up to the consumer to decide how to specify the address. As in my example, in most cases, the brand decides how the consumer must enter the address. If I come across a brand that allows the consumer enter freeform text, I'll use that field to enter Google Pin / Lat Long Coords. But it's a separate matter whether the brand is geared up to guide the delivery boy to a physical location on the basis of that info.

TY @CharmaineOak. Of late, Amazon India is not coping very well with delivery and other issues. Some of its attempts to cope seem to be global whereas others are specific to India. But all of them deviate from Amazon's past commitment of "covering the customer". So much so that, after 15+ years of showing cult-like loyalty to Amazon, I've started looking for alternatives. You can find more on this subject on the following two posts on my company blog: 

Strange Happenings In Amazon

Should I Look For An Alternative To Amazon India?

(hyperlink removed to comply with Finextra Community Rules but these posts should appear on top of Google Search results when searched by their respective titles).

Interesting regulation. "The objective of ECB in asking for the granular credit data is to ... understand the credit Risks being taken by banks ...".

I'm sure individual banks run their credit decisioning process before sanctioning any and every loan. If ECB were to merely want to "understand" the credit risk, reviewing the output of individual banks' credit decisioning process should suffice. Or, by asking for individual loan-level data, is ECB really planning to second-guess the credit risk judgements of individual banks?

We've seen other fintechs who launched mobile wallets probably because their founders "found it completely insane that people would store their 21st century contactless cards in 1000 BC leather wallets." We know how that movie ended. Hope Flux fares better and proves that the insanity is in the market and not its founder's mental state.

Forrester asks if relationship banking is dead. Just about the same question I had.  

https://go.forrester.com/bank/ < https://twitter.com/forrester/status/856830201807986689

If only COIN and Plastc had taken my advice to focus on loyalty, rather than payment, cards...

Accelerating Mobile Wallet Adoption By Fixing What's Broken

@GerardHergenroeder:

+ 1. Banks may or may not do better digital than fintechs but they surely do more with digital than fintechs.

Ever since my bank launched its mobile wallet, it has become my go-to method of payment, ahead of the fintech mobile wallet I used to use before. HDFC Bank's PayZapp Ends My Bill Payment Woes  

One question: Fintechs use VC funding to offer digital services, even at a huge loss. As traction increases, their paper valuation goes up. VCs exit at handsome profits during the next round of funding. Everyone is happy. Life goes on, seemingly forever. In your experience in payments, will banks use their huge profits to fund similar loss-making digital services forever?