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It's good to know that bad guys have abandoned schools, malls and other places where kids usually hang around and are turning to metadata from social media pictures to find out their locations. At least we now have a step-by-step guide to stymie their efforts.

This @Protiviti article published in The Financial Brand reinforces my reading of the omnichannel-banking writing-on-the-wall.
http://thefinancialbrand.com/55261/omnichannel-bricks-and-clicks-strategy/

@HamzaAbu-Musa:

I'm no banking industry corporate strategist but I think it's very smart for banks to continue in the current mode of keeping online P2P companies at arms length. For several reasons, they should avoid ownership of such companies: (1) If and when loans go delinquent, it's very easy for an asset-light VC-funded fintech company to leave investors high-and-dry. It's not so easy for asset-strong banks to do the same. (2) Not sure if banks can ringfence online P2P business from their core business. Even assuming they can, why should they bother to take the risk of reputation loss when they wash their hands off delinquent loans when online P2P volumes are extremely miniscule at this point? (A Tier-1 bank does more volumes in one day than what LC has done in its entire lifetime nearing 10 years).

"It's the first service of its kind that doesn't place onerous restrictions on how rewards can be redeemed." Ah, that's what I call Godfather-style offer - one you can't refuse! Kudos to BBVA Compass.

I remember reading some article on Finextra saying banks are getting involved in online crowdfunding companies either as lender or as investor or both. As of now, online crowdfunding seems to be focused on subprime, thin file and no file categories. Since banks are currently shunning this "bottom feeder" segment of the market, there's no question of disruption, as of now.

Some have hypothesized that, as online crowdfunding gains traction in the bottom feeder market, even prime and ultraprime segments - currently the mainstay of banks - will choose online crowdfunding options over banks when they need a loan (despite the former’s higher interest rates and just because of their superior CX). If and when that happens - and VC-funded online crowdfunding companies are still around to take advantage  of it and get their recovery act in place by then - disruption will happen.

It was 2001 or 2002. Germany's Bild tabloid was raising EUR 5 donations from its readers for a charity. In what is still the most frictionless method of making donations I've come across, readers interested in donating simply called a telephone number given on the newspaper and disconnected the line after one ring. EUR 5 was credited to the charity and a like amount was added to the reader's mobile phone bill. MNOs facilitated the entire transaction with just one "missed call" as we say in India and without involving banks.

15 years later, for the same use case, we've a bank-centered solution that requires a smartphone, an app, registration (and I'm sure an onboarding process with some friction and abandonment). This is just another illustration of how TELCOs have lost the lead they had in retail payments and why

Banks Have Nothing To Fear From TELCOs.

Well, we asked the same question 7 years ago, a couple of months before FPS went live at a Top 5 UK Bank. The consensus prediction was that FPS would kill BACS three years after its go live in 2008. Not only did that not happen but BACS actually goes around breaking records 7 years later (https://www.finextra.com/news/announcement.aspx?pressreleaseid=60713)! 

I received my May 2008 salary via FPS. Based on my company's CFO's explanations of the advantages of FPS over BACS, we expected everyone to shift to FPS in the next few months. But, 7 years later, the mainstream market still seems to use BACS for payroll! 

I sometimes wonder if even the 10 years in the legendary Bill Gates quote about change is an underestimate when it comes to payments!

I've been hearing a lot of buzz about student debt being a big problem. But is it such a huge issue that the next generation "will not know what money is"?

@AlexanderPeschkoff: Like I said, fingerprinting was always more culturally acceptable for foreigners. As for that driving greater acceptance within USA because it's carried out at its own borders, well, I won't hold my breath, going by US apathy towards other things like Chip+PIN and 3DS that have been de rigueur for foreigners for ages!

True. In addition Pay By Touch faced a cultural challenge somewhat unique to USA. Many countries in ROW have attempted / succeeded in creating Fingerprint-based Citizen ID systems e.g. India, UK. There were no such systems in the USA when Pay By Touch was around. Fingerprinting was - perhaps still is - associated with criminals who were "printed" after getting arrested. This thwarted scaling up user count to the levels required for Pay By Touch to become sustainable.