Community

Kudos to DNB for reiterating that cash is legal tender - a basic fact that tends to be forgotten in all this hype about mobile payments.

Banks are increasingly providing customer service via social media to backstop any lacunae - and there are several - in their conventional customer support channels. 

The Business Case For Social Media Customer Service

Virtual agents using natural language processing could still be good options in select niches. 

On the back of Check21 truncation standard introduced over a decade ago, Mobile RDC has proven to be a big hit in the USA. It's arguably the only mobile banking killer app, at least the only one that customers are willing to pay for. This just substantiates your conclusion, "There are certainly lessons to be learnt here, even for the ‘old’ economies and their payments environments."

Credit cards came into existence more than 50 years ago. Despite the progress of technology during this period, they're still around. Rightly or wrongly, card issuance still uses KYC norms that are centered around identity and address (and not mobile phone # or email address). As a result, it'd logically follow that conventional PIN Mailers, sent to the KYC'd name at the KYC'd address, would be the only legally valid approach. Besides, they work well and, compared to the alternatives, are free of friction for the average cardholder. I for one wouldn't want to go thru' different channels to assemble different pieces of passwords just to get to my PIN.

@AlexanderP: Your image is of Multipass whereas your hyperlink goes to the website of one PriorityPass, which displays card #, cardholder name and expiration date! On another note, like I mentioned in Why Is This Data Breach Different?, I prefer more protection than just PCI-DSS instead of 2FA.  

With reduced shopping cart abandonment as one of its key benefit, Zapp seems to be targeted at buyers who are wary of using credit cards. Curious to know whether banks will levy any charge on either the buyer or the merchant for accepting payments via Zapp. 

Seems like a Cardlytics clone. Nevertheless, I'd love to receive targeted offers from my card issuers that would hopefully be far more relevant than the junk I get from them today. 

This has something in it for the merchant / biller and the consumer. I see it becoming a big hit provided Barclays is able to articulate the value proposition clearly enough for everyone in the value chain to appreciate.

@MilosD: I know merchants always want to have their cake and eat it too. But, even by their standards, contactless delivers tremendous value since it pays the merchant twice per transaction via "double-dipping". Okay, just joking. Since you've raised this very valid point, just wanted to check if you have come across any reports on business case for contactless, especially for merchants.

This just out:

http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/19/intercom-series-a/

Although it doesn't give any concrete examples, Intercom, the company featured in this article, claims that card issuers face a lot of friction in making targeted offers, which its platform seeks to resolve. (Full Disclosure: I have no personal or professional vested interest in Intercom).