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Recording shouldn't be required for a face-to-face interaction where the simpler and time-worn alternative of wet-ink signature exists. So, why won't a simple signature of customer and banker on a printed mortgage proposal suffice? The proposal should summarize the key points discussed during the in-person meeting. 

Nice article. Data of the nature described here is surely beneficial to auto manufacturers, dealers and insurers. From discussions with a couple of auto manufacturers, I gather that, according to privacy laws in EU and elsewhere, such data must be streamed directly from the car to the auto manufacturer, without access being provided even to the car owner, let alone third-parties. Maybe I got it wrong but it'd help if you could please throw some more light on who exactly a TSP is and its roles and responsibilities (assuming that it's different from the MNO whose network is used for the data streaming).

Props to Westpac for appreciating that each channel has its own strengths and investing to reinforce its branch network instead of falling for the "branch is dead" notion spouted by the digerati. 

Contactless POS for Express Checkout and existing Chip-and-PIN POS for normal checkout might be the optimum combination. 

If, by B2C payments, you're referring to consumer to business payments in the biller-direct model, only if the consumer chooses "NetBanking Transfer" as the method of payment does the bank's portal enter the picture. Many people - including me - choose card payment and never log on to the bank's portal. While there's no universally-agreed rigorous definition of mobile payment v. mobile banking, I don't think C2B Card or NetBanking transactions of the above nature would qualify as either mobile payment or mobile banking. On the other hand, if a consumer accesses a bank via mobile web or native mobile app and makes a P2P or bill payment, that could qualify as both mobile payment and mobile banking.

Judging success of a service like mobile banking also requires certain realistic baselines: 15 years after Amazon pioneered ecommerce, online sales only accounts for 5-7% of retail sales in the USA. While this is a tiny %, people still think ecommerce is successful.

The real debate arises when the digerati claim death of the store or bank branch when moden digital channels, while quite successful by themselves, are nowhere near uprooting the traditional physical channel.

Maybe I've misunderstood it but much of this article seems to be about mobile payments, not mobile banking. I was recently talking to a customer living in Santa Clara and working in Mountain View, the absolute technology Meccas of the world. In the last 2 years, he says he hasn't seen even 10 instances of the use of mobile payments in supermarkets. So, the poor uptake of mobile payments is not restricted to India.

Talking of mobile banking, most offerings currently view it as a mobile variant of Internet Banking. People don't do banking so often that they really need a mobile appendage for it. More than anything else, this explains the low adoption of mobile banking. I expect mobile banking adoption to soar if it exploits camera, microphone, GPS, accelerometer and other powerful features of a smartphone to deliver use cases that are not possible on PC-based Internet Banking e.g. Mobile RDC.

@AdvaitR:

Phew, thanks for pointing the fraud ramification of CTS-2010! I never thought of it. Depending on which report or FAQ you read, you'd reach various conclusions ranging from "no need to change cheques" and "there's only one difference between the old and new cheques" to "you must surrender your old cheque books before getting the new ones" and "there are five differences between the old and new cheques". The only things I'm certain about are (a) I've received new cheque books from two banks without surrendering the old cheque books and (b) I won't be able to distinguish between the old and new cheque leaves.

Let alone rural and non-English speaking population, in this case, even urban and English-speaking people with fair amount of knowledge about banking - like me - need to be on the guard against the likelihood of fraud. Although it's another hoop to jump, I agree that bank verification of cheque validity will become a necessary step before contracts can be concluded in the CTS-2010 regime. 

Just tried it out. Was a bit disappointed not to see the wish on my FB newsfeed immediately. Apparently, the goal is not processed in realtime. Apart from this lack of instant gratification, works as advertised.

You've hit the nail on the head. I always have a good laugh when SQUARE-and-Clone fans wax eloquent about how they can pay their babysitters, plumbers, et al by credit cards - as though these "merchants" were just waiting on the technology so that they could ditch cash.

Talking about taxis, you pay a cabbie by cash, he gets the money immediately. You pay him by credit card, a 1-on-1 transaction gets corporatized, goes through bureaucracy at the taxi dispatch company, takes 2-3 days before it reaches the cabbie and, when it does, there's a deduction applied on the amount on account of MDF. At the same time, the daily fee that the cabbie owes to the dispatch company is still due in cash and by the end of each day. Which cabbie in his right mind would accept card payments as readily as cash? Under the prevailing business model, I don't blame them. This has nothing to do with payment methods.

Having said that, it's quite possible that tax avoidance, misconception, old habits, etc. could explain why some other businesses like daycare or plumbers tend to refuse cards.

Adding business value to a compliance initiative is always a powerful value proposition to nudge corporates along but isn't it a big stretch for them to expect fraud and bad debt related benefits from SEPA when most of their revenues are not from EUR?