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It seems to have finally dawned on the nonbank payments players that the retail payment value chain is not so simple and that it involves other players who have decades of experience in it. Better to join hands in a committee to get something done - sooner or later - than stay alone and waste time under the delusion of disintermediating banks from the retail payments business.

"A number of start-ups are trying hard to convince the world that the ability to pay for things with a phone is something we actually need ... Still, mobile payments aren’t big yet in the United States. Forrester, the research firm, predicts that the domestic market is three to five years from reaching critical mass." (emphasis mine)

- New York Times, August 7, 2012

@RobertS: Thanks. I've already downloaded and installed it.

Not sure if Intellect is aware that BFSI has been the #1 IT spending sector for a long time and that it provides more revenues to many leading IT services companies than all other industry verticals combined. Therefore, pressurizing banks to replace all their legacy systems may not be practical.

What might work is stronger regulation on the "ends" instead of greater interference with the "means". This could happen by regulators specifying stringent SLAs that banks have to fulfill at various customer IT touchpoints and enforcing those SLAs by levying punitive penalties for breaches. Some SLAs are already in place viz. 2 hour and 1 minute round-trip times for Faster Payments and TARGET2 transactions respectively. More of them could be introduced viz. say, "Three 9" uptime for Internet Banking, 1 hour lead time for ATM and ePayment transactions to reflect on account balance and statements, etc. It should be left to individual banks to figure out whether they can tweak their legacy systems to achieve these SLAs or they must adopt spanking-new technologies to avoid penalties for SLA breaches.

@Darren N:

Yes, I'm familiar with BackBase. A couple of years ago, I was involved in a joint GTM with BackBase in the area of Rich Internet Applications for Retail Banking.

Spotting customer needs before customers express them is admittedly a slightly fuzzy endeavor. I'm afraid that subjecting it to the rigors of a formal evaluation process of the type that banks normally use might nip it in the bud. Having said that, banks don't have to fly blind. They can use semi-formal - and arguably more reliable - methods of prioritizing ideas gathered via social media sentiment analysis applications. One such method is Digg-style voting by the community. I remember reading about one direct bank in the UK / Europe already using this method. In the US, Challenge.gov is currently running the MyMoneyAppUp Challenge IdeaBank on a similar basis to solicit and select ideas for financial apps from the community, one of which I happen to have submitted myself. As a matter of fact, today happens to be the last day for voting - let me rush to cast my vote before the deadline passes... 

Brilliant post!

This list is self-admittedly applicable only for custom development projects. Many software projects involve customization and implementation of standard products (e.g. SAP, FLEXCUBE, etc.). In case you're planning to write separately about what makes such projects hard, here's one item to kickstart your list:

Drastic difference in what is expected from the software before implementation starts versus what is accepted after implementation ends. To cite an extreme example, many companies embarking on an ERP project expect the software to change the fabric of their company before starting the implementation but are willing to settle for accurate invoicing after ending the implementation! 

When SQUARE launched, it was easy to believe that there were millions of mobile merchants who couldn't / wouldn't spend the $$$$ on traditional POS, so its market seemed large enough. However, it's difficult to fathom who are the merchants who can't / won't be able to afford tablets starting at a couple of $$$, who form the primary target market for GoPago. Sounds more like the race to the bottom has begun in the mobile POS space.

I'm interested in protecting my Android smartphone from malware and other threat vectors. Can you suggest a suitable app from Google Play Market?

Private cloud might be the solution. Cloud purists might balk at attaching the label of cloud to something that lies within a company's firewall. However, private cloud deployment undeniably gives enterprises greater control, flexibility, security and uptime guarantee than any public cloud. At the same time, it allows them to consolidate common services on shared infrastructure, thus cutting both capex and opex, as well as to ramp up capacity on demand, thus making them more agile. I know IT services companies which used to need 4-6 weeks mobilization period before starting new projects because it'd take that kind of time to order and receive the required new hardware and software. After moving to private cloud, they're now able to provision the required infrastructure within a few hours, which gives them tremendous competitive advantage.

TY for your response.

From our experience with eBills / eStatements solutions, we noticed that even PDF format is quite heavy! Hope the same is not the case with eReceipts, which are physically often smaller than bills and statements.

I'm aware that retailers use identifiers like mod10 to authenticate their receipts. Generally, disputes happen when customers are unaware of these identifiers and can't verify them at the time of receiving the receipts but retailers contest their claims later. These disputes could potentially increase with e-receipts, which can be PhotoShopped.