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Thanks but the crux of my observation still remains. Downloadable mobile apps flaunt their ability to provide better UX than mobile web apps. So, making them downloadable - not just usable - over 3G is a cross that mobile developers must bear. This is even more true for an app intended to engage deeper with a highly fungible commodity like a newspaper ad. Most people wouldn't have carried the newspaper home, or, even if they did, wouldn't have remembered to go back to the CBA ad. BTW, although I hadn't mentioned it before, I'd downloaded the Times intARact app via 3G.

"The local papers have a downloadable iphone app with newspaper ads that interact with the phone (mind you, I didn't have wifi at my coffee shop so will have to do later)."

Talking about technology, just curious to know why CBA's mobile app won't work without WiFi. To me, a mobile app that doesn't work on 3G sounds like a contradiction in terms. India's leading newspaper The Times of India has a multi-OS mobile app called Times intARact which works fine on WiFi and 3G. In fact, I happen to have used it only on 3G to experience the augmented reality extension to many recent print ads. 

It's ironic that the true power of a smarphone - anywhere, anytime on - is so badly undermined by problems in another kind of power - battery! Personally, I like targeted ads and LBS apps among other smartphone goodies. While all suggestions to preserve battery life are useful, I begin to wonder if following them wouldn't downgrade the smartphone to its poorer cousin - feature phone. 

As the subprime mortgage crisis exposed, bankers make more bonus when they lend more money.

If, this time around, they're reluctant to make more loans to small businesses, there must be something more than lethargy or complacency to explain their behavior viz.:

1. Increased capital requirements to comply with Basel-III
2. Heightened scrutiny of their Non Performing Assets by regulators (this has already started happening in India), and
3. Starting troubles faced by non-banking competitors like Wonga under regulatory oversight, well before they've become 'too big to fail'. 

@Michael J: 

Thank you for the clarification. It's clear why unclaimed payments would call for suspense account, regardless of whether they are sent to registered or unregistered mobile #s. But, unclaimed payments are not "incorrect transactions", nor do they involve customers who have "entered the wrong details", which is the context of this article and my comment. I still remain clueless about the need for suspense account in this context. 

If sender / receiver have to enter complex details like bank account # and sort code to initiate a payment, I can understand how mistakes could creep in and why a suspense account is needed. However, going by the popular stereotype, the typical user of MTN's mobile money transfer service is likely to be unbanked and would simply have to enter the beneficiary's mobile phone # to transfer funds. In that case, I can't understand how there could be mistakes in payments and why a suspense account is required in the first place. 

Just because petrol from BP, Shell, Aral and other petroleum companies is more or less the same as one another, I won't expect them to be given away for free. Likewise, basic banking service - boring or not - doesn't have to be free. Differentiated features command premium but are not required to justify a basic fee. That banks have kept them free reflects a legacy problem: Having started off by giving away toasters and other gifts for opening checking accounts, it's too much of a stretch for them to think of levying fees for such basic banking products. That explains why most of them give away traditional, but costlier, 'products' like branch, cheques and cash for free but are able to charge fees for newer, but cheaper, 'products' like EFT, debit and credit cards. On the other hand, banks have a solution about which they smartly maintain a low profile: It's called Net Interest Margin.

Hi Srinivas C: 

Nice to see you on Finextra!

Far as I know, there are at least two key differences: (1) IMPS requires the sender and receiver to be pre-registered with IMPS and obtain a certain MMID # before the payment can be initiated (2) IMPS payments can only be sent to the beneficiary's MMID #, not email address or mobile phone #.

Whereas, in the case of clearXchange, PopMoney, ZashPay and PingIt, only the sender has to be pre-registered with the respective service before the payment can be initiated. Sender simply sends money to the beneficiary's email or mobile phone #. Beneficiary needs to register with the service only upon hearing that, by doing so, they can collect some money. This is similar to the manner in which Hotmail and PayPal became viral when they launched more than 10-15 years ago. 

While these differences might sound technically minor, PayPal, PopMoney et al have designed their service to resonate far better with typical consumer behavior and have been rewarded with significant mainstream adoption. Whereas, I won't be surprised if IMPS heads the way of Nokia Money, whose design suffered from the same friction as IMPS' does.

You've a problem with a certain transaction. You try Phone Banking and can't get the CSR to understand your problem. You then try to log a complaint on Internet Banking but fail to find your problem listed on the dropdown boxes from which you must select one entry. You then send an email (assuming your bank allows you to log complaints in this manner) but, beyond the AutoResponse Message, you don't hear back from the bank. You try social media. You might be lucky and get your problem resolved there. However, it's more likely that the bank will ask you to report your problem on its website or via email. So, you're back to Square One. You finally decide to ditch all remote channels, make a trip to the branch and howl at the branch manager. Problem solved.

Surely, you never looked forward to visiting the branch. Surely, you visited the branch as a last resort. Not sure if @Finextra Member meant 'not looking forward' and 'last resort' in this way but, until you visited the branch, the problem didn't go away.

I'm not suggesting that banks should not invest in digital channels. My point, expressed in my three part personal blog post titled "Jumping On The Omnichannel Bandwagon", is only that each channel has certain unique strengths and banks should not ignore them. According to a recent CapGemini-EFMA Retail Banking report, customers consider Branch and Internet Banking as their primary channels.

I've been hearing for close to 10 years that security doesn't mean inconvenience and, as a vendor of security solutions, confess to saying the same thing for 6 out of those years. Unfortunately, friction just keeps mounting with greater security measures in actual practice. To me, greater friction caused by greater security is the biggest threat to increased adoption of the online channel, not the other way around. I think the American banks and e-tailers have realized this. So many years after mandate for it them was passed by FFIEC, most of them haven't bothered to implement 2FA. I haven't come across any figures suggesting that they suffer greater fraud loss as a percentage of transaction value compared to other countries that have implemented more stringent security.