Community

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.

"Retail bank marketers need to identify ways to apply the same level of personal touch and feel currently offered to retail branch customers through the online channel." Personal touch in a branch? Which bank's branch, which century, may I ask?

If 52% prefer Web, balance 48% would prefer Web, that accounts for 100%. From where does the "third of respondents" come from that considers "the branch their primary method of banking"? Whatever happened to phone, mobile and social media channels?

While minimizing friction in Internet Banking can undoubtedly foster greater adoption of the web channel, numbers in this survey simply don't add up. Personally, I might never visit a branch unless the bank forces me to visit it, but that's not necessarily a universal behavior.

I don't recall these views being expressed in the mainstream ten years ago, so you make my point about hindsight being 20/20 very well. Brussels didn't force anyone to join the EuroZone. It invited individual countries fulfilling certain conditions to join the EuroZone. Greece and other countries took the decision to join it just as UK decided not to join it. Brussels is not culpable and doesn't need to put up any defence. If anything, it's the governments in Greece and the other floundering countries in the EuroZone who should be on trial. They need to defend not only their past decision to join the EuroZone but also their present plight.

Hindsight is always 20/20, as they say. I used to live in the heart of the Euro - Frankfurt - when it was launched and I remember hearing very different things at the time. Instead of inequality, the Euro was expected to foster equality when combined with free labor markets within the larger EU region. This made sense then, it continues to make sense now. Besides, former currencies of now Eurozone countries were converted to EUR at non-uniform exchange rates - 2DM:1EUR and 6FFR:1EUR if I recall correctly - that reflected their respective strengths. Ten years later, it's another matter whether the expectations have materialized or not, but, for one, that's how I remember them and, for another, I won't blame Brussels for the alleged profligate behavior of Greece and a couple of other floundering nations in the Eurozone. 

Like Square, iZettle doesn't require its small business customers to have a merchant account. mPowa's pricing structure suggests that it does. Given that getting a merchant account directly from an acquirer bank is a major pain area for such businesses, iZettle shouldn't have any significant competition from mPowa. 

"Comment from the floor: I recently received a remittance payment into my account. Called bank and they couldn't tell me who sent it, the exchange rate etc etc." To this, let me add my recent experience where the same thing happened even for a domestic payment. My bank shrugs its shoulders saying it hasn't received any more information from the central bank - which runs the ACH-equivalent scheme in India - and I'm left with nowhere to go to find out the sender details. As a consumer, what's frustrating is there's no single point of contact in case of EFTs where such ambiguities are increasingly becoming commonplace. 

A seasoned program manager with over two decades of experience exclusively in the Retail vertical was first put in charge of a transaction banking / payments / cash management program at a Top 5 UK Bank a few years ago. When he heard why the bank had to spend several millions of GBP in implementing an ACTIVE:ACTIVE architecture to ensure automated failover, he mused, "Ah, now I understand, a 5 minute downtime can wreck havoc with a bank's liquidity position whereas it's only a matter of a few T-Shirts lying unsold in the case of a retailer". 

I'm reminded of the above story when I read this question: "...if retail suppliers... can offer an engaging online experience, why not banks?". 

When I want to buy a shirt online, I might want to view it in 360 degrees, turn it upside down, get a feel for its texture, and so on, before I decide which shirt to buy. And the retailer's website should be geared up for letting me do all that. However, as a retail consumer or corporate treasurer, when I want to make a payment, I really don't want to engage, interact or otherwise schmooze with a bank's website - all I want to do is to spend the least amount of time on the website and move on to other things in my busy life. As long as a bank's website lets me do this, it's doing a great job for the given purpose.

So, as a customer of a bank interested in making a payment, here are the specific things I'd like to see on the EFT screen of a bank's website that's missing from most of them today: (1) Let me simply enter the beneficiary name, bank account details and the transer amount (2) Make the reference field length long enough for me to enter all required details so that the beneficiary can figure out why they're receiving this payment (3) Help minimize the likelihood of my entering wrong details or assure me that I can retrieve my payment if I make a genuine mistake. I'd like the bank to figure out which method of payment to use based on my choice of cost and lead time instead of troubling me by making me add beneficiary by type of payment and so forth.

A year after announcement and six months before consumer launch, do we know if myBank's fees for merchants will be much lower than card MDF?

In my last year's Finextra post "Why I Think EBA Clearing's myBank Will Be A Hit", I'd wondered if myBank would be available for intra-country transactions. Do we know now if this is indeed the case? The experience of SEPA SCT and SDD in the intervening period clearly suggests that cross-border, B2C EURO payments are not as widespread as hitherto assumed, so myBank might be able to achieve mainstream adoption only if it supports and promotes itself for domestic payments as well.

Transformation during Post Merger Integration was an attractive proposition during the GFC when several takeovers of banks happened. In principle, transformation during compliance is equally attractive. But, it is far more difficult to realize in the latter case since regulations seem to happen in drip feed. By the time FIs absorb the full scope of the compliance program, deadline pressures are too severe for them to do much else than simply achieve compliance. 

At least someone is able to monetize Faster Payments! On second thoughts, Wonga's transfers to SMEs via FPS might qualify as business payments / DCA, yielding fees to the transferring bank as well.