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I can't agree with you more.

How Banks Can Increase In-Branch Sales 

Last week, I had a terrible experience with one of my banks to carry out what I thought was the simple activity of changing an account from minor to major status. It suddenly struck me that even staying with a bank is sometimes more painful than undergoing the proverbial root canal surgery.

As far as I know, the US ACH *may* implement same-day settlement later this year. While The Clearing House (TCH) is planning to implement realtime payments later this year, Venmo runs on ACH and will only be able to cut down processing time from 3 days to same day, but not realtime. On a side note, Chase's QuickPay processed $2B in January 2016, double of what Venmo did (Source: http://qz.com/625259/banks-are-teaming-up-to-launch-a-venmo-killer/)

I totally agree that 3DS / 2FA is a huge conversion killer. Compared to fingerprints, selfie is a more practical alternative to passwords since every smartphone has a camera whereas few but a small subset of them has fingerprint readers. In the past, I've been gung-ho about mobile ordering of anything. However, with passage of time, I've found frequent app updates to be a major source of friction with ordering via mobile apps. This calls for reliable bandwidth at the point of ordering, adequate space in the smartphone to accommodate the update, etc. (For the moment, I'm assuming that everyone can easily afford a big enough data plan). Just yesterday, I spent 45 minutes to order a cab because of this problem with two different cab aggregator apps. If MasterCard addresses this problem upfront, I see a bright outlook for its Selfie Pay service.

End of the day, it's all about execution. I hope StanChart does a better job of this new "Tablet Banking" initiative than it did on its online credit card application portal: Omnichannel Fiasco 1: Standard Chartered Credit Card

@DenisWicking + 1.

Especially the part about the challenge in controlling access to only when the user wants it. Added to that is the challenge in controlling access to for what the user wants it. From my experience with many web / mobile services / apps that seek access to one another or social network credentials, this can turn into a major nuisance very soon.

1. I want to give access for one purpose for one time but, because of the obfuscatory language on the ensuing permissions screen, I inadvertently end up giving access to more purposes and forever.
2. Over time, it's impossible to keep a track of whom I've given what access to.
3. Assuming I figure out a way of doing that, it's not easy to locate the feature for disabling access.

This is not a big deal when all these services are doing is relatively harmless stuff like detecting a new post on my blog and posting a link to it on my Twitter account. But, when it comes to banking info, the consequences of such behavior by these services / apps can be dire.

I know. That's why the ex MasterCard...

LOL. Bus ticket will get wetter if Dwolla wrangles a deal to bypass ACH / FED rails and pay the fine via Dwolla rails! On a side note, these fintechs can't even disrupt banks by attracting $B fines!!

No one sees a connection with ex MasterCard UK CEO being ex ex VL CEO?:)

When the credit card "no surcharge" rule was repealed, some merchants started charging as much as 7.5% surcharge even though their MSC / MDF cost was only 2-2.5%. Therefore, while I'm aware that interchange is being lowered in Europe, I'm not so sure if that will mean much in actual practice. In any case, credit card still won't make funds available to spend in real time, the way cash does.

Good post. Having spent nearly two decades in various IT companies leading - and being led by - people distributed all over the world, I can easily relate to many of your tips. Keen to know if you've any experience of using new-age enterprise collaboration platforms like Slack, Yammer and Jive on managing remotely distributed teams.