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On another note, haven't all - contactless or "contactful" - cards needed activation / opt-in in Australia? Maybe things have changed now but, when I got my credit cards in Germany, UK and India several years ago, I was required to call a tollfree number before I could use them for the first time.

I maybe going slightly off the track here but, in response to @LuZurawski, I remember reading an article where an iPhone6 user in USA found the Apple Pay authorization screen popping up near the turnstile at an amusement park, when the NFC was used for access control, not payment! Not sure whether on-off feature will be supported on mobile or contactless anytime soon! 

Over the last couple of years, we've been hearing that BTC is being accepted at overstock.com, some higher education institution (don't recall the name but it's apparently a portfolio company of Andreessen Horowitz VC firm), and so on. Any idea what percentage of BTC volumes and growth come from these "real world" businesses? 

Okay, fine, but my consumer finance experience is quite different from yours. I've used both banks and nonbanks for personal cross-border remittance for over two decades and the experience w.r.t transparency of fees and CX have been more or less the same.

I'm not so sure that business sector will benefit from nonbanks anytime soon because (1) In the nearly 10 years that I've been hearing this contention, nonbanks haven't made much progress for business cross-border payments (2) Nonbanks are VC-funded and most VCs are wary about funding B2B startups.

Who is to say "how much is too much"?  By the same token,

1. Whole countries have claimed that Chip + PIN is a waste of money. 
2. STRIPE lambasts 2FA / 3DS by saying that it results in loss of revenues (https://support.stripe.com/questions/does-stripe-support-3d-secure-verified-by-visa-mastercard-securecode).

End of the day, fraud metrics can work both ways. 

No, I respectfully disagree.

1. The point is about trust, not support. As things stand, there's not a single nonbank that I trust more than the banks I deal with. Unless there's a cataclysm in the financial world, I don't expect that situation to change.
2. Contrary to all the hype, there's actually very little choice of nonbanks apart from PayPal when it comes to B2B cross-border remittance, which is the transaction I referenced. I've reached this conclusion after exploring TransferWise, Xoom and many other nonbanks. Either they don't support this transaction type or, if they do, their processes have as much friction as banks'. Since you've so asserted that "fintech companies ... better and faster than any bank", can you cite names of a couple of nonbanks that you've experienced that lead you to this conclusion? (As long as they provide B2B cross-border remittance service, it’s okay even if they corridor is different from my case of USA-India.)
3. In my previous comment, the sender bank was different from the receiver bank. It struck me later that nonbanks provide benefits #1 and #2 only because they're present in both sides of the cross-border transaction by themselves. If I now compare the nonbank experience with the experience – if available - of the same bank being present in both countries (e.g. Citi UK to Citi India), I'd say that the banking route trumps the nonbanking route on all counts and more: (1) Highly transparent: Zero fees (2) Excellent UX: The screen is very simple. (3) The transaction is instant. Money is received directly in bank account in realtime.

Since I'm currently struggling with my bank to find out the reason for charging whatever fees it charged me for a recent incoming US$:INR remittance, I can't agree more with your first point about upfront mention of charges in the case of PayPal, Xoom and other nonbanks.

On the other end, my customer in the USA was wary about having to complete a long form for initiating the payment at his bank unlike nonbank. So, I also agree with your second point about nonbank systems being easier to use.

That said, my bank has a Customer Complaint Redressal mechanism. While it might seem sluggish, it eventually works. The same can't be said about many nonbanks when they freeze merchant accounts for no rhyme or reason. Their CCR mechanism is a joke. They have a huge "my way or the highway" attitude problem. People lose access to entire remittances for months. Compared to that, with banks, it's only a question of going out of pocket for a few $ and suffering some friction for a few days.

So, based on my personal experience with both banks and nonbanks, when it comes time for my next inward remittance, I'd anyday want it to be routed via my bank rather than nonbank.

So, this does highlight The Clear And Present Danger With NFC Payments that I was concerned about:(

Nice post. I especially liked your distinction between customer and consumer. You also hit the nail on the head when you say that all the nice digital revolutions must happen within the framework of being a bank. While some banks want to be like IT companies, reality is, whatever IT they use and however they use IT, they're still banks and use IT as enabler of their banking business. 

BACS breaks the record on one week and breaks a bank on another!

https://www.finextra.com/news/announcement.aspx?pressreleaseid=60713

Totally agree. Having worked in the IT industry for 25+ years, I'll pull out all my money from banks and put them under my mattress if banks started working like software companies. More in my comments at https://www.finextra.com/blogs/fullblog.aspx?blogid=7831