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Chris: 

A small field for a programmer, but a giant record...

As its name suggests, BIC is expected to identify a bank, and it seems to do that quite well. As far as I know, BIC wasn't envisaged to identify non-banking business identities, and it should continue to serve its purpose even after IBEI/LEI come into existence.  

Y2K, the most famous/notorious of these field-related changes, illustrated that data standard change initiatives gather steam only when the doomsday is just around the corner. Unless I'm missing something, that's not the case for BIC/IBEI/LEI.

@Keith:

Your example about limitations in Payroll Systems reminds me of this interesting story in The Partners, the book about Goldman Sachs, which talks about the huge disparity in state of technology across different parts of the famous investment banking firm. Even while its trading systems could do HFT in milliseconds, its payroll system couldn't print a check/cheque above USD 10,000!   

Having observed up close the trials and tribulations that a company went through in working out a unified BlackBerry contract for its employees across 8-10 countries in Europe - each with its own language and local clauses - your solution sounds interesting. 

If we put eInvoicing within the larger perspective of the order-to-cash cycle of an enterprise, I just can't shrug off the feeling that its core value proposition is questionable: Sure, it can bring down DSO by a few days, but does it really matter when many typical CFOs and VP-Sales believe that the bulk of DSO is caused simply by customers refusing to pay on time? 

While a single standard always helps in theory, it generally happens only after mass-adoption of a certain technology. Besides, multiple standards never deterred the mass adoption of many technologies with strong value proposition, for example, Internet (OSI/ISO v. TCP/IP), Instant Messaging (lack of interoperability between, say, MSN and GTalk), and ERP (SAP iDoc v. Oracle EBS' XML-based document standard). 

In this context, the recent annnouncement of Intuit Payments Network (IPN) is an encouraging development. By coupling eInvoicing with ePayments, Intuit propels the value proposition of IPN to the next level, which might just be the tipping point in B2B e-invocing and e-payments technologies.

Adding business value while implementing compliance solutions is an important business imperative for banks and FIs, considering the preponderence of topics pertaining to regulations and compliance that are likely to make demands for incremental IT spends in 2011. And, given our experience with injecting cross- and upselling value propositions into single customer view related compliance solutions, this is very much feasible. Technology vendors who differentiate themselves in this manner have a better chance at cornering a larger portion of the incremental spend. 

Google USA Search now includes Comparison Ads for Mortgages as well. 

https://www.google.com/comparisonads/home

Adding business value while implementing compliance solutions is definitely the way to go for banks and FIs. And, given our experience with injecting cross- and upselling value propositions into single customer view related compliance solutions, it's very much feasible.

At the same time, we've seen that regulations hit banks and FIs with impractically short implementation timescales and not enough clarity - at least not until their third or fourth versions (ex: TARGET2, SEPA-SDD). 

This tends to transform what is principally feasible into a major challenge that only a minority of banks and FIs are able to surmount, especially when they're faced with loss of reputation for non-compliance by the given deadline. 

Finally HSBC UK does it!

HSBC India issued RSA tokens for One Time Password (OTP) generation for Internet Banking access more than six years ago. I didn't have to visit the branch to collect the token which came to my home address by post. It got activated upon first use. Losing the token, battery running dry and all other standard concerns around this technology have somehow spared me so far, and I've been a satisfied user of this security method. 

Around four years ago, I visited the HSBC branch in Canary Wharf to open a bank a/c. After finishing the entry of the basic particulars into her PC, the manager who was doing this on my behalf asked me to come over to her side of the table and enter a static password for Internet Banking access on her computer.  

Given my elegant, self-service experience with HSBC India, I was surprised to come across a somewhat old-fashioned process in HSBC UK - and that too at the branch right below its global HQ!

When I pointed this out, the manager admitted that, unfortunately, all system enhancements in UK were put on hold pending a multi-year core replacement. Looks like this has finally happened!

This experience taught me a lot about how legacy systems stymie progress in one part of a bank whereas their absence infuses agility into its other parts, however remote they may be from the headquarters.  

Props to Mitek Systems for coming up with yet another innovative product based on its patented mobile phone scanning technology. If it works as promised - I couldn't spot it on the App Store, so can't comment first hand - Mobile ACH Enrollment will eliminate a key source of friction in the ACH enrollment process.

However, unlike its other products related to Receipts, Fax, and Bill Payment, Mitek might face a couple of challenges with Mobile ACH Enrollment:

(1) As it is, consumers in the US might be wary of divulging their bank account details with mobile payments companies, many of whom are startups. How willing will they be to share it with another party like Mitek Systems? (It's far more common to give out bank a/c details in Europe, but checks from which to scan a/c # and sort code are rare there!)

(2) An average American might need to enroll not more than 1-3 bank accounts with not more than 2-3 mobile payments providers. That means this product will be used for a maximum of 2 to 9 occasions through the user's whole lifetime. Does such light usage justify the trouble of downloading and installing yet another app - even assuming it's free?

How well Mitek Systems surmounts these challenges will determine the adoption of Mobile ACH Enrollment.

@Anonymous of 03/03/2011 12:15:46:

Answer: Sorry, I meant Matt White.

PS: I'll take this as another example of how the newly-turned "anonymous" Finextra "specialized walled garden" community can foster expert and prolific Q&A! 

@Mark:

Am glad to hear that Finextra intends to stay focused on an industry and be selective about its membership profile. It struck me that, by adding "anonymity" to its intrinsic nature of being a "specialized walled-garden", Finextra may not only end up enriching its blogging platform but also be in a position to germinate a value-added Q&A property for the fintech industry - somewhat akin to Quora for the startup / VC industry.

Having just watched a Gartner+SmartStream Sponsored Video webcast on Finextra about Intraday Liquidity Management, the first question that came to my mind was "Can treasurers in the Finextra community share their experiences of live implementations of intraday liquidity management technology solutions?"

The specialized nature of the Finextra community will guarantee quality of responses, and the new ability to submit them anonymously will ensure that there are enough responses to the make the Q&A thread interesting.