I was doing some thinking over the weekend about what I was going to write about in GonzoBanker this week and I keep coming back to alternative delivery. A few questions came to mind that I need to dive into or update my research on in 2011. I thought they might be interesting to those looking at delivery channel planning or investments so I figured I’d put them in a post.

  1. How much volume will mobile deposit capture ultimately take from branch and ATM deposit and check-cashing activity? How much would volume have declined anyway as fewer checks are issued and presented?

  2. For those institutions that don’t already have ATM image capture, under what circumstances do mobile deposit capture investments make more sense? Or will these services become and remain complementary?

  3. As teller activity declines, will the transition to “cashless” branches begin in earnest, using full-function ATMs/kiosks in lieu of teller lines? In addition to driving a transition to smaller locations will it also drive a shift to fewer locations?

  4. Will financial institutions find creative ways to utilize location-based services to present relevant offers (discounts for using their credit or debit card, for example) to their customers? Some combination of merchant-funded rewards, bank card product, and Foursquare seems like a slam dunk.

  5. Will a “winner” emerge in the current wave of mobile and alternative payment pilots and deployments that becomes a de facto standard or will mobile and alternative payment technologies remain fragmented?

  6. Does Frank-Dodd and the proposed interchange cap threaten or foster alternative payment innovation? On one hand, card-based products like prepaid and credit may gain but what happens to non card-based alternatives if merchant costs for debit decline substantially?

  7. How commonplace will offers based on transaction history become (merchant-funded rewards, bank promotions, cross-sell offers, etc.) and how popular will they be with consumers? How successful will financial institutions and vendors be in migrating these offers to mobile devices as customers receive a greater percentage of their balance and transaction information on them vs. the Internet banking channel?

  8. What will happen to online bill payment over the next couple of years? Will a combination of pressure from biller-direct alternatives and the return of bill pay fees for customers cut into volume, driving per-transaction costs higher for banks? Hat tip: Terence Roche

  9. How will the approach to combating corporate and small business online banking threats (Zeus, etc.) evolve? How will these new approaches (or possibly a return to older, manual approaches) impact financial institution and customer costs and convenience?

  10. Will we see more groups of financial institutions banding together to aggressively negotiate alternative delivery and other technology contracts, using combined volumes to reduce pricing? There is particular interest in this kind of collaboration in the credit union world today.

It’s a pretty exciting time to be in the delivery channel or payments business, that’s for sure.