>RE6: The banking infrastructure allow consumers to "subscribe" to businesses
We have this in the US (almost all businesses have an 'Automatic Bill Pay' or similar)
But businesses are very routinely "slightly-corrupt" here, so many don't trust it. Businesses will purposefully withdraw more than they should, and make you fight to get it back. Or will raise prices without telling you. Or will continue to bill you after you unsubscribe (if they let you unsubscribe at all).
Often you have to yell or make threats to people on telephones, or publicly harass a company on Twitter / Facebook, or manually withhold payment, to get any kind of appropriate response.
This creates an atmosphere where people don't trust businesses with "subscriptions" or automation of any kind of bills. Which further perpetuates the antique cheque-based bill payment process. It's not a technology problem (we have the technology). It's more of a "poisoned trust" issue.
> RE: 11) my only tax-related action is to click "Accept" once a year.
We have this in the US -- the IRS is already capable of offering this. It's just illegal for them to do so, because of Intuit's political influence. (Again with the businesses being corrupt...)
Yep. I have the ability to have most of my bills automatically deducted but I don't trust those institutes enough to allow them to do it. If one of them bills me for an incorrect amount, which happens more often than it should, it could cause me to overdraft or not be able to pay my other bills.
It still takes me about 30 minutes at most to electronically pay every bill that will take it and balance my account.
We have this in the US (almost all businesses have an 'Automatic Bill Pay' or similar)
But businesses are very routinely "slightly-corrupt" here, so many don't trust it. Businesses will purposefully withdraw more than they should, and make you fight to get it back. Or will raise prices without telling you. Or will continue to bill you after you unsubscribe (if they let you unsubscribe at all).
Often you have to yell or make threats to people on telephones, or publicly harass a company on Twitter / Facebook, or manually withhold payment, to get any kind of appropriate response.
This creates an atmosphere where people don't trust businesses with "subscriptions" or automation of any kind of bills. Which further perpetuates the antique cheque-based bill payment process. It's not a technology problem (we have the technology). It's more of a "poisoned trust" issue.
> RE: 11) my only tax-related action is to click "Accept" once a year.
We have this in the US -- the IRS is already capable of offering this. It's just illegal for them to do so, because of Intuit's political influence. (Again with the businesses being corrupt...)
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/16/technology/personaltech/tu...