Surely it would it be more of a win-win for each of them to get on with what they are best at (ie, savings and loans for banks, being a pipe for operators) and have a third-party run the payment service under a separate license?

…Currently, there are approximately 481,000 iD-enabled payment terminals nationwide which allow users to make payments just by waving compatible mobile phones or cards over them. iD can be used in more than 90% of all convenience stores in Japan, including all am/pm and Seven-Eleven stores…

…”Long term, I think Wal-Mart would like to get into the banking business not so much to make money on banking–which it could do by outsourcing and taking a cut of the profit–but as a means of creating greater consumer ‘lock-in’ by providing lower cost banking services.”

… Retailers, like operators, have business models that do not begin and end with the transaction revenue from the payments: even if the payments brought in no revenue at all (which, as noted, is not the case in Japan) it wouldn’t matter, because their contribution to the business model comes from another direction: reduce churn, higher footfall, higher average spend or so on.

Read more: http://digitaldebateblogs.typepad.com/digital_money/2010/10/sepaarate-development.html