Note that the P2P there refers to person-to-person. Basically yet another paypal/dwolla/...

Seems like Banks are trying to play catch-up to Paypal.  In future maybe catch-up to Bitcoin.

not the mining side of it, but they are trying to come up with a system where individuals can digitally with computer or cell phone - send money back and forth directly to each other using a set number like a phone number,

"You will soon be able to pay your friend back for dinner or give your kid $100 by simply logging in to your bank account and entering their name and phone number. No cash, check, PayPal or silly app required."


this does not sound familar at all to you?

Venmo.

That is all.

Enemy tactical capability still limited to copycat.

Silly app indeed. What do you call it when you use an interface to initiate some sort of action? If that's not an application what the hell is it? Nothing like the validation you get when the bastards copy your work.

Bring it on fellas. A few thousand hacks, poor customer service, delays in movement of money, and investigation of fraud should soften them up for transactions using Bitcoin instead.

Gentlemen, start your IDEs, rev up your compilers, contact friendly hosting services, and show these wannabes how it's done.

Fantastic!  Hopefully this makes it easier to send money that I put in the bank to MtGox so I can buy bitcoin with it.  

As with Google's phone payments, we must consider this as both a threat an an opportunity.

With a web-of-trust system, it will now be easy for Americans to exchange USD for BTC.

What if the banks take a hostile position to the vendor of Bitcoins?

I don't see how this is anything like bitcoin.
The 'official' currency/economic systems are broken at the core, just another way to transfer these funds in a broken system doesn't fix the system or compete with an actual good system.

It is not p2p if it goes through visa first.

No mention of fees... I guess it will be free, like Bitcoin!

That still requires a paper check unless it's the same bank.