I was talking to a client yesterday when the subject of mobile
payment security came up. I was explaining some ideas for bringing some
new ways to pay to the mobile phone, and one of the client team asked
about security and so we went through some high-level risk analysis.
The concerns expressed were perfectly reasonable and widespread, as
consumer surveys confirm:
Convenience
is the most compelling feature of both mobile banking and mobile
payment at the point-of-sale. Participants cited the ability to perform
banking functions, such as check balances and pay bills, from anywhere
without the need of a computer as the major convenience of mobile
banking, and the prospect of no longer carrying a wallet as the major
convenience of mobile payment at the point-of-sale. Conversely,
participants indicated security and fraud were their main concerns
regarding these mobile applications, wondering what would happen if
their mobile devices were lost or stolen.
As it happens, I had a ready-to-roll Powerpoint presentation on
security in mobile payments so I was able to walk through it show the
client how we would deal with these concerns and manage the risk down.
Afterwards, I was thinking that we (ie, people who are bullish about
mobile proximity payments, in this case) should be more upfront about
security, because the truth is that there is more security overall in a
mobile payment than a card payment.
“There’s
a whole lot of upside and security advantages to mobile devices,” says
James Van Dyke, president of Javelin Strategy and Research,
Apart from the often-repeated point about noticing a missing phone
much sooner than you notice a missing card, there's also the issue of
communications. You know where phones are and you can communicate with
them, which greatly changes the risk and countermeasure situation when
compared with cards. I think the question should be the other way
around: from a security point of view, does it make sense to carry on
with cards?
Mobile
proximity payments are getting an incredible amount of attention. I'm
going to be talking about some of our experiences in this field at BIMS 2008
in Amsterdam on 10th-12th June 2008. In a spirit of unbelievable
generosity, the wonderful people at IIR have given me a three-day
delegate pass for this event -- worth an astounding THREE THOUSAND
EUROS -- to give away on this blog as a competition prize. So if you
are going to be in Amsterdam on those dates and you'd like to come
along to meet the people who matter in billing, operational support,
customer management and revenue assurance in the telecommunications and
billing world, then all you have to do is be the first person to
respond to this post with the name of the bank that Adam Smith is
talking about here...
In
order to remedy these inconveniences, a bank was established in 1609
under the guarantee of the city. This bank received both foreign coin,
and the light and worn coin of the country at its real intrinsic value
in the good standard money of the country, deducting only so much as
was necessary for defraying the expense of coinage, and the other
necessary expense of management. For the value which remained, after
this small deduction was made, it gave a credit in its books. This
credit was called bank money...
In the traditional fashion, this competition is open to all except
for employees of Consult Hyperion and members of my immediate family,
is void where prohibited and has nothing to do with Ant and Dec.
The prize must be claimed within one month. Oh, and no-one can win more
than one of the Digital Money Blog prizes per calendar .
