Tag: mobile payments security

Survey shows that consumers are showing strong interest in mobile commerce but remain concerned regarding security

Bain & Company, a global management consulting firm, has released the results of a new survey that focuses on mobile commerce. Throughout the world, mobile shopping and payments have become quite popular among consumers. These people tend to be quite reliant on their mobile devices, using smartphones and tablets quite frequently in their daily life. The survey from Bain & Co. accounts for 25,000 respondents across five countries and aims to shed light on how their view mobile commerce as it exists today.

Consumers show they are somewhat unwilling to make mobile purchases in a physical store

According to the survey, more than half of respondents noted that they were aware of mobile payments. This awareness is highest in Western Europe, where 70% of respondents noted that they knew what mobile payments were and how to make a payment from a smartphone or tablet. While awareness is high, only a quarter of respondents to the survey said that they were willing to make mobile payments in stores. Online payments were considered more attractive and many respondents suggested that paying online from a mobile device was more secure than using a device in a physical store.

Security concerns prevent many people from participating in mobile commerce

Security is one of the most significant challenges that face the widespread adoption of mobile commerce today. Many consumers are worried that by participating in mobile commerce their financial information will be exposed to exploitation. While consumers are concerned for the security of their financial information, the survey shows that as much as 27% of respondents were willing to make a mobile payment in-store.

High profile crimes keep people wary of mobile commerce  and shopping in general

Mobile commerce is becoming more accessible, but ongoing concerns regarding security are likely to inhibit widespread adoption for some time. Some of the security concerns that consumers have are somewhat misguided. These concerns are, however, augmented by recent spates of high profile data theft and hacking. Such events tend to spark serious doubt on mobile initiatives.

This new tech could provide regular consumers with the same level of security as used by the military.

Professor Bill Roscoe and his team at the University of Oxford have been pursuing what has been called “spontaneous security” for about a decade and have now been able to create it in the form of a very powerful, defense-grade security in mobile payments technology.

This would make it possible for people to use their smartphones as wallets without being worried about theft.

The team has come up with a mobile payments technology that would make it possible to easily and inexpensively create secure ad hoc communication networks so that two or more devices could safely communicate in a way that they have never been able to at any other time. Professor Roscoe explained that “What we have been working on all this time is contextual authentication: ways of identifying someone by the context they are in when you don’t have their mobile number, name or anything like that.”

The security protocols followed by the algorithms in this mobile payments technology are very high.

These security levels are great enough to be appropriate for the US Navy, that contributed $1 million to the project, in addition to the £100,000 from the U.K.’s Ministry of Defence. The tech was taken to Kenya by the British Army, which used the security software in protocols on maneuvers. That software was spun off by the commercialization company at Oxford, Isis Innovation, which then formed OxCept. This allowed it to be converted for use in transactions.

There has already been considerable interest in OxCept within the industry, as even PayPal has been looking into the research being conducted and the outcomes produced by Roscoe’s team. This has also led to another first, which will occur as the Oxford spin-out, when it has a base in both London and Silicon Valley. The purpose will be to try to grab hold of a good sized share of the market for mobile payments, which is predicted to become massive in the next few years.

In fact, KPMG has predicted that the mobile payments technology marketplace will be worth over $1 trillion by the close of 2015.