Page 8 - index

RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

Wanted: Customer-friendly security

measures for mobile payment

sage, enter the password and confirm their online pur-
chase. Since only they know the password and have
access to the mobile phone, this process is a secure
means of authentication that can reduce the risk of
fraud significantly.

Beware of public Wi-Fi networks
Equally important for the consumer is a secure Internet
connection. However, online purchases should never
be made in a public wireless network, since third par-
ties have access to the same network and theoretically
can track all activities. Unfortunately, users who shop
Mobile devices have become the most common method on the way to work, often go online via the public Wi-Fi
to shop on the Internet and it has never been easier to networks available, making their transactions visible to
do so. But the more often shopping activities get paid by everyone on the network - also for fraudsters.
mobile, the more vulnerable this payment form becomes
to hacker attacks - particularly for users connected via TLS / SSL-encrypted websites protect the data
public Wi-Fi networks. transmission
It is important not to forget that there are of course
Quite obviously, more reliable authentication is required websites with criminal backgrounds among the many
here, which prevents fraudsters to benefit from this de- thousands of Internet pages, too. Hence, before carry-
velopment.
ing out a transaction, always make sure that the ad-
While it may seem as if consumers spend an unlimited dress bar icon appears with a padlock and that the In-
part of the day in front of their desktop PC and on the ternet address starts with "https". Only then it is truly
websites of online shops, market research firm Forrest- encrypted via TLS / SSL connection and prevents the
er revealed that 80% rather keep themselves busy with access of third parties that may be located in the net-
their five favorite apps, which is why companies started work. The icon serves the site as a kind of credibility
working with social media platforms, such as Facebook, certificate and stands for secure data transmission.
to get to the wallets of their consumers.
Company and customer alike have to take care of
Both online businesses as well as consumers should be their safety
aware of the dangers and confront them with the right According to the trends and technical possibilities, com-
security measures and authentication methods. For ex- panies offer new kinds of online shopping and so it is
ample, the question for account recovery "What is your up to the consumers to protect their identity and data
mother's maiden name?" can be easily answered with a while shopping online. For this purpose, the two-factor
Google or Facebook search. Therefore, a special proce- authentication and some precautions help users to han-
dure for a save resetting of account passwords is re- dle their secure online payments on the way to work
quired that prevents the hackers to crack user accounts and in everyday life, and online businesses should
by means of easily accessible information. However, deal at an early stage with the possibilities of applica-
this process should not affect the user experience, since tion programming interfaces (APIs) for the global phone
for sure no company wants to use a technology that number verification.
hurts the user experience or the conversion rate. There-
fore, to be effective, this method should require only a Further, it would also be useful to investigate a bit be-
minimum effort by the customer. fore commissioning a new service, for example by find-
ing out how other users rate the quality of the service,
Fraud prevention through strong authentication
what problems there are, what speaks for or against it,
The phone number verification is a simple procedure for et cetera. That way, unpleasant surprises can be avoid-
online vendors and customers to prevent that accounts ed and services identified that truly meet the needs of
get hacked. At the same time, it involves only a small consumers.◊
loss of time for the customer: Users receive a one-time By MediaBUZZ
password on their mobile phone by voice or text mes-
8 Asian eMarketing October 2015: Mobile Marketing
8