A couple of days ago I was reading an article about Mobile banking. As we all know Mobile banking is not a new concept. It has been around for a while. I asked myself so when will mobile banking take off? According to the article mobile banking is going to have its second push and will take off 2009.
I believe one of the most reason for not being used by many people is the security issue. Given that the security issue can still be improved, many people are afraid of using their cell phones for mobile payment services. According to a report from Javelin Strategy & Research (year 2007) nearly half of the customer perceive mobile banking unsafe.
Some carrier deliver phones with pre-loaded banking application and even though it makes mobile banking easy to access, it has its fallback. What if someone losses his/hers mobile? Banks with such an application say they are able to remotly clear the mobile from all personal information in case it is lost or stolen.
For me it would feels much better if biometric technology is used for authorization for payment services over the air.
Nokia has implemented steganography on some of its mobile phones. What is doen here is that information is hidden in a picture and the address of the picture is sent to the customer by an SMS. The information is password protected so the customer has to enter the password in order to see the hidden information.
The other issue has been that banks and credit card companies have not done much work on pushing mobile banking so far. Maybe because of the time and cost needed to make it ready for public use.
On the other hand, even though it is another step towards easy and fast access to bank accounts for majority of people using internet over DSL, cable... can do almost the same and there is not much market demand for Mobile banking at the moment.
