Mobile Payment Systems in Malaysia: Its Potentials and Consumers' Adoption Strategies

Have you ever experiance mobile payment? Do you know what is mobile payment? According to Wikipedia, Mobile payment (also referred to as mobile web payment or WAP billing) is the collection of money from a consumer via a mobile device such as their mobile phone, SmartPhone, Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) or other such device.

Mobile payment can be used to purchase any number of digital or hard goods, such as:
Music, videos, ringtones, games, wallpapers and other digital goods. Books, magazines, tickets and other hard goods.

Previously, we can see that there is quite popular on purchase ringtones and games through mobile payment. Now it has getting more and more use for Malaysian.

For instance, Mobile Money International Sdn Bhd had desinged Mobile Money to make payments, allowing registered users to pay for goods and services at anytime, anywhere using only a mobile phone Personal Identification Number via SMS. It gives the freedom to shoppers to buy products online and pay the merchant using his/her mobile phone without being physically present at the store.


The Mobile Payment is the only global, cross-industry alliance of leading organizations from the wireless and financial industries dedicated to realizing the full potential for mobile payments.

I believe that more and more organization in Malaysia will take the opportunity by inviting the others organization with an interest in expanding the global market for mobile commerce to work toward simple, secure and interoperable mobile payments. Leveraging their combined expertise to collaborate on industry requirements and maximize the opportunity for mobile payments.

In order to attract the user from using mobile payment a reward had been given to the user as the return of using mobile transaction.

A free shopping application is provided as it can be downloaded to user mobile phone device to purchase services and products.

It is save and secure as it has security to protect payment details and consumer identify.

It also save cost as the transaction fee is lower than the normal price.

Electronic Currency

What is Electronic Currency?

Electronic Currency also known as Electronic money, E-money, Electronic Cash, Digital Money, Digital Cash or Digital Currency.It refers to money or scrip which is exchanged only electronically. Typically, this involves use of computer networks, the internet and digital stored value systems. Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) and direct deposit are examples of electronic money. Also, it is a collective term for financial cryptography and technologies enabling it.

How Do The Existence of E-Currencies Mean Good Profit ForR You?
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Multinational corporations, small businesses and individuals regularly
exchange e-currencies with each other in other buy and sell
their goods and services across the widest possible economic and
Geographic borders. In 2004, about 1.9 TRILLION US dollars worth of
e-currencies was traded DAILY by trade merchants and individuals ,over the Internet.

Most e-currency trading across 129 geographical locations worldwide is
managed by a Company called Global Digital Transfers Inc (based in
Vanuatu), which maintains the intermediary e-currency DXGOLD, and
recruits individuals to manage, invest and profit from its vast daily exchanges.
DXGOLD is 100% secure, and loss-proof.

BITPASS
Micropayments, small digital payments of between a quarter and a fraction of a penny, made (yet another) appearance this summer with Scott McCloud's online comic, The Right Number, accompanied by predictions of a rosy future for micropayments.

Bitpass was an online payment system for digital content and services. Kurt Huang was a co-founder; Doug Knopper was hired as CEO in November, 2005. Bitpass was a California corporation with headquarters in Silicon Valley. It was founded in December, 2002 and partnered with major technology and financial services companies such as Microsoft, PayPal, the Royal Bank of Scotland and First Data.

On January 19th, 2007 Bitpass announced that they were shutting down, and operations officially closed on January 26th, 2007. No immediate reason for closure was given.

For the content buyer, Bitpass worked like a pre-paid telephone card: the buyer signed up for the service and put money into an account using a credit card or PayPal. This stored-value amount could be used to purchase digital content or services.
Transaction fees were paid by the content provider. For payments under $5, the charge was 15% of the price paid by the buyer (Bitpass Professional merchant account fee).

The Bitpass system allows you to control access and authentication to protected content. Using a series of web services, you can determine if a customer/subscriber has access to a set of web pages or content. Sell and control access to protected content from your own website. Now includes DRM services for selling protected media content.

WHY BitPass will Fail?

BitPass will fail, as FirstVirtual, Cybercoin, Millicent, Digicash, Internet Dollar, Pay2See, and many others have in the decade since Digital Silk Road, the paper that helped launch interest in micropayments. These systems didn't fail because of poor implementation; they failed because the trend towards freely offered content is an epochal change, to which micropayments are a pointless response.

The failure of BitPass is not terribly interesting in itself. What is interesting is the way the failure of micropayments, both past and future, illustrates the depth and importance of putting publishing tools in the hands of individuals.

In the face of a force this large, user-pays schemes can't simply be restored through minor tinkering with payment systems, because they don't address the cause of that change -- a huge increase the power and reach of the individual creator.
BitPass' predecessors failed for a variety of reasons and of course "poor implementation" was among them. Efforts like the ones Shirky mentions were plagued with problems: Elaborate and intrusive sign-up forms, flaky business models, mandatory plug-ins, blood-sucking hook-ups to bank accounts, vendor start-up fees, greedy profit splits, etc. Some even claimed to offer "micropayments" while refusing to support transactions below 99¢.

Another factor contributing to micropayments’ dismal first round was the simple fact that until very recently, few users were willing to pay for content while they still felt that they were paying with their time. Without broadband, the climate for paid content was hardly hospitable.

Similarly, users who had just brushed away the styrofoam packing from their first home computer (and there were a lot of them in the '90s) were still factoring in the cost of that initial investment. Selling premium content to those users was as futile as selling pay channels to TV owners in 1952.







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PHISHING: EXAMPLES AND ITS PREVENTION METHODS

Phishing is a type of deception designed to steal your valuable personal data, such as credit card numbers, passwords, account data, or other information.
Con artists might send millions of fraudulent e-mail messages that appear to come from Web sites you trust, like your bank or credit card company, and request that you provide personal information.
As scam artists become more sophisticated, so do their phishing e-mail messages and pop-up windows.
They often include official-looking logos from real organizations and other identifying information taken directly from legitimate Web sites.
Example of a phishing e-mail message, which includes a deceptive URL address that links to a scam Web site
To make these phishing e-mail messages look even more legitimate, the scam artists may place a link in them that appears to go to the legitimate Web site (1), but it actually takes you to a phony scam site (2) or possibly a pop-up window that looks exactly like the official site.

PayPal is one of the many examples that phishers has tried to impersonate. PayPal was spelled wrongly in this phishing attempt in the e-mail and the presence of an IP address in the link is both clues that this is a phishing attempt. Another giveaway is the lack of a personal greeting, although the presence of personal details would not be a guarantee of legitimacy. Other signs that the message is a fraud are misspellings of simple words and the threat of consequences such as account suspension if the recipient fails to comply with the message's requests.

PREVENTION METHODS

Keep your information more secure

Before you download files, help protect your computer. First of all, keep your software safety net up-to-date which means update Windows automatically and regularly download the latest antispyware and antivirus updates, and then scan your computer right away. Secondly, improve your computer's overall security with lay the protective groundwork, set your antivirus program to scan all incoming files and e-mail attachments before you open them, use a spam filter and Install and run a program to help detect and remove spyware.

How to handle suspicious e-mail

If you think you've received a phishing e-mail message, do not respond to it, approach links in e-mail messages with caution, don't trust the sender information in an e-mail message, verify the identity and security of the Web site (picture 1.1 and picture 1.2) , type addresses directly into your browser or use your personal bookmarks, don't trust offers that seem too good to be true, report suspicious e-mail, don't enter personal or financial information into pop-up windows and don't enter personal or financial information into pop-up windows.

picture 1.1

picture 1.2

Protect your personal information from ID theft
Strong passwords, make it lengthy and combine letters, numbers, and symbols with the fewer types of characters in your password, the longer it must be, use the entire keyboard or use words and phrases that are easy for you to remember, but difficult for others to guess. In addition, password strategies to avoid which means avoid sequences or repeated characters, avoid using only look-alike substitutions of numbers or symbols, avoid your login name, avoid dictionary words in any language, use more than one password everywhere and avoid using online storage.

Protect your privacy with online payment services

How to shop online more safely? Before you select a store, do a background check andeExplore the Web site for third-party seals of approval such as:
or

Before you enter your credit card number, the company should only require personal information that's necessary to complete the purchase and the Web site should use secure technology.

For detailed or futher information, please log in http://www.microsoft.com/protect/yourself/phishing/identify.mspx

The Threat of Online Security: How safe is our data?

Security is a major concern for Internet users. The threat to online security is one of the main barriers to electronic transaction via the Internet medium. Types of online security threats included Internet Attacks, Vulnerabilities, Malicious Code, Phishing, Spam, Viruses, Trojan horse, Hacker, Cracker, and Identity and Data Theft.

In order to get confidential data or information of a company, hacker will create virus or tools to hack into the company’s computer. Those hackers normally spread out the viruses through e-mail attachment. Viruses can be generally categorized into Trojan horse, worm, spyware and etc. Surfing internet website may also expose the risk attacked by the viruses.

Nowadays, many people surfing internet via Wi-Fi. Wireless devices pass through many different, potentially non-trustworthy networks from which service is derived and data is exchanged. Information can be stolen or altered without the end user's knowledge.

Beside that, simply "refreshing" a browser to re-establish the connection may unintentionally introduce risks. Re-establishing connections and transactions without re-authenticating principals on both sides of the transactions can be dangerous. Requests can be redirected and malicious code stealthily downloaded with expected Web data. Most Web sites are not currently configured to deal with inconstant service failures, as is common with wireless connections.

Below are the online security predictions for 2008:

1. Bots will dominate 2008: The number of computers infected by botnets will increase sharply in 2008. In an effort to become harder to detect, bot-herders are changing their tactics and decentralizing via peer-to-peer architectures. They are increasingly using instant messaging as their main vehicle for spreading botnets.
2. Smarter malware: There are new levels of sophistication in malware. Malware will target virtualized computers, and increasing use of obfuscation techniques to hide in plain sight, including steganography and encryptions, will help criminals conceal their activities.
3. Gamers under fire: Gamers already are a prized target, and stealing their account credentials continues to be a primary objective of online criminals. Gamers historically are more concerned with optimizing their PCs for high performance rather than for tight security. In 2008, virtual assets will equal real world money for Internet criminals.
4. Social networking sites in the crosshairs: Social networking sites will become increasingly popular and, as a result, more vulnerable. The large number of aggregated potential victims and relatively small concern for computer security make these sites a windfall for cyber thieves.
5. Key dates for opportunity: The U.S. presidential election and the 2008 Olympics in Beijing offer high-profile opportunities for destructive attacks and corruption or outright theft of information.
6. Web 2.0 services and sites will come under targeted attacks: While it is relatively easy to implement Web 2.0 services, it can be quite challenging to configure them to be totally secure. Therefore, many Internet sites using these services are easy targets with little outward indication that a site is compromised.
7. Windows Vista at risk: As businesses and consumers buy new computers, Vista's market share will grow. Although it is designed as Microsoft's most secure operating system, 20 vulnerabilities were reported in 2007, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology. As more people use it, the more attackers will target it.
8. Mobile devices will still be safe: Mobile devices are still safe, despite rumours of mobile malware. Smartphone and other mobile devices will not be a real opportunity for criminals in 2008. Proof-of-concept malware for mobile devices has not yet translated into any meaningful attacks. The only significant mobile vulnerability reported in 2007 was to the Apple iPhone.

Prevention of Online Security

Several approaches can be applied in an attempt to prevent Internet criminal activity, which can categorize as `hard' prevention and `soft' prevention.

(i) ‘Hard’ Prevention

`Hard' prevention, in the sense of intrinsic features within the architecture, protocols and software, that prevents difficult, actions of a criminal nature from being performed. `Hard' prevention is an attractive idea. Unfortunately, it is largely impracticable. This is because most criminal activities are only differentiable from non-criminal ones on the basis of the content or purpose of transmitted data, and hence little scope exists for designing Internet architecture or protocols in order to ensure that the Internet simply cannot be used for criminal purposes.

(ii) ‘Soft’ Prevention - Definition, Awareness and Education

`Soft' prevention, comprising disincentives against criminal activity, and in particular clear definition of criminal offences, public awareness-raising and education, the perceived likelihood of discovery, the perceived likelihood of effective investigation, and the perceived likelihood of successful prosecution.

Awareness of the existence of a criminal offence, and education can only be successful if the message is clear. Hence it is fundamental to the prevention of crime that members of the public understand what the activities is that are proscribed, and where the boundaries lie. Many 'white-collar' crimes (such as ‘insider trading’) suffer in this regard, as do so-called 'computer crimes'. A further need is that the definition of criminal offences, and the punishment meted out to wrongdoer will reflects public opinion.

How to Safeguard Our Personal and Financial Data

It's now easy to steal a person's identity for financial gain. According to the Federal Trade Commission estimates there are nearly 10 million victims of cyber fraud every year.

The dangers come in many forms: viruses and worms, malicious software that embeds itself in a user's computer, online lures and scams, scam Web sites that exist solely to steal personal information. Therefore it is important to take extra security precautions to safeguard the data in order to prevent lost of private and confidential information.

Step 1 Software

Choose the software that have the ability to scan all downloads, e-mails, attachments and other files for malicious content. The National Cyber Security Alliance recommends software that can recognize current and older viruses, effectively reverse damage and update automatically.

Step 2 Firewall

Firewalls help keep hackers from using your computer to send out your personal information without your permission.

Firewall is like a guard, watching for outside attempts to access your system and blocking communications from to the source you don’t permit. For your firewall to be effective, it needs to be set up properly and updated regularly.

For a free trial of a firewall, check out download.McAfee.com or www.Symantec.com/downloads. McAfee and Symantec also offer anti-virus software.

Step 3 A filtering technology

A filter is use to scan inbound and outbound information. A filter can scan the text of an e-mail and block it if it contains certain words, set to accept e-mail from known users only and be used to test the header of an e-mail to see if it might be forged or disguised by a spammer to avoid detection. Some current filtering software encrypts passwords and information to keep it away from malicious Web sites and hackers.

Step 4 Choose your PIN number wisely

While you want to choose something you will remember, please do not choose something that a clever thief could figure out just by learning your birth date or your child’s name. It is advice that a combination of uppercase or lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols will offer more security.