How to Deliver Secure Mobile Payment Solutions for Portable Devices

Software outsourcing companies offer plenty of developments in the sphere of security for mobile payment software and hold great promise for merchants, banks, and their customers.

Since mobile payments are at the head of the burgeoning mobile commerce market, software outsourcing helps deliver secure mobile payment solutions. On one hand, this lets users take advantage of reliable payment services directly on the go. On the other hand, the mission of software outsourcing companies today is to add an incremental value to the mobile environment of retail and merchant businesses and eliminate business-related risks.

The mobile payment industry has spent years for outsourcing software development, which have resulted in accumulated multifaceted expertise. Today, software outsourcing companies present a wide range of best-practice mobile payment solutions with a simple and functional UI for different platforms (iPhone, iPads, Android, etc) and rich functionality: quote and invoice management, invoice creation, control of financial transactions, product and service management, mobile accounting offices, mobile clients, and many more. Apart from these best-practice capabilities, software outsourcing companies hold a delivery of smooth payment services as a priority in mobile payment software development. The brightest minds of present-day software outsourcing concentrate their expertise on the safety issues surrounding mobile payment software.

Security and privacy features have always been important concerns regarding the finance and commerce market for both software outsourcing and businesses. The latest findings (2014) from Ernst&Young showed the factors that encourage more frequent use by consumers who’ve taken up mobile payment solutions. As for details, the top usage accelerants are ease of use with greater convenience, good value to money, and, of course, increased trust. Look: the EMV (EuroPay, Mastercard, Visa) card has been developed with a secure microchip for transmitting data, but it is a physical asset. Software outsourcing companies are working to create an equivalent level of security in the virtual world.

Moving from more simple solutions to more complex ones, outsourcing software development offers a key focus on full authorization and PIN payment solutions with restricted access and strong end-to-end data encryption as a way to develop secure and trusted mobile payment software. Software outsourcing partnership model has applied many efforts to develop a rather simple but secure way to set up a new holder account. Instant issuance application creates a new bank account for a customer with specified business rules within this account and options to use mobile devices for payments or a credit card that is attached to the account. The functionality of this mobile payment software includes an option for users to select their own PIN to ensure safety for payment transactions. Banks can also take advantage of this mobile payment product of software outsourcing because the instant issuance technology sets hierarchical limits on cardholder spending and controls access to it based on operator permissions. If a card is stolen or lost, the application reissues it in a safe manner due to user role management. Furthermore, the technology supports full account authorization to make “Pay” or “Not Pay” decisions.

Moving on, software outsourcing launched mobile wallets as a kind of full authorization mobile payment solution that is fully integrates into accounting systems, enables P2P mobile payments for sending and requesting funds, keeping transactions history, and controlling access to a user’s accounts.

Another good business concept for mobile payment: software outsourcing envisions mobile apps intended for use with MPEDs (Mobile Pin Entry Devices) that support magnetic stripes and smart cards. This mobile payment software transforms tablets into safe wireless payment terminals. Here, software outsourcing relies on the safe encryption of all data transmissions in the payment ecosystem, which eliminates potential vulnerabilities. On the whole, Pin Entry Device offerings for mobile payments used with smartphones or tablets have a broad functionality, including invoice creation that gets sent to a customer and keeps all the transaction details. Businesses can add or view a whole customer profile, while ensuring security due to the connection of a safe mobile device terminal via Bluetooth.

Despite all the efforts of mobile software outsourcing to eliminate fraud, there are still some risks for mobile commerce. According to an old saying, absolute security is only attainable when you are protecting something absolutely worthless. There are no such thing as perfect security, just better or worthy security. New fraud technologies emerge as software outsourcing solves the security puzzle.

Nevertheless, the adoption of mobile payments is substantially increasing at a rate that makes Gartner predict that in 2017, the worldwide mobile payment market will have nearly half a billion users with nearly three-quarters of a trillion US dollars in value. That is why software outsourcing continues to arm mobile payment solutions with self-defense and tamper-resistant capabilities.

Today, software outsourcing is making a strong move to incorporate Near Field Communication (NFC). The technology promises to be the dominant solution in the world of mobile commerce. With a couple of quick steps on a phone screen and a tap on a terminal cash register, mobile devices will perform a payment from a virtual wallet to the retailer. A number of popular payment services have jumped on the NFC payments bandwagon while software outsourcing companies remain active investors in it. However, while this payment solution is a very good functional technology, it still requires some security package. Security is being delivered due to the tokenization of NFC. In a broad sense, tokenization aims to lower the value of sensitive information stored on mobile devices and transmitted during payments. A payment card’s static credentials are replaced with virtually substituted ones that mitigate the impact of a card theft or information breach.

By the way, due to tokenization, NFC has an alternative – Host Card Emulation (HCE) technology which is gaining recognition for its security. HCE restricts the storage of sensitive data to host or cloud databases with limited use keys, tokens, device fingerprinting, and transaction risk analysis to prevent unauthorized access.

Obviously, software outsourcing is brewing strong competition that delivers plenty of solutions for today’s mobile payment market for both merchants and software outsourcing companies. The trick is to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each and leverage them to provide a more secure, more convenient technology-enabled experience for customers.

Elinext Alliance Secure Mobile Payment Solution

Industries and Technology Areas

Industries: IT

Technology Areas: mobile payment solutions, mobile application development

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