Cloud Based Mobile Financial Services & Payments

Cloud Based Mobile Financial Services  – Exploring Cloud-based mobile financial services, and the dynamic world of mobile payments. While Cloud Computing may appear simple at first glance, its true power often goes unnoticed.

Lets uncover its hidden complexities and reveal the vast potential it holds. Additionally, lets shed light on the rapidly evolving landscape of mobile payments, a subject that has become the talk of every company, captivating minds with excitement and innovation. Assuming you are reading this post with clear understanding of Cloud Computing, Mobile Financial Services, and Mobile Payments.

Prepare to be enlightened as we unravel the untapped possibilities within cloud-based systems. Together, we challenge assumptions, ignite inspiration, and pave the way for a future where Cloud Computing, MFS, and Mobile Payments shape a new era of finance and technological interaction. With a full understanding of both technologies, we can now get an Idea of how to marry both of these to gain some cost and speed effectiveness. In the event that detailed information or deliberation is needed on any part, please feel free to get in touch directly. Artificial intelligence is on its way to pulling more out of payment intelligence.

The presence of a Ministry of Innovation for regulation and control on a global level would have made today’s work and innovation impossible or must have stopped it long ago. Yet time and time again, initiatives have failed or fallen short because of business and technological hurdles that impede the innovation and collaboration that are necessary for real success.

In the domain and era of cost-cutting, we are always inclined to watch and look for low-cost solutions for every service we launch to max out the returns, but sometimes looking at the security, privacy, impact, and exposure of risk it can put on accounts and pockets stops us and moves us away from our imaginations for mobile payments, which have a big dependence on the secure element (SE) to store secure credentials on mobile phones.

Secure elements themselves have been argumentative in mobile payment deployments because of the forceful behavior of issuers to work on a single platform, usually owned by another entity in a business relationship that may or may not be beneficial to the credential issuer. It’s very interesting to see how Cloud Computing can solve the need for a low-cost solution.

I have seen cloud services for the same service type, same functionality, same configuration of hardware, and same support level (at least on paper) and every other same offering with a cost difference of 20 times or more, so we know very well what joy we can expect in a one-dollar apple and in a 20-dollar apple that also matters.

Cloud Computing !! Not Exactly a cloud

Cloud Computing is the simple name of 3rd party infrastructure that is managed by a 3rd party in their own location or anything that involves delivering hosted services over the Internet. These services are broadly divided into three categories: Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Defining each of them with advantages and disadvantages is out of scope here.

The name cloud was inspired by the symbol that’s often used to represent the Internet in flowcharts and diagrams. The cloud can be private, public, or hybrid in terms of ownership. The cloud allows you to upload, download, and access data, services, and information from any Internet-connected device; it’s very convenient and cost-effective, but security cannot be taken for granted and tells us it may or may not be safe. Security and poor service turn away customers who want to demand services.

The security of cloud services starts at the user level, and privacy starts at the service provider level. How users use the service in terms of their own in-house network, infra, and outdated systems can cause bigger damage than from the sky (cloud services).

In particular, the following issues should be addressed: security, access, management, and portability of customer data; transparency. Mobile Money and Mobile Payments service providers are seeing partnerships with telecom operators and banks as key to the success of near-field communication (NFC)-based mobile money applications.

In addition to network advantages, MNOs possess efficient internet/data-ready handset distribution channels, billing trust and customer relationships, secure user profiles, and location information, which can all be used to increase the security of electronic transactions.

Microsoft (Windows Live), Amazon (AM Cloud Services), Apple (iCloud), and Google (Google Drive) are a few examples of such service providers. I am yet to find out if there are any clear and special guidelines for hosting or using them for your very own Mobile Financial Services. In my last article, “Payments Jungle (Apple, Android, Samsung, and Microsoft),” dated June 6, 2015, I mentioned Google coming up with Android Pay, in which Google announced NFC Host Card Emulation (HCE) support in Android. This innovation can now be called a trump card or game changer.

Host Card Emulation enables a normal Android app to perform the application functions of a secure element by relying on secure cloud storage for the account credentials instead of a secure chip in the phone. Today, any NFC-enabled Android 4.4 or Blackberry 10 and above phone can perform HCE. We need to confirm and verify for the Samsung S6 and S6 Edge, though.

Cloud-based Mobile Payments – Advantages

Imagine a world where organizations can revolutionize their operations by outsourcing the equipment needed to support their functions. This is precisely what Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offers.

In this provision model, businesses entrust storage, hardware, servers, and networking components to service providers who take care of housing, running, and maintaining them. This allows organizations to focus on their core activities while leveraging the expertise and infrastructure provided by the service provider.

But that’s just the beginning! In the realm of digital payments, a complementary relationship arises between payment cards and digital wallet services. Users can securely store their payment card details in a digital wallet, enabling seamless online and mobile payments to merchants within the virtual or cloud community.

Despite the advancements in technology, the issuer of payment cards retains direct control over the user experience and product branding. This means businesses can maintain their unique identity and deliver personalized experiences to customers, even in the world of virtualization and cloud-based mobile payments.

By embracing Cloud-based solutions, organizations can streamline operations, reduce intermediaries, and unlock countless opportunities to deliver innovative services using flexible business models. This dynamic landscape holds the potential for transformative growth and success.

Welcome to a future where Infrastructure as a Service and digital payments reshape the way we operate and interact in the digital sphere. Join us as we delve into the limitless possibilities and reveal the true potential of these game-changing technologies.

Given the pace of technologies and the level of global competition in the mobile payments and telecom sectors, success requires a product that is standardized, fast, and takes the least possible time to market. To support these needs for coordination and speed, cloud-based solutions play a key role in ensuring that strategic coordination across industries is facilitated and promoted.

Standards have been created for installing payment solutions into the wallet after a device has shipped. In general, regarding card, internet, and mobile payments, some stakeholders believe that the issues, in particular security, access and accessibility, management, portability of customer data, and transparency, are addressed.

Service providers that provide completely secure environments and advanced tokenization methods can achieve high-security levels for their solutions and systems to gain confidence for the services they offer to MFS customers, who always keep their expectations critical and to a level where the playing field for payment solution providers could be large or small. It also aims to allow for device- and cloud-based solutions, including secure elements and contactless payments.

Cloud-based Mobile Payments – Challenges

The realm of mobile payments brings forth new dimensions of fraud and risk management, demanding innovative solutions to ensure secure transactions. One of the key challenges lies in the use of connected devices, where the concept of secure elements has stirred debates in mobile payment deployments. These elements often require issuers to rely on a single platform owned by another entity, introducing complexities and potential drawbacks to the credential issuer.

To establish a seamless user experience across multiple apps, precise rules and procedures must define which credentials can be accessed by specific applications. This ensures that authorized apps can seamlessly conduct transactions at the point of sale, safeguarding both security and convenience.

Furthermore, ensuring the security of smartphone memory poses an additional hurdle. Transactions should be feasible at merchant POS/mPOS systems even in the absence of network coverage. This necessitates the storage of essential details, such as a cardholder’s name and account number, within the phone memory. However, this approach raises concerns regarding the vulnerability of such data, highlighting the need for robust security measures.

Tokenization only partly addresses this problem, and on top of that, tokenization solutions have their own issues if not done properly. Security and standards compliance are always challenges, as you can’t put all your eggs in one basket for security reasons and increase too much risk. By nature and style of work, Digital Issuance vendors handle the same sensitive data as plastic issuer providers and By replacing the real card data with randomized account details, these tokens represent actual account details stored in the cloud.

The actual cardholder data is never stored in phone memory, not even in encrypted form. The problem is that in most available tokenization schemes, the card data becomes so generic that processors can’t identify if card accounts are linked to rewards programs.

Near-field communications and embedded Payment services are coming of age across the globe, with telecom operators, handset manufacturers and operating system vendors, social media companies, banks, and credit card companies, as well as payment platform providers, contesting for market share. When mobile devices and cloud-based solutions are used for financial transactions, it creates both challenges and opportunities for issuers in terms of risk management.

On the one hand, there are challenges with mobile devices that have limited security against threats such as malware sniffing card data, while on the other hand, rich contextual data creates new risk management opportunities for issuers. Legacy risk management systems are not designed to handle dynamic, contextual data from connected devices.

We see this being applied across retail and point-of-sale terminals and taxis, for example, that will be able to accept contactless payment, which is creating a very heavy dependency on cloud-based solutions that might rule against itself. The security of your files and customer data is in another company’s hands. Banks and other issuers should be working with approved vendors by the main card associations that are compliant with EMV, PCI, and other major payment standards, but normally this does not happen.

Which system is useful and required for the business in light of the market in which you operate and is in harmony with your strategy and goals? While mobile payment announcements from various smartphone makers are becoming more common, there is still a lot of uncertainty and scepticism about whether such services would generate much interest in purchasing the smartphones that support them.

Conclusions: What are the implications of a cloud-based solution? Is it going to change the world (very likely), be a significant “win”, be a nice hack, or simply serve as a road sign indicating that this path is “UNKNOWN or well KNOWN”? Cloud-based mobile payments can be supported globally and will give financial institutions and partners greater choice in offering consumers secure ways to pay with smartphones.