Online Shops and Mobile Payment
M-Payment in online shops is becoming more and more common. Find out how mobile payment works and how Apple and Co. are positioning themselves in the market.
Mobile payment, or M-payment, is a form of cashless payment dominated by the use of tablets and smartphones. Worldwide, m-commerce makes up 47% of all transactions worldwide. The rising popularity in m-commerce is mainly drive by developing countries such as Brazil, Ukraine, India and Mexico. Mobile telephones are not only methods of communication but also offer payment solutions and access to interesting shops.
If a transaction is completed over a smartphone or mobile device on an internet connection, the payment process is completed over a bank account with an invoice or a credit card, through a “wireless application protocol” (WAP). This form of mobile payments is also called m-commerce. This type of m-commerce includes orders over mobile phones at retailers such as Zalando or ordering cars on apps such as Uber. Thanks to the widespread use of smartphones, the optimization of apps and mobile webpages will experience massive growth in the next few years and is expected to be worth 16 billion Euros by 2019.
Payment methods in m-payment
Mobile billing is mostly used for microtransaction of digital goods, such as ringtones. The purchase is then charged directly on the users’ mobile phone bill. With the popularisation of mobile commerce and online shopping, other payments methods are being increasingly used in m-payment. E-wallets are one of the most popular methods.
Mobile commerce and fraud prevention
Generally, mobile payment is vulnerable to the same types of fraud as in e-commerce. The complexity of m-commerce, however, implies more weakness options for fraudsters. The lack of technological standards in mobile payment, combined with the fact that mobile apps are installed rather than navigated to, increases the complexity of content crawling and requires proprietary screen-rendering tools. The infinite number of available apps only contributes to make this task even harder. Mobile commerce is particularly vulnerable, however, since device can be easily stolen. Thieves can then make purchases through apps where the user is already logged in, notably through the “keep me logged in” option.
