Are digital payments secure enough for the Indian economy to go cashless?
At a time when the entire nation is either excited or furious about embracing digital payments and going cashless, Qualcomm brings us a bad news. According to the American chipset maker, no digital payment app used in India is completely secure. They are of the view that wallets and mobile banking applications in India are not using hardware level security that is mandatory for secure online transactions.
At this crucial time when more people are relying on digital payments, some even for the first time ever, such news about the security of cashless banking could be sending panic strokes across the nation if not addressed soon. People would want to know if digital payments are secure enough before going cashless.
Yes1. If we follow the guidelines: There are a set of rules that need to be followed to keep your digital banking secure and free of phishing. If we take care of those little points which we usually ignore, it is not very difficult to stay secure with the digital payment system. People usually miss on the small but essential guidelines that maintain secure payment system.
2. Being worked upon: Mobile banking apps, wallets, payment banks are working overtime to help improve the security level from time to time. It is essential that people upgrade their applications from time to time when a new update is available. Instead of panicking, we should try to be more alert on digital security and make other people aware too.
3. New measures: The good news is that Qualcomm is already approaching digital payment companies to help secure their payment system. Soon Qualcomm is said to be coming up with a its new features in mobile chipset that will verify user with payment gateway using unique features that will be hard to hack or bring glitch into.
No1. Qualcomm report: Qualcomm has reported that most banking applications in India don’t run on hardware security. They run on Android mode and use password can be stolen. Fingerprints that some users use can also be captured and used to sneak into your account. Security is one of the biggest challenges with digital payments and wallets. If we cannot be provided with that, cashless economy is a far dream.
2. Hackers everywhere: It is not long back when ATM fraudulence disturbed a lot of people who lost money and had to wait for quite a long time to get it refunded from banks. Over the last week, we saw that twitter handles of prominent leaders were hacked and abusive posts were made from it. Email databases were accessed. The biggest issue in US at the moment is also on Russian hackers accessing the system of party members and their databases. This is a scary enough tale for a nation that plans on going cashless.
3. Falling into traps: If latest reports of Norton Cyber Security Insights are to be believed Indians are the most prone to falling into tramps of phishing and hacking. We just don’t know when to click and when to simply avoid. The ads are not always secure and we aren’t supposed to clicking on things randomly but that is not known to most people who are either using digital payments or wallets for the first time or using Smartphone for the first time.
4. Helping isn’t really help: Recently our PM asked digitally literates to help at least 10 others who are not used to the process of online transactions and digital payment system. The problem with this is that digital banking and e-wallets are actually things that should be personal to someone. You just don’t want anyone else to peek into your stuff when it comes to money matters. It is getting more and easier for someone to take undue advantage of your innocence and the next moment one can be robbed of whatever little they saved up.
5. Lack of security standards: As of now there are no security standards prescribed by RBI for e-wallets in India. The circulars only require e-wallets to have ‘adequate’ data security infrastructure. There has to be prescribed minimum standards for security for the e-wallet providing firms to be registered before people start putting all their faith into it.
No, we aren’t completely ready to go cashless but we are on the way. There are improvements being made and as Qualcomm suggested that it will be integrating with Indian companies to make digital payments more secure, we can definitely hope for a better world where no hacking and phishing would be a glitch for India to go completely digital.
