No one can deny the mobile phone’s impact on our everyday life. From making and receiving calls to sending and receiving texts, we now have the internet at our fingertips at any time and millions of mobile applications to choose from, all to engage every aspect of our lives. It seems fair to say that mobile devices now serve as multifunctional tools that most of us cannot do without daily. Depending on the connection speed, whether 2G, 3G or 4G, our mobile devices provide instant internet connectivity wherever we are. Using our mobile devices, we now decide where to go and what to buy and even manage our money through the banking and wallet apps available, and this is where the idea of mobile money is introduced. Mobile money is using your mobile phone to transfer, withdraw, or deposit funds between banks or accounts. Mobile capital can also be referred to as using a mobile device to buy physical or electronic goods and services. Mobile money has increased in popularity in the past two years mainly because of its convenience and ease of application to everyday life.
How Mobile Money Affects You
Using mobile money, you can use your mobile device to…
• Make payments at the point of sale (POS): Most retail stores that use this technology either scan or provide a facility to input the relevant code for the purchased product, which allows the money to be deducted from the account linked to your phone.
• Make payments online: This also applies to paying for goods and services at an Electronic Point of Sale (EPOS). This differs slightly from POS, with the main difference being that a code will have to be provided to the website where the relevant monies can be deducted from the account registered to your phone.
• Pay Bills and other services: The convenience of paying bills on the go is something that many find attractive. This option is popular in regions with a higher unbanked population (individuals without a bank account who account on their mobile.
• Send money to another account: Mobile money can also transfer funds from account to account via wallet apps that are becoming increasingly popular and mainstream.
With anything involving technology and money, the issues of mobile transaction security, hacking, and fraud must be addressed. It is not unreasonable to assume that the more we use our mobile devices to make purchases and fund transfers, the more we potentially risk increasing mobile security threats, which must be addressed proactively.
Omis, a global provider of unbreakable mobile transaction security to financial institutions, payment service providers (PSPs), payment processors, merchants, and mobile network operators (MNO), amongst others, also supports the idea that more people would gain confidence and trust to transact via their mobile device if they fully depend on the security measures taken by banks, merchants, and payment service providers to provide substantial mobile transaction security.
Conclusion
The mobile phone is fast becoming an indispensable tool for most people on the move, which means that mobile money has the opportunity to grow and become the usual way of transacting on the move. It does seem that there is still a long way to go until the issues of mobile money convenience and mobile money security are fully resolved.
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