While the govt is aggressively pushing for digital payments, following the demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, Mobile chipset manufacturer Qualcomm has said that none of the mobile payments application in India was completely secure. The company has warned that the lack of support for hardware-level encryption, in these apps, could allow for user login details and data to be stolen.
“You will be surprised because most of the banking or wallet apps around the world don’t use hardware security. They actually run completely in Android mode and users password can be stolen. Users use fingerprint which might be captured … in India that is the case for most of all digital wallets and mobile banking apps,” Qualcomm Senior Director Product Management said.
Qualcomm said it is now approaching digital payments companies to urge them to use a secure environment for processing payments on mobile phone, and added that the company it’s “coming up with new feature in its mobile chipsets from 2017 that will verify user with payment gateway using unique features like device id, phone manufacturer signature, Android version in the phone, root kit of operating system, location and time, which will be nearly impossible to duplicate.”
