Fri. Mar 29th, 2024
Mobile Wallets

At a time when the government of India is trying to push the digital wave by supporting online modes of payment, Qualcomm, the largest chip maker in the world feels that none of the mobile payment apps in India are fully secure at the moment.

Speaking at an event, Sy Choudhury, Senior Director – Product Management Qualcomm stated that most of the mobile payment apps in the world do not use hardware level security which is essentials for transactions which require exchange of confidential information such as credit card or banking details. he further added that almost all the mobile payment apps in India run completely on Android mode, which is very vulnerable to hack. Also, the finger print, used to authenticate a lot of modern day transactions, can be captured without much of a hassle.

Qualcomm currently powers 37 percent of the total smartphones active in the world at the moment. Justifying his statement, Choudhury further added that developing countries like India are adopting to digital means of payment at a much rapid rate. When a user installs an app, he never gets to know if the app is using hardware level security or not. Qualcomm, however is now approaching OEMs (Original Equipment Makers) as well as the mobile payment companies to create a secure ecosystem for mobile and online payments.

Qualcomm is not providing a secure execution environment in the chipsets. The layer authenticates all the payment related transactions on hardware level and separates the operating system. So in case there is a malware on the operating system, online transactions remain unaffected. Qualcomm will start shipping such chips by start of 2017 and end users will be able to experience it by the end of next year.

Qualcomm will also be introducing more features in its mobile chipsets to verify the digital payments with the help of mobile ID, IMEI number of the phone, root kit of operating system, date and time. The information will be impossible to duplicate and it will provide a secure transaction environment to the users.

Sy Choudhury was in all praise for Aadhaar in India and termed the online Aadhaar system as one of the best in entire world.

By Prithviraj Singh Chauhan

Part time journalist, full-time observer. Editor-in-Chief at The Indian Wire. I cover updates related to business and startups.

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