As government makes big strides towards making Indian economy cashless and pursues more and more citizens to use digital means of payment, prominent chipset maker Qualcomm raises a few grave concerns. According to Qualcomm, mobile wallet apps and mobile banking applications in India are not fully secure.
According to Qualcomm, mobile wallet apps and mobile banking applications in India are not fully secure.Unlike payment apps like Samsung Pay, PayPal, AliPay, most Indian banking and digital wallet apps don’t utilize hardware-based security authentication to secure digital transactions.
“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,” said Sy Choudhury, Qualcomm Senior Director Product Management, while talking about secure solutions and secure execution environment that their chipsets can potentially deliver.
Post demonetization of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 bills mobile wallets such as Paytm and MobiKwik have witnessed an unprecedented spike in transactions through their mobile apps, which only increases their liability.
This was evident when recently hackers who call themselves ‘Legion’ caused jitters when they claimed responsibility for the recent hacks of digital accounts of prominent Indians in an interview with ET. The group calls Indian banking system “deeply flawed” and does not believe in a cashless economy.
The same group was responsible for the hacking of twitter accounts of Indian National Congress, its vice-president Rahul Gandhi, fugitive industrialist Vijay Mallya and prominent journalist Barkha Dutt.
