Top 7 best practices to secure mobile wallets

Mobile wallets have highly revolutionised the payments ecosystem by eliminating the need for cash. Now you do not have to carry a lot of cash to pay your monthly bills or to make payments at your nearby shop. Just use a mobile wallet and complete your payments speedily and securely.

Although mobile wallets have provided us with great convenience in making payments, it has posed some serious security threats too. That is why payment businesses are highly concerned about the security of their mobile wallets and they are also following several practices to secure it.

So if you are confused about the safety of mobile wallets then you are not alone. In this blog, we will give you the seven effective ways to reduce the security threats of mobile financial solutions.

Secure your mobile wallets in seven easy ways

Touted as the future of mobile payment technology, mobile wallets are gaining immense popularity across the globe. However, many people are still suspicious about the security of mobile wallets. So if you want to gain the trust of your customers then you need to tighten the security of mobile wallets. Here are some ways of securing your mobile wallets:

1. Follow the payment compliances

You have to consider the rules and regulations before starting any business irrespective of its type. In the case of mobile wallets, you have to follow legal payment laws such as PCI-DSS, DSP2 and GDPR.

Generally, PCI-DSS compliance deals with credit card regulations. While GDPR is concerned with privacy and payment data protection. On the other hand, DSP2 consists of payment laws implemented by the European government. So before making a digital wallet, ensure that it is compliant with the existing payment regulations.

2. Application Security

Security becomes a key concern when it comes to mobile wallet apps. Strong passwords become the need when it comes to the security of digital payments. By making a mobile wallet platform, you can assign separate IDs to all user accounts. With it, you can detect the changes made by the users in their registration and login details.

Along with this, you can also offer a secure preference library to your customers. The secure preferences library uses AES (Advanced Encryption Standards) that can randomly generate the encryption keys at the time of the first-time installation of an app. These keys will encrypt the key-value pairs encoded with base 64 algorithm.

3. Secure data transmission

Digital wallets can provide you with a secure data exchange in every transaction by using secure data transmission methods. But before discussing more secure data transmission methods, let us understand its meaning first. Secure data transmission means the transfer of any confidential information over a secure channel. Also, some secure transmission methods come with an end to end encryption.

In secure data transmission of mobile wallets, an AES key is generated for every app that uses unique identification methods such as OTP and MSISDN. All the data that will be exchanged takes this AES key.

4. Use anti-fraud strategies

Nowadays, fraudsters and hackers are using new ways of committing financial frauds such as ransomware, phishing, and banking trojans. These methods are used by the cybercriminals to steal the sensitive information of the digital wallet users for committing frauds.

But now you do not have to worry about the security of your mobile wallets as you can protect them by using effective anti-fraud strategies. These anti-fraud strategies consist of the usage of identifiers, address verification methods, and deferred payments. Let us look at them one by one.

An identifier is used in the mobile wallets for checking the cards that are added in the wallet solution. The identifier will raise a red flag if it will detect any kind of fraudulent transaction. While the address verification system will compare the billing information with the data storage of the mobile wallet service providers.

5. Authenticated API calls

Before discussing in detail about the authentication of API calls let’s understand its meaning with an example. Suppose you have downloaded an app on your smartphone. But for using it, you need to enter your email address or phone number for registration. Then the moment you press the “Submit” button, you have made an API call. In short, an API call is a process of setting up an API with right endpoints.

Talking from the mobile payment point of view, API call is a way where the customers will choose a payment method. After the selection of the payment method, the customer’s payments details will be shared with the merchant. But sometimes hackers can steal this information or they can break the chain of payments. That is why you first need to authenticate the API calls for your mobile wallet.

6. Leverage tokenization

Tokenization can also be used for securing your mobile wallet. In this method, a trusted system is used to convert sensitive payment data into a random string of numbers. So that hackers can not get the real data. Meanwhile, the original data gets shifted to a secured cloud database so that one can access it later on.

By using tokenization, your payment security will improve drastically as your original payment information is not visible to the hackers. Your payment information will be replaced by a token which is useless if it gets detected. So in this way, cybercriminals are unable to access your payment data.

7. Utilize Biometric technology

Biometric authentication is one of the methods that are used for securing mobile wallets. It is a security method that identifies the person by using its biological characteristics.

You can also consider using biometric technology in your digital payment systems to provide a secure payment experience to your customers. With the integration of biometrics such as fingerprint, eyes, voice, face, etc. into your digital wallet, you can easily differentiate between the fraudsters and the real users. Also, you can save these biometrics for further verification in the future.

Conclusion

Payment frauds are the inevitable byproducts of using mobile wallets. And you are the best advocate when it comes to the security of your mobile wallets. You must have to detect and eliminate them at earliest to create a safer payment experience for both the merchant and the customers. For this, you have to use the methods that are discussed in this blog.

Still, want to know more about your mobile wallet security? Then reach us to know more. Keep following this space for more such insightful things.