M-Commerce
Mobile commerce is yet another new service area that has shown
some promise for a while. However, no significant advances in terms of
technology or acceptance by consumers have been seen in this area. M-commerce
essentially includes doing business and financial transactions via the mobile
network. Security is one of the major concerns of anything that deals with
financial transactions. Wireless networks are essentially a broadcast medium and
hence a cause for being concerned with security. Consumers in the wired world
have a false sense of security simply by virtue of having a physical wire as
opposed to data being transmitted over ether. Wireless networks have, however,
developed sophisticated encryption and ciphering algorithms that will make it
possible to carry out financial transactions over the mobile Internet.
M-commerce also includes the capability to make payments using
the mobile device. The mobile device with its smart card can be considered as an
extension of one's wallet. The use of the mobile phone as a payment instrument
to make purchases in the physical world or online is another application of
M-commerce. The mobile phone as a wallet is based on existing technologies such
as ECML (Electronic Commerce Modeling Language). More information about ECML is
at www.ecml.org.
Mobile commerce is still in its infancy, and many problems need
to be dealt with, including user perception and technology, before revenues from
M-commerce as a service can be expected.
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The Mobey forum is a financial industry-driven forum whose
mission is to encourage the use of mobile technology in financial services. The
URL for the Mobey Forum is http://www.mobeyforum.org.
The Mobile Electronic Transaction (MET) initiative was also
intiated by Nokia, Ericsson, and Motorola with the aim of defining a framework
for secure mobile transactions. The URL to the MET forum us http://www.mobiletransaction.org. |
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