Web2 Finance, Mobiles and Two Factor Authentication

A friend has just had problems with fraud and it got me thinking about two factor authentication and how web2 finance sites such as Mint.com and Wesabe can play a role in making online fraud harder.

The Web2 Financial sites could Email and sms the individual whenever a payment or transaction is done to confirm the transaction before it is committed. Essentially the mobile phone (or email) becomes the second factor of authentication. No need to carry around a separate dongle or bit of hardware in order to make a transaction.

Implementation of this would require the companies to partner with the banks or online payment processors to get the realtime-ness need for the second means of authentication to be effective.

Banks and the payment processors could also do this as well and probably should. I would like to be able to receive an SMS to authorise ATM transactions or when paying by card at a shop prior to being the money being handed over. Not the ultimate solution to card cloning and pin card issues but it would certainly put a crimp in that type of fraud.

Web2 financial services have an advantage over the banks, credit cards and payment processors for the following reasons:

• Online banking sites suck - badly
• People often have many bank accounts, credit cards and setting them all up is likely to miss something. As the financial sites already aggregate this information they can act as single point for passing transactions through to authenticate
• Many online payment processors are merchant focused and never have a relationship with user so can't really send an SMS or email
• The financial sites are focused on the user while banks, credit cards and payment processors lack this focus
  

In the end the more services that offer this type of two factor authentication the better for reducing fraud. It isn't going to make it go away (phone and wallet stolen etc) but it can be reduced without having to roll out great numbers of bits of hardware.

Tags: Mint.com, Wesabe, Two Factor Authentication, Mobile, Fraud, Online Payments, Web2

iPhone Reverberations

It is now several days pass the announcement of Apple’s iPhone software roadmap. We are now firmly far enough away from the reality distortion field we can take stock of what it means and the possible ramifications. John Doerr certainly thinks that the iPhone is the next coming. And I am inclined to agree but I shall come back to my reasoning later on in the post.

The presentation came in two parts; the enterprise features and the SDK. I’ll consider each as both have different effects.

RIM

The enterprise features are aimed at the heart of RIM. Not only has Apple targeted the BlackBerry handsets but RIM’s whole push technology revenue. It is a classic pincer strategy and strangely enough not one that I’ve seen discussed much. By using ActiveSync Apple removes the intermediate steps of the RIM server and NOC. This will be cheaper for enterprises wanting to deploy push email and potentially more reliable, an issue that RIM has struggled with in the last 6 months.

Apple has created a viable alternative to RIM push email technology that is going to have a lower total cost of ownership. The software update is not going to be deployed until June 2008 so I expect that the update will include many other improvements to the iPhone that will make it even harder for RIM. I am interested in whether Apple will work with Google and Yahoo to bring push to the companies’ webmail. In particular push integration of Google Apps would almost make the iPhone a no-brainer for small to medium enterprises.

RIM has six months in which to respond and come up with a strategy to counter Apple. Steady as she goes is not a viable long term strategy. One possible idea is to give the RIM server software away for free/open source it and focus on providing maintenance contracts to enterprises looking for them. But it is not all plain sailing for RIM (and all the other handset manufacturers) as Apple not only announced the enterprise features but more importantly announced the SDK.

SDK

The enterprise features were about selling more iPhones and increasing access to the enterprise. The SDK is about changing the world. The SDK unlocks the power of the iPhone and turns it into a comprehensive mobile computing platform. John Doerr stated it was the third platform and I agree. Does it replace the other two platforms? Not at all. Instead it complements the other two platforms to create ubiquitous computing. Now we have the mobile platform with the computing platform and the cloud platform.

The SDK provides a little something for everyone. For enterprises it allows mobile versions of enterprise applications (ERP, CRM, SCM etc). More importantly the native applications will support offline processing allowing users to continue using the applications when not in range of large of large bandwidth connections. It also allows the applications to send only the necessary data (sync) between the central application and the iPhone version increasing the essential mobility of the platform.

For games developers it provides a mobile gaming console that with the mult-touch interface and 3D accelerometer and high resolution screen offers new gaming styles and game play. The Wii is a demonstration of how a change in interacting with a game opens up new game play. Perhaps the largest stumbling block will be Apple’s historical indifference to games on their platforms. Take a logical step further the iPhone could become a very interesting Wii-like controller for Mac based games. Imagine playing id’s Rage using the iPhone to steer and fire.

Application developers will be able to create applications and mobile versions of their applications that address specific computing needs when mobile. These applications will often be compliments of desktop and web applications. The inclusion of SQLite will do a lot to reduce the issues surrounding EDGE and intermittent connection.

In Conclusion

Like a butterfly flapping their wings only to create a storm, the true impact of the iPhone mobile computing platform is unpredictable. Like Jason said, this will play out over the next two decades. Not having “social” mentioned is hardly a reason to doubt the impact of the iPhone as Fred Wilson does. The point is the SDK is about the how of mobile computing not the what. The what is left up to the developers and users.

All that can be said for sure is how we think about computing and its involvement in our lives is going to radically change just as the PC platform and the Internet Platform changed computing before.

Tags: iPhone, iPhone SDK, Mobile Computing, Apple, RIM

Liability in the age of targeted ads

Every so often you here about the latest advertising based scam. An ad is located somewhere in magazine or newspaper and this leads the un-suspecting off in a merry dance that sees them loose some or all their life savings.

Generally the service (magazine, newspaper etc) are not held liable for this type of scam. Which is fair enough because the service is not targeting ads at specific people.

But...

What happens when a service is predicated (Blyk) on delivering very target ads to a specific demographic delivers advertising that is the start point of a scam? It could be very easily argued that the scam would not have been successful without the targeting provided by the service. Which of course opens the service to liability.

Liability for scams is something that does need to be considered with highly targeted advertising. Particularly, where the targeting focuses on populations known to be (more) prone to duping by scams.

Tag: Blky, Mobiles, Targeted Advertising

Rant: Playing Music on a Mobile Speaker Phone

I've been meaning to say something for a while but today on the bus into work was the last straw.

What idiotic engineer or marketeer decided that it would be cool to allow people play music stored on a mobile on it's speaker? The only time that is going to happen is when the person is in a crowded bus/train/building where is going to piss people off.

Now, to those people who do this. STOP. I don't care what music you like but I don't want to have to listen to it. I have my own favourite music and I don't want to have to listen to yours because you are too selfish to not use headphones. You are intruding on my personal space.

Strangely enough it always seems to be teenagers who insist on playing music on the speaker. Some people would say I could simply ask them to turn it down. Yes I could, BUT, they should never have turned it on in the first place. Why can't people think of those around them?