Providing secure payments and protecting the privacy of an
individual’s personal data is critical to the growth of mobile ecommerce,
also known as m-commerce. M-commerce may
someday provide a true alternative to cash and make purchasing
items as easy as hitting a few keys on the keypad of your
Wireless Internet device.
One of the most important issues to overcome in the area
of m-commerce is fraud. It’s easy enough to prove payment in
the physical world—cash works well and credit cards have
sophisticated protection schemes to protect both the holder
and the merchant from unauthorized use. Over the Internet,
it’s quite a bit harder to confirm the identity of the entity that
is attempting to complete a purchase—merchants are unable
to ask for a photo ID or some other proof that the identity of
the person requesting the purchase is correct.