With launch of Cashless Jharkhand Campaign, Chief Minister Raghubar Das has made it clear that the Government was ready to go any extra mile to see everyone in the State making and receiving payments through virtual mode of payments sooner than later. However, bankers do admit that such transactions, especially in case they are made through mobile handsets, remained vulnerable at least in principle, until and unless the government came up with something extraordinary to safeguard interests of common customers.
“I must say that we have done a lot to protect the interests of common users as far as transactions made through mobile phones and plastic money (credit/debit cards) is concerned. However, the number and type of issues related to security breach which we all banks have faced prior to demonetization present a scary picture. They do suggest that we also need to go extra mile in terms of data security,” said Punjab National Bank DGM (Jharkhand) PK Pradhan.
The fact of the matter is that India has become the second largest Smartphone market in terms of active Smartphone users with number crossing well over 22 Crores users, according to various reports. However, cashless transactions in States like Jharkhand where more than 70 per cent population still resides in villages spending most part of the day in fields using largely analogue phones, have challenges of their own in absence of smart phones.
“The bigger challenge for banks and the Government is that the moment you make your maiden transaction through mobile or laptop/desktop, you become possible victim of cyber fraud or crime. The state seriously lacks a complex cyber security set up which is well equipped to thwart any real time cyber attack. Until this happens, which can easily take some years to come into existence, you need to remain extra cautious while making payments through mobile phones despite the fact that banks are taking steps to make such payments safe from cyber goons,” said Cyber Security expert Vineet Kumar who runs an NGO on cyber security.
A senior State Bank of India (SBI) official admitted only two days ago on the sidelines of an event organised to demonstrate how bank’s SBI Buddy could be operated for mobile banking and transactions that security remained a concern. He said that though negligible, the risk was there. But bank was ready to take risk as the maximum amount one could carry in Buddy was Rs20,000 only. However, he claimed that there was no reported fraud in Buddy so far since it was launched some two years ago.
Kumar said that the bigger challenge was coming from e-wallets. “Thousands of e-wallets including banks and private providers are available in the State. The problem is that most of them come from the first generation of young entrepreneurs who worry more about their business than the security of customers. It has become a child’s play to infect platform of those wallets for cyber criminals because most of the wallets have been started in a hurry without any security testing, or only routine testing,” said Kumar.
Even Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Friday that the country was home of over 23 Crores of mobile wallets at the time. Experts believe that the state needed to work on cyber security first before jumping to ride on the bandwagon of cashless society.