Building a reliable and robust mobile payment system is always a challenge,it requires good analysis from business, marketing and technical teams together to deliver a simple, secure and convenient system to the end users. On the other side there are some trivial mistakes some people do, and this quick guide list some hints to help you to avoid making such mistakes unless your target is to build a system to fail!
This article is Part2 and you are advised to check Part1 to get a clear idea on how the article is listed.
6- Mobile payment is a replacement for traditional banking!
Mobile payment only exists as a replacement for traditional banking, to build your mobile payment system all you need to do is visit the nearest bank branch to your location and spend some few hours to list all the process happens around you. Then the easy part is to develop your system based on what you have noted, you will need to register accounts as they do in the bank, limit the transactions & balances the same way and it will be a great idea to issue some plastic cards for your customers later on!
[Hint] Mobile payments is not a dummy replacement for banking and for sure it is not a way to digitalize the banking systems in case you think its just an old fashion systems. Mobile payment plays on a customer segment and transaction types that might be in the interest area of banks, more over mobile payment has its own scenarios process and copying bank process will never work.
7- They do it that way, They are expert!
When you decide to use one of the well known vendors solutions you will never need to challenge them, do it their way, they are experts and they know what they are doing. And moreover they deployed the same solution in many other regions and it works over there – at least they said so!
[Hint] I will not talk about this point a lot, just make sure to follow your own marketing analysis there no dependency between what works in other countries and what will work in yours, and don’t be afraid to challenge the big brands and you might discover what I already did!
8- Mobile payment is for rich customers!
Mobile payment solutions is built for rich customers, they do own mobile phones and that means they are rich! The best way to attract your potential rich customers is to add multiple features linked directly to credit cards and banking accounts, you may also manage to get offers from top brands and elite restaurants.
[Hint] This point might differ based on your region and location, but in my region and in multiple locations worldwide mobile payment platforms is mainly accessed from feature mobiles and major customers are mid to low layers customers. Just to stay on the safe side you have to balance your options and limit your solution to a specific segment and ensure that your system is accessible from all mobile handsets.
9- Security is a must
Make sure your system is secure, start with unique username and implement the latest good password algorithms, password must be updated every three months and it should be 8-16 length. Password must contains numbers, upper, lower and special characters as well.
[Hint] Security is fundamental for any payment system -we can not debate here- but when you are about to apply any security rules you better give it a try your self and see how it is hard to fulfill some of those security rules using the small mobile screen and tight keyboard.
For simplifying, user name should be the user MSISDN its unique and could be used automatically through the GSM network or through apps, and password should be a PIN not a password.
10- No refund!
Design you system to process financial transactions only, there is no need to care about refunds or reversed transactions. Since you are duplicating the banking style you can do refunds manually later on!
[Hint] The major difference between traditional financial systems and mobile payments is the execution time and daily transaction volume, this gives an edge to the mobile payment but also make it hard to handle exceptions manually as it happens in some other systems.
In your early design you have to consider that each single transaction might have a reversal, rollback or refund transaction and you will need to do some effort to explore the difference between the three above transactions clearly, the three simply means to return the money in the opposite direction and well designed systems knows how and when to use each technique.
In a final summary those tips are not the only reason for failure and again most of them might work under conditions, I just tried to highlight some of the issues I have seen already to help those who are trying to build a mobile payment solution and give them a quick check list.
Khaled Sayed
PhotoCredit: http://www.lingholic.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/man-question-mistake.jpg