The Logic Group Blog

You are a retail business. You have spent a small fortune in time and money to upgrade your systems and processes and a certified QSA has accredited you as PCI DSS compliant. Do you sit back and relax, safe in the knowledge that you have achieved security nirvana and that fraud will never show its ugly face in your business again? Well not quite.

Will mobile phones replace the card?

More people leave their wallet at home, than their phone. In the past, this may have caused the shopper some difficulty as they search their pockets at a checkout. This situation is set to change with the introduction of NFC contactless technology coupled with your mobile phone. The exact form factor is evolving from bank issued stickers attached to any item, NFC enabled SIM cards, to contactless enabled handsets. The timelines for mass adoption are still unclear, but we are firmly on the journey!

In keeping with things at this time of year I’ve been thinking about a few predictions for 2011.

First off, I think we’ll see more coordinated fraud attacks. As the take-up of PCI DSS compliance continues, fraudsters will be forced to focus more strongly on specific targets. With PCI DSS compliant environments it is clearly harder for would be fraudsters to illicitly obtain card numbers and personal data, meaning would be fraudsters will have to take a more structured and planned approach to their activities, as a “scattergun” strategies will begin to pay less of a dividend.

Having recently attended a breakfast briefing in London on the subject of micropayments, I was fascinated to learn that the market opportunity for micropayments is forecasted to grow to €15bn by 2015! A massive growth from today’s estimates of €6bn, considering that most other markets are either flat, or showing minimal growth. The reason for this unprecedented growth?