SAFE to be launched

by Gamini WARUSHAMANA

Mobile telephone is the most secure and efficient transaction mode and just a SMS message is sufficient to do a bank transaction, transfer of money including foreign remittance and commercial payments, said Prof. Sead Muftic. He was delivering the keynote address at the National IT Conference 2009 organised by the Computer Society of Sri Lanka (CSSL). Muftic is a Professor of the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden and a Research professor of the George Washington University, USA.

He said that the SAFE System, the secure application for financial environments, introduced by SETECS Mobile Technologies of the USA will be launched in Sri Lanka soon in partnership with the University of Colombo in development aspects and Senova Multisystems (Pvt) Ltd, a banking software provider in marketing and operation aspects.

In Sri Lanka the system will be implemented with the Co-operative banks the largest banking network in the country and reputed commercial banks too have shown interest. Over the years the concepts of banking has changed, over-the-counter transactions evolved to teller machines and thereafter to internet banking and mobile banking. However, only 10 per cent, a fraction of the world population has bank accounts and therefore most of the financial transactions are still non bank transactions. Internet banking has become popular, as internet browsing is possible using mobile phones. But they are not popular to attract this vast non-bank transactions due to many reasons. Mainly these transactions are costly for the banks, operators as well as customers. For instance, for a internet bank transaction through a mobile phone you need 3.5G mobile service, 3G mobile phone and you may have to pay a high charge for the transaction.

Credit card is the most expensive payment mode in the world. SAFE System address these issues. It is a payment system including mobile banking and not a sole mobile banking solution.