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.
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