A wallet-less mobile payment system using near field communication (NFC)

M.Sc. (Information Technology)With mobile payments and mobile wallets becoming more and more popular, researchers are actively investing more time and funds intro creating solutions that can offer better convenience, efficiency and security in order to make mobile payments easier, faster and more secure. With huge economic boosts that mobile payments and mobile wallets provide, malicious and rogue activities constantly increase and improve in their efficacy. These malicious and rogue activities aim at compromising the security and confidentiality of the mobile payment applications and mobile wallets. The purpose of the research presented within this dissertation is to explore a mobile payment application that does not require the need for any mobile wallet system. With time becoming a constraining factor and mobility more demanded, consumers are inclined to weigh the benefit of speed, efficiency and convenience against security, even though they are well aware of the potential security threats and risks they face. As numerous research articles focus on the use of mobile wallets for mobile payments, this dissertation presents a unique illustration of enabling mobile payments in a person to person and person to point-of-sale (POS) setting. Furthermore, this dissertation investigates the use of Near Field Communication as a means of transferring payment information from a payee to a payer. The use of NFC therefore eliminates the requirement of having to type in account information – which could lead to erroneous payments being made. Lastly, an improved identification, authentication and authorisation mechanism that can ensure legitimate usage of the mobile payment system is also described