It’ll Be 14 Years Before Mobile Payments Are Secure To Leave Cash And Cards at Home

The prospect of leaving the house with just a smart phone in lieu of a wallet full of cash and payment cards is 14 years away, according to a survey released Thursday by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a technology association based in New York City. By 2030, 74% of respondents say mobile payments will be secure enough to do just that.

The survey of more than 1,600 information-technology professionals found that 45% said mobile payments will be secure enough by 2020 and 29% said by 2030, for a total of 74%. Ten percent said it would be at least 2035, while 16% said it will never happen.

Discounting the naysayers, for mobile-payment technology to live up to the expectations of the more optimistic crowd, it will have to surmount some security issues. Payment-information hacks were cited by 48% as their top mobile-payment technology concern, followed by unauthorized payment processing, 31%; accidental payments, 13%; and a virus infection through a Quick Response code, 8%.

Indeed, consumer concerns about security are strong. In a survey last year, 451 Research, a New York-based advisory firm, found that 84% of North American consumers cited security as their top mobile-payments concern.

Many mobile-payments services, like Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and Android Pay, use tokenization and encryption to secure the credit or debit card number and the actual payment-transaction data.

While technical engineering may assuage many concerns about mobile payments, the possibilities for social engineering—how criminals might use relationships to gain access—are another concern.

An early example of that, which now appears to have been quenched, was the rash of account-takeover fraud found last year with Apple Pay. Criminals, using stolen consumer data, were able to pretend to be legitimate consumers signing up for Apple Inc.’s mobile wallet.