15 big retailers that includes Wal-Mart Stores, Target Corp, 7-Eleven are developing a new mobile phone payment system that that would allow consumers to pay with their smart phones. With $1 trillion in annual sales, the group wants to make sure it has a say in the development of standards for mobile payments.
 
The group is entering a crowded market, we already know that Starbucks Corp has employed Square Inc to process payments at its U.S. coffee shops, eBay Inc's PayPal unit announced deals with 15 retailers to use its system for mobile payments and top U.S. mobile carriers (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile) are working on their mobile payments venture (Isis). 
 
Named Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX), it is a retailer initiative that may change the way customers pay for purchases still security concerns are more present than ever.
 
TJ Maxx 2005 point of sale breach can show the proportions that security issuses pose to such a system. TJ Maxx security breach affected 45.6 million customers who had their credit and debit information stolen and still ranks among the largest of this kind.  
 
A more recent example is that of Michaels Stores, one of the members of the new venture that had its own point of sale security breach in 2011.
 
An important concern is that consumers will expose their credit card data or personal information since for the system in order to work needs to store information in your cell phone. Thus other applications installed on the phone might gain access to financial data stored on the device.
 
Still, in a security chain, professionals know, that the human link is usualy the weakest. There are few answers to the most common situation of the cell phone being lost or the use of weak passwords.
 
This facts are clear for the retailers group, or at least in a declarative tone they seem to be "very confident that we will have world-class security" .
 
 
 
 

You can post your comments on my  Facebook Page.