Vulnerabilities of Smartphones Payment Apps: The Relevance in Developing Countries

Most major banks, credit card payment processors/issuers and large businesses have come to adopt mobile pay- ment applications for smartphones. A ica, Asia, South America and other developing countries are no exceptions. e rate of growth of developing countries’ smartphone market penetration and usage have increased tremendously in recent years. Based on previous research ndings (Cavallari et al., 2015; 2016), the present study regards mobile payments as one of the new architectures at the heart of “social commerce”. e paper discusses research into the tech- nological aspects that pertain to security issues of smartphones. e novelty of present work resides in the authors’ tailor-made approach. e empirical results highlight the extent of the information that can be passively accessed within the endpoint (smartphone) and the most vulnerable areas to consider. is study is especially pertaining to developing countries where smartphones models and versions of Operating Systems are particularly old or outdated. We conclude that the most critical risk carriers are linked to an abundance of devices with obsolete operating systems and that are no longer supported by the supplier. is has shown to be particularly true about A ica, Latin America and other developing countries, (Duncombe 2014; Han 2012; Asongu 2013). e research concludes that whilst the payment clearing companies are incapable of protecting endpoints, their development and deployment of payment solutions based on HCE architectures will increase the risk of criminal transactions. So the foreseen scenario will see aud schemes that will migrate to the virtual payment environments found in the endpoint, instead of exploiting the weaknesses in the physical POS and/or credit card payment system. Practical research ndings illustrate the most vulnerable areas of mOS in order to prevent attacks and tampering.