Is It safe to transaction using Internet?
Internet security seems to be getting more difficult to combat as white hacker and black hacker are trying their best to out beat and out wit each other.
Is it safe to transact monetary transaction using internet?
As in China, where even the beggar also has a specific QR Code for begging and getting donors to donate by scanning the QR Code and transfer the money using Alipay or Wechat Pay.
In Singapore, there seem to have quite a few online payment systems now on the market after the Government challenge the IT industries to come out with a system as very commonly used in China.
For hawker Centre in Singapore, some Hawker stalls owners are using QR Code and getting the patrons to pay using online payment system, this in a way, is good as the stall owners/operators will not be handling cash and food at the same time.
Patrons will feel happier as the operator is not handling cash and the food at the same time.
However, from the operator side, he may not be seeing the money immediately as the bank may take time to transfer the money to him,
Then the next question is How safe is this payment mode?
In the midst of busy doing business, the operator may not be able to ensure the payment is transacted successfully, the patron will just show the scanned QR code result and showing the successful transacted, whether what he showed in his mobile phone is a screen shot or the real transaction, the operator will not be able to know unless he takes the patron's phone and check it carefully.
If the Patron just showed his phone screen and waved in front of the patron, he may be using the screen shot of his previous payment of the previous day.
As it happened in China, a patron went to a stall to have his lunch and he ordered the same lunch every day with the same amount, the operator did not suspect any fault initially, then one fine day, she was checking her collections and the actual amounts she sold during the day for the last ten days and she noticed there were discrepancies and she was trying to figure out why had happened.
Luckily she had a daughter who was good in IT and she helped her mother to program her phone with transaction notification, meaning once a patron claimed he or she had transferred the payment online, the operator's phone would have a sound of notification indicating the money was in.
Then she noticed that young patron who ordered the same food and the same value for his lunch came again and showed his mobile phone screen of the payment, however there was no notification sound, the daughter of the operator was on site that day to ensure the program she installed in her mother's phone was working fine and she demanded to see the phone of that patron.
The patron naturally refused to allow the daughter of the operator to check, leaving the operator without any alternative but to call in the police.
The police discovered that patron had been using the screen shot to show the stall operator his supposedly paid transaction record, at the end, the patron decided to make good all the one-month lunch consumption amount.
The other issue about online payment is:
How do we know the system is safe and not hacked by people?
It appears that one can only know the system has been hacked after a few months and this is not immediate discovery or detection of the intrusion, hence, to me it sounds like this is not safe.
Nowadays there are so many disruptive program and busines model which cash in on quick and fast cash, and the authority is having a hard time to keep abreast with the regulation and law to monitor these new business model.
With the abuse going on in this disruptive business model, where is the world heading to?
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