Mobile payments and end users' sensitivity to information disclosure

Abstract

The adoption of electronic and mobile payments has improved significantly in recent years. A number of payment channels that provide convenience are now ubiquitously available for conducting electronic transactions. These payment methods range from credit cards to the Near Field Communication (NFC) tap and pay methods. A recurring premise in these electronic payment methods is the guaranteeing of security and privacy of the end-user's personally identifiable information especially with respect to financially sensitive information. However, recent high profile information breaches have seemed to suggest otherwise. While information security administrators have scrambled to secure financial institutions' payment gateways and enterprise networks, an often overlooked domain is end user security. This paper aims to examine mobile payments security as well as the end user's sensitivity to disclosing personally identifiable information in relation to preferred payment methods. The methodology employed is the statistical inferencing of a survey on 138 valid respondents consisting mostly of university students, to assess the information disclosure sensitivity across the various subpopulations. The results of these assessments showed that business students and professionals were significantly more sensitive to information disclosure than other assessed subpopulations.