Bank ponders Internet transaction control

Bank Indonesia (BI) is assessing the possibility of regulating Internet banking transactions to protect customers from losses through cyber crime, a central bank official says, according to The Jakarta Post

“We are still evaluating the necessity of making the regulation, or otherwise we can just push banks to tighten security through the Indonesian association of payment systems,” the head of BI's payment system development and policy division, says.

He added that there were around 500 000 Internet banking transactions a day, growing by up to 15% so far this year, keeping pace with the growth in electronic banking, the fastest growing payment system.

Infosys has introduced Finacle mobile banking solution that enables retail and corporate consumers to access banking services through mobile SMS, GPRS, 3G and USSD enabled handsets, states Silicon India.

It claims to facilitate interactive financial management encompassing product selection, proximity payments, remote deposit capture, new account opening, ATM locating based on GPS and value added services like mobile ticketing, mobile top-up and mobile marketing.

The device-agnostic solution supports over 8 000 mobile handsets including basic handsets and smart devices like iPhone, BlackBerry smartphones and iPad. Customers can avail themselves of the banking services through SMSes, browser-based mobile banking, rich client-based mobile banking or USSD messaging.

Westpac remains wary of using cloud computing for live banking operations after months of using the technology for internal software testing, reveals Australian IT

The bank has been using its private cloud computing service to assist in keeping its five-year $2 billion strategic investments priorities programme of work on track since early this year.

Westpac chief technology officer Sarv Girn says the bank has no plans as yet to use external cloud service for its live applications. "As the market matures around that, I can see that becoming where the industry does move to eventually, but I think we're a while away yet from mitigating those security and information risks," Girn says.