Examining the evolutionary trends of mobile banking platforms in Nigeria

Abstract

This paper takes a critical review of the evolutionary trend of mobile banking platforms deployed by commercial banks in Nigeria, with the aim to recommend a more secure and robust one. It identifies the strengths and weaknesses of each and highlights the factors that led to the invention of the next succeeding one. The mobile banking platforms reviewed includes Short Messaging Service (SMS), Interactive Voice Response (IVR), Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), SIM Application Toolkit (SAT), and Application (APP) based platforms. Many of these mobile banking platforms are still utilized by most commercial banks in Nigeria today. However, it is obvious that, although most commercial banks combine two or more of the mobile banking platforms in order to get better result, there are inherent security problems and other challenges in them, which need to be addressed. Having a mobile banking platform (APPbased) with inbuilt ability to confirm a user’s authenticity before his transaction is completed, would bring a better security check and thereby bring enhancement to mobile banking transactions. The Application is made more flexible for users by allowing more than one user to use the application to transact once installed in a phone. It is as well equipped with more functionalities like including means for users to: enable/disable their SMS alerts, Change their SMS phone number, Edit their residential address, and Update their next of kin information, as their needs may arise.