Evaluation of Mobile Payment Authentication Mechanisms

The aim of this research is to evaluate the feasibility of different mobile payment authentication mechanisms in Taiwan. Viewing these authentication mechanisms as a form of innovation, this research adopts innovation diffusion theory, and carries out a qualitative case study in a local bank and users in Taiwan. In particular, we focus on the perception of bank managers and potential users about three types of mechanisms, including password, device authentication, and biometric. Our literature review shows that most prior researches on information security of mobile payment were based on the subjective security, and very few studies evaluate the aspect of objective security. Subjective security is defined as the degree of the perceived security from the viewpoint of the customer, while objective security is a concrete technical characteristic. Additionally, only limited studies were available on the feasibility evaluation of authentication mechanisms. Hence, this research tries to understand the degree of perceived information security of mobile payment of users through the technical characteristic of authentication mechanisms. The empirical results indicate that in the opinion of α bank, password is the most used mechanism. Because of the limitation of technical maturity and data collection, our findings show that biometric is not feasible at present. However, we found that biometric got the highest users’ intension to adopt authentication mechanisms, second one is device authentication, and password is the last. Moreover, we also noticed that users were quite concerned about safety and convenience. As a result, while choosing authentication mechanisms, mobile payment service providers not only offer adequate safety but also need to consider user experiences.