UK government body to invest £1.5 million in m-commerce security projects

The UK Government-sponsored Technology Strategy Board has earmarked £1.5 million in funding for new projects aimed at stimulating mobile commerce and countering the threat of theft and fraud.

Up to £1m is available for phase 1 of the competitive tender process and up to a further £500k may be available to further develop successful phase 1 projects.

Funding is open to single companies or organisations from the private, public and third sectors, including charities. Projects will last up to five months and successful applicants will attract a 100%-funded development contract of up to £50k.

Market support will be provided by the Technology Strategy Board and the Home Office, helping companies gain exposure to commercial organisations via the Forum for Innovation in Crime Prevention.

The competition opened on 19 November 2012, with networking events planned for London and Manchester in early December. The deadline for registration is noon on 9 January 2013 and the deadline for applications is at noon on 16 January 2013.

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Channels

Retail banking Security Payments

Keywords

Mobile & online banking

Comments: (2)

Pat Carroll - ValidSoft - London 23 November, 2012, 14:48

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The recent news that the UK government body, the Technology Strategy Board has set aside some £1.5m for m-commerce and fraud prevention projects, is a significant and positive step in the right direction for the industry.

So far, we have seen a variety of companies racing to gain market share in the mobile market in many different forms, but some unfortunately at the expense of customer security. This new initiative helps to bring the focus of mobile security to the heart of the m-commerce debate. Lack of trust has always been the Achilles Heel in the take-up of e-commerce: m-commerce will be no different.

Security measures needn’t be onerous or complicated for the customer to use, and yet can be very strong. A real-time, multi-layer approach, incorporating visible and invisible security layers can be achieved today – allowing total risk discrimination at the transaction level and with “low-or-no” customer friction.

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A Finextra member 23 November, 2012, 17:29

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It is possible that they would be better off making this money available to Universities and inviting companies in the Mobile and fraud management space to provide commercially logical bids to the Uni's to undertake R And D that could be made available to ALL interested parties... We need to bind our University and businesses together - the use of this type of funding would be a great facilitator and would remove a lot of the tender administration and vetting costs - which will probably be 30% of the value of the funds allocated if fully loaded..