Did you realise your mobile phone can solve your payment issues and save a lot of your time?

While the well-informed exploit well the mobile payment systems, there is still a sizeable population in both banked and unbanked sector that refrain from utilising mobile phone as gateway for payments or financial transactions. Something is stopping so many individuals from using the several modes of engaging into financial transactions. Was it lack of awareness or concern about security?

Mobile financial transaction methods can be identified into five basic modes &#151 SMS, Interactive Voice Response, USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data), Data Connection based (mobile web Browser and apps), and Near Field Communications based. Out of these five, the first four methods of mobile payments or mobile financial services have been used and experimented in past couple of years. However, no massive spike in usage of either of the medium has been noted so far.

This may be due to the fact that “mobile phones in India currently are looked upon as frivolous medium. Whether it is organised sector or unbanked sector, there is a strong need about awareness related to the security of mobile finance services available today and in near future,” opines Srinivas Nidugondi, vice president &#151 Mobile Financial Solutions, Comviva which provides mobile value added services.

Neel Chowdhury of Obopay, which claims specialisation in mobile payment systems, has similar thoughts. Chowdhury, vice president and chief marketing officer of Obopay, states, “There is an urgent need for educating masses on mobile banking and demystifying concepts on transacting through mobiles. As a technology provider we are well endowed to help consumers to clear these misconceptions.”

Though many in India today use mobile financial services, we doubt someone would be actually making payments in large amounts using SMS gateway. “Even simple SMS based mobile payment method requires an individual to feed in specific PIN number to proceed with the payment and finally accept the transaction to pay the merchant via bank. In case the confidentiality of PIN number or other details has been shared, it is difficult to spoof a phone number, PIN number and IMEI number of device all together,” added Nidugondi.

While the private sector players roll out services, even the central banking institution of India – Reserve Bank of India also is involved at a major scale when it comes to regulations. Jaivinder Gill, managing director, NCR India, informs, “The RBI has been continuously monitoring the progress of mobile banking solutions in India and its adoption by consumers. As scalability of functions and breadth of such services increase at the mobile channel, the service providers will have to look at securing this channel from all potential points of compromise.”

Also, explaining the fortified system of mobile payments, Neel Chowdhury of Obopay said, “All Obopay accounts are protected against unauthorised transactions and use advanced encrypted security technology whenever possible to prevent unauthorised access to account holder data. When using the Obopay India service, protection against unauthorized use is provided through PIN-based authentication. Users must enter the PIN when sending or requesting money using Obopay India service from their mobile phones. Additionally, all data transmitted via the Obopay India service is protected by advanced security technology against unauthorized access. To provide this level of security, Obopay India uses multiple layers of advanced Encryption algorithms so that transmitted data cannot be intercepted or compromised. ”

That clearly hints one thing &#151 if you are sloppy about your personal bank account passwords and PINs then there is very little what such service providers can do to prevent a fraud. Mobile solutions providers have laid down multi-level authentication as well as authorisation involved processes have been laid down where the process takes place through strongly encrypted backend systems.

The SMS and IVR based solutions are best applicable to the unbanked and unorganised sector where as the more organised and matured sectors can utilise the mobile services that based on USSD, Mobile App or web browser, and Near Field Communications. Nidugondi believes that the mobile payments and financial services mix will succeed in India when each essential component in mobile financial services are placed in order and are working together.

Lot of buzz has been created in last couple of months about the Near Field Communications system and the smartphones carrying NFC chip. Near Field Communications chip allows encrypted data exchange at short ranges and consumes less power. Consider this scenario when you could just pay for your lunch at restaurants or for goods purchased at superstore by sampling waving your phone in front of another NFC chip loaded device. No need to carry around much of cash.

Currently the eco-system to spur the best out of NFC is slowly setting up where Reserve Bank of India is playing a crucial role along with TRAI. Chowdhury points out stating, “With companies such as Google, Apple banking on this technology; the future looks bright. But unfortunately this technology is not yet a part of ISO standard. Hence, this results in no protection against eavesdropping and is vulnerable to data modifications which are a great concern when it comes to financial transactions. That said, many analysts are betting big on the NFC industry and has a very positive outlook for the same. They have predicted that NFC will be the one of the greatest catalysts in the growth of mobile banking globally.”

Several solutions to facilitate mobile financial services like payments, remittances, fund transfer, and others, are being developed and in process of roll out at the banks. Handset makers, telecom service providers and banks are working together closely to build an ecosystem with a strong backend to spur the mobile money scene in India.

According to Juniper Research , the mobile payments market is expected to touch $670 billion mark by 2015. At the end of the day, the onus remains on the consumer who is required to protect every detail and confidential information that can be used to facilitate any mobile transaction. In couple of years from now, we may get to see less of actual cash since the mobile payment is evolving.

Apple iOS based devices continue to lure several consumers across the globe. Apart from great multimedia consumption, the iOS devices are also helpful in boosting personal productivity to a great extent. The Apple App store has several applications that can help you improve your daily productivity and also keep you in-tune with things that need to be taken care of.

Out of thousands of productivity apps, we have chosen best five for your iOS device.

Evernote

It is always difficult for anyone to keep track of all the important notes and images while on the move. Evernote is a powerful three-in-one solution that allows taking notes, capturing images, and also recording voice notes using iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Featuring a standard and easy to adapt interface, Evernote allows quick note-taking and serves as a life saver while you are in a meeting or during a group discussion.

Registration is required and by default receives 40 MB storage on the cloud servers of Evernote which is enough for a casual user while heavy users can always purchase more storage by opting for Evernote Premium. The chief advantage of having this application is the flexibility it offers to access your content on any platform &#151 mobile or web, and that too from anywhere.

Users can add tags to their notes in the form of text, images or in audio format. If you wish to search for something be ready to be surprised as it searches for text even in images. With regular and timely sync, it keeps your data updated and stored securely in the clouds. There are multiple uses to make best of the Evernote App such as saving up the web articles or links you wish to check out later instead of clogging up your phone cache.

Evernote is available for free from App Store for iOS 3.0 or higher running iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

Calvetica

Even though Apple has given a great native calendar App, there is a lot more that one can do with other calendar apps like Calvetica.

Its name is derived from the Helvetica font family and uses the same font throughout the app. At times you need to schedule your tasks according to dates but you can’t keep doing with two apps. Calvetica is one app that offers zippy calendar and tasks in one single place. There’s a neat split-view that shows months and days in the same pane. It also integrates with the native Calendar app on the iOS devices.

Scrolling through the several events can be painful at time and especially when you have too much of data added already on the native calendar app. Calvetica is fast and reduces the several taps required to add and access the events on particular dates. It is the fastest calendar and tasks app we have come across so far.

Calvetica is available for $2.99 from Apple App Store for iOS 4.0 or higher running iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

QuickOffice Pro

Accessing multiple documents and editing them on the move is quite a challenge especially when one has to deal with cross-platform documents. QuickOffice Pro is multi-platform app that allows opening, editing and creating documents, spreadsheets and also presentations that are compatible with the Microsoft Office suite. QuickOffice Pro features the SmartTouch technology that allows faster and quicker editing with the edit Toolbox.

QuickOffice Pro is already available for Symbian and Android platforms. With the iOS support, multiple device owners can have seamless sharing by backing up the files to third party Cloud Storage providers.

QuickOffice Pro is available for $14.99 from the Apple App store (hyperlink: https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/quickoffice-pro/id310723177?mt=8 ) for iOS 4.0 or higher running iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

Business Card Reader

This simple to use and handy app is a must have for those who meet loads of people and travel a lot. A unique feature of this app is its support for number of popular languages. As the name suggests, Business Card Reader is meant to scan the business cards and store the details on the phone itself. The app has been developed for accurate recognition of the text on the Business Cards.

However, this is not some miraculous app so one needs to ensure that certain things are in place before scanning a business card. For instance, you need good lighting for the phone’s camera to capture the image of the business card properly. The Business Card Reader offers an on-screen viewfinder EDGE and users are supposed to frame the card to fit within the edges.

Once the image is captured, the smart filling features neatly places out the details in respective boxes and makes it editable. Once done editing, you can simply tap on Save to add the contacts to the address books.

Business Card Reader has LinkedIn support so one can search and add contacts from there itself. The Business Card Holder allows organising and searching contacts.

Business Card Scanner is available for $4.99 from Apple App Store.

Dragon Dictation

Not everyone would be comfortable typing speeches on the iPhone, iPod Touch or for that matter iPad for long. At times one may feel that it would be great simply to speak and store that as notes. Nuance developed Dragon Dictation app comes with a speech to text engine which allows users to speak anything and save it down as text on the iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. There is one limitation that this app requires network connectivity (WiFi or 3G) to function efficiently and accurately.

Users can also speak and share the text as status updates directly to social networks – Twitter or Facebook. Alternatively one can share the text via email or text message as well. This app shows great potential in terms of accurate recognition of speech and then transforming it into a text. However, it fails at time for people with different accent and is a bit slow.

With Siri – the intelligent assistant voice control app, coming into picture, this app will be quite useful on the devices that lack iOS 5 support.

The Dragon Dictation app is available for free from App Store for iOS 4.0 running iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

For quite sometime we have not heard anything big from the Angry Bird’s side, maybe because of the increasing list of competitor games on both Android and iOS.

Rovio Mobile has been delivering constant updates and upgrades for Angry Birds and this Halloween the developer seems to be adding a little kick to the Halloween episode of the game.

According to the latest teaser released by the developer on Youtube the changes long due to the game finally seem to have arrived.

Angry Birds has previously been updated with different quests, new enemies and even newer treasures. The only thing that remains unchanged are the birds themselves and that is what is expected to change in this Halloween edition of the game.

Although till the official update is rolled out there can be only guess-work about the upcoming edition of the game and the surprise element that has been conveyed through the teaser video on Youtube.

It’s only a matter of a few weeks before this release is officially rolled out for different platforms. As usual the release will be made available on Android and iOS first, followed by other operating systems.

Stay tuned for more Angry Birds updates.

Google intends to jump into the music services market as well by launching its own MP3 music store which will likely compete with Apple’s iTunes and the Amazon.com MP3. Google is also reported to be talking with record labels for the music rights. This is now the latest attempt from Google to catch up with the dominance established by Apple with its iTunes store.

The Google’s Music beta already allows users to upload up to 20,000 MP3 tracks owned by them and stream it later through all their Internet connected devices. At the time of launch of Google’s Music Beta, the company had clarified that it was in talks with the record labels for about one year, but had not secured licensing deals for the same.

The talks are still on and Google is aiming for extensive licensing arrangements with the record labels. Google’s music services will allow MP3 files for download also, and not only for the streaming purposes. The record companies are not anyway happy with the Google’s Music Beta because they are not getting their share on that service whereas the new service will offer peace of mind to the users as they won’t have to deal with any music piracy issues.

The New York Times in its report said that Google “may be hoping to announce its store before Apple opens its cloud music program, iTunes Match, which was unveiled in June and is expected to be operational by the end of October.”

The reason why Google is launching this service now is probably due to the launch of Amazon’s Kindle Fire, a tablet which makes full use of its own content ecosystem. Just the way Apple’s iOS devices work with iTunes and iCloud at the centre, Google also needs to work more like a media company where users can get all the content they need. Google is also coming out with the new Android version Ice Cream Sandwich to unify its operating system for both tablet and smartphones, though users are looking for more &#151 they want easier access to content, and the music store probably would do just that.

In terms of Facebook integration, the other mobile operating systems are definitely doing better, but Windows Phone 7 is fast catching up. The technology website WMPowerusers reports that Facebook App has reached one million Windows Phone users.

When it comes to Facebook usage on mobiles, iOS devices have about 90 million users, whereas Android enjoys about 67 million active Facebook users. The site also calculates that there are about 6 million Windows Phone 7 users by now.

As it has one million users, with the increase in the number of committed handset partners and devices, the Windows Phone 7 platform is expected to cross even more milestones.

When Windows Phone 7 was launched, despite good reviews there was a feeling that the platform was not complete. As the missing pieces such as a Facebook app for Windows Phone arrive, the picture begins to look more complete. After the Windows Phone 7 Mango upgrade, the user response about the performance and responsiveness of the phone has been good, at least on par with the Android handsets in the market.

The only slightly discordant note has been about battery life, as some users suggest they sometimes notice the battery needs charge before the day ends. In the new operating system, the People Hub is basically the phonebook itself, though it is beefed up with data from Facebook.

Windows Phone 7 Mango also adds Twitter and LinkedIn support which means that users can check what’s new in the social networks without even installing separate apps for them. There is a separate title in the Metro user interface which is called “Me” where users can post updates straight to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and even Windows Live. What’s more, even the notifications come straight to the “Me” tile.

Last week, RIM suffered massive outage in BlackBerry services caused by a core switch failure, which left several BlackBerry services users stranded. RIM apologized for this and has promised to offer more than $100 worth of apps to affected BlackBerry users. BlackBerry smartphone owners will be able to download those free apps starting October 19 till December this year.

The availability of these apps would be dependent on the type of device, operating system and access to the BlackBerry App World. Also, certain apps won’t be available as the censorship regulations differ from country to country.

RIM’s back-end server failure caused BlackBerry services to blackout for three days in India and up to 1.5 days in several other regions. These BlackBerry services have been restored and are running normally now.