This is an era of communication technology. This era has faced a lot of innovation in technology sector. Mobile phones were once used for calling or text messaging only, now slowly becoming competitor of computers. The rapid development of hardware, software and operating system of smartphones made it possible to do multiple tasks through the phones. Nowadays, smart phones have powerful operating systems which provide wide range of applications. Smart phones can be interfaced with external hardware also. The payment industry is about to see a drastic change because of these features. People can now pay through their smartphones; they can use payment cards to pay through it etc. But financial transaction is a very sensitive service and security is very crucial here. For financial services, the major security services such as confidentiality, integrity, authenticity, authorization and non-repudiation must be ensured. There are two major types of payment cards, magnetic-stripe based cards and chip based cards. Chip based card provides better security. Magnetic stripe based cards being static, is easy to counterfeit. But the fact that these magnetic stripe cards are still used in many countries, it is necessary to provide a security solution in order to protect customers from treachery. In this thesis, it has been investigated how to secure the mobile payment based on EMV standard. EMV is a chip based payment card. It has strong security features which made skimming or tampering it very hard. But, Magstripe based payments still remained insecure. This thesis paper aims to secure the transaction when paid with magnetic stripe based cards. Several measures have been taken to ensure that major security services are met. In addition, a prototype was developed and tested to demonstrate the practicality of the designed solution. The research results of this paper show that by transacting through the secured mobile payment protocol, customers can avail payment service more securely than traditional magnetic striped card based payments.

Magister Commercii - MCom / This study investigates the financial, marketing as well as technological feasibility of turning the current University of Western Cape (UWC) Student ID Card into a more featured debit card called the "Hoop Kaarf'. This debit card will offer the functionality of access to secure UWC areas, the purchase and use of photocopying credits, the purchase of printing credits, taking out library books; and identification, as the old student card does. It will also have the added functionality of replacing cash when paying for vending machines, cafés, takeaways, shops, supermarkets and withdrawing money from ATMs, at UWC, within South Africa and outside the country.

<p>Recently the society has been turning from the use of paper-based technologies to plastic cards in certain spheres of our life. With the emergence and proliferation of high technologies we cannot content with the security provided bypaper only. Therefore the society has chosen plastic to protect its information because it offers far more security based not only on human perception but also on machine-readable elements. </p><p>The number of plastic cards in circulation in different spheres of our everyday life increases constantly. They replace money, documents and allow easy and safe access to some services. In spite of its security the plastic card however is subjected to fraud. </p><p>Plastic card fraud results in significant losses for the various industries. Since the first appearance of plastic cards methods of committing fraud have changed dramatically. Now there is a wide range of high technologies at the disposal of criminals as well as card manufacturers. </p><p>Therefore we have put the great emphasize of this work on the analysis of the most common card technologies in the Plastic Card World, the magnetic stripe and the chip, existing crimes and main means of their committing. And we also have revealed the weak and strong sides of the prevention techniques, which are currently in use.</p>

Recently the society has been turning from the use of paper-based technologies to plastic cards in certain spheres of our life. With the emergence and proliferation of high technologies we cannot content with the security provided bypaper only. Therefore the society has chosen plastic to protect its information because it offers far more security based not only on human perception but also on machine-readable elements. The number of plastic cards in circulation in different spheres of our everyday life increases constantly. They replace money, documents and allow easy and safe access to some services. In spite of its security the plastic card however is subjected to fraud. Plastic card fraud results in significant losses for the various industries. Since the first appearance of plastic cards methods of committing fraud have changed dramatically. Now there is a wide range of high technologies at the disposal of criminals as well as card manufacturers. Therefore we have put the great emphasize of this work on the analysis of the most common card technologies in the Plastic Card World, the magnetic stripe and the chip, existing crimes and main means of their committing. And we also have revealed the weak and strong sides of the prevention techniques, which are currently in use.