Master Thesis Information Management Faculty of Computer Sciences University of Koblenz-Landau Biometric Authentication in Mobile Payments Supervisors: Prof. Dr. J. Felix Hampe Stefan Stein Submitted by: Shiny Sreekumar 201 210 414 Gudenauer Weg 57 53127 Bonn
[email protected] Koblenz, September 2010 1 Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge and thank all the people who contributed, in different ways, to the completion of this thesis: • Professor Dr. J. Felix Hampe for his guidance and support always and for pointing me in the right direction with new ideas. Above all, I am thankful for his undying patience. • Stefan Stein for his friendly assistance at all times. • Professor Elaine Lawrence and Dr. Agnieska Zmijewska who, through email exchanges, sent me relevant papers and answered any queries I might have had. • Lee Barr for the numerous iterations of proof-reading and pep-talks. • My mother and my dear friends for all their help, patience and understanding. Most of all, I would like to thank Alexandra Bohnet for constantly pushing, believing and the final “This is it” weekend! Without her, I could not have done this. Shiny Sreekumar Bonn, September 2010. Picture on title page put together by author using following sources: Pantech PG6200 Phone - (PC Welt, 2006); Fingerprint – (O'Gorman, 1999) Sound wave – www.nanobioart.com/nanolab/category/day7 ; Euro – www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro Shiny Sreekumar: Biometric Authentication in Mobile Payments 2 Abstract Mobile payment has been a payment option in the market for a long time now and was predicted to become a widely used payment method. However, over the years, the market penetration rate of mPayments has been relatively low, despite it having all characteristics required of a convenient payment method.