mFerio

Rajesh Krishna Balan, Narayan Ramasubbu, Komsit Prakobphol, Nicolas Christin, Jason Hong
2009 Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Mobile systems, applications, and services - Mobisys '09  
In this paper, we present the design and evaluation of a near-field communication-based mobile p2p payment application, called mFerio, that is designed to replace cash-based transactions. We first identify design criteria that payment systems should satisfy and then explain how mFerio, relative to those criteria, improves on the limitations of cash-based systems. We next describe mFerio's implementation and user interface design, focusing on the balance between usability and security. Finally,
more » ... e present the results of a two-phase user study, involving a total of 104 people, that shows that mFerio has low cognitive load and is also fast, accurate, and easy to use -even outperforming cash in terms of speed and cognitive load in common payment situations. One problem, however, is that current mobile payment solutions all require infrastructure support. In particular, they cannot work if at least one of the parties involved in the payment is not connected to some back-end payment server, via either SMS or GSM/CDMAbased technology. For example, consider the following scenario. DESIGN SPACE FOR MFERIO We start by analysing mFerio's design space; drawing from both prior research [20, 31, 36, 40] , and from analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of cash payments. We chose not to compare mobile payments to credit cards as credit cards require infrastructure and thus cannot be used in a peer-to-peer manner. We grouped the design criteria into three main categories: usability, security, and auditing. To be successful, mFerio has to be better than cash in multiple criteria, while not having any significant drawbacks. Usability Criteria A payment system needs to be highly usable by a large cross section of the population to be viable. The following usability criteria provide some guidance towards this goal. Fast to use. Making a payment should not take too long. Cash is generally a fast payment system, However, as our results show, situations involving even moderate amounts of change can slow down cash transactions significantly. Easy to use. The payment system should be easy to use by people of different ages and technical competency. Cash satisfies this criterion and is universally used. Easy to learn. Anyone should be able to quickly learn how to make payments. Cash satisfies that criterion as well, as even young children can be taught to make cash payments. Predictable performance. Different situations should not affect the performance of the payment system. For example, the time taken to make a payment should not depend on the payment amount. As stated above, cash's speed depends greatly on the situation.
doi:10.1145/1555816.1555846 dblp:conf/mobisys/BalanRPCH09 fatcat:ehfwo7gljjaybavznmne556b2q