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HP study investigates trends in electronic payment methods

Of 634 IT professionals surveyed, nearly half said virtual currencies will be widely used within in five years, and that they eventually will overtake paper currencies.

November 20, 2014

Last week at BAI Retail Delivery 2014 in Chicago, HP unveiled results from a new study determining the most popular electronic payment systems, adoption trends, and most critical technologies in securing electronic payment methods.

The survey was conducted by the Ponemon Institute and sponsored by HP Atalla. Participants included 634 individuals in the United States who work primarily in IT operations, security and as part of their organization’s electronic deployment team.

Survey results indicated that, despite privacy concerns, consumers are quickly embracing new payment systems, including mobile payments, person-to-person payments and e-wallets.

According to the report, "Security & Compliance Trends in Innovative Electronic Payments," payments with a mobile device or phone number are the most popular electronic payment method. Three-quarters of respondents said their organizations have plans to support payments with a mobile device or phone number.

However, two-thirds of respondents said the authentication of users was a key challenge in implementing new payment methods. To address this, organizations can look to technologies such as cryptography, key management, hardware security models and interoperability, the report said.

“Consumers are increasingly adopting mobile-based and other forms of electronic payments, despite the threats to their sensitive payment data,” said Albert Biketi, Atalla general manager of enterprise security products for HP. “Implementing fundamental payment security technologies to advance innovative electronic payment methods is crucial in both managing risk and staying ahead of the growing number of threats.”

Additional findings from the report include:

• Privacy concerns don’t affect consumer adoption of electronic payments. Only 38 percent of respondents said that consumers will be reluctant to use these payment methods due to privacy concerns.
• One-time passwords or tokens are considered the most critical security technologies for electronic payments. Despite this, only 48 percent of respondents said their organization used them, while 42 percent said their organizations use federated identity and authentication systems.
• NFC and host card emulation increase the security of new electronic payments, according to 55 percent and 57 percent of respondents, respectively.
• Virtual currencies are expected to overtake paper currencies. Forty-six percent of respondents said that virtual currencies will be commonly used within the next five years.

Also at BAI, HP also announced that its HP Atalla Network Security Processor now provides expanded support for new cloud-based payment platforms and EMV issuance. This extends the platform's capabilities for Apple Pay, EMV tokenization, and card encryption, the company said.