Electronic transaction of internet banking and its perception of Malaysian online customers

The purpose of this research is to find out significant factors of consumers’ perception on e-banking transaction by Malaysian bank consumers. The study utilizes a combination of theoretical frameworks and quantitative techniques o testify the statistical relationships between consumer perceptions on e-banking transaction. Meanwhile factor analysis was performed to extraction and make initial decision on the number of factors underlying asset of measured variables of interest. Thereafter structural equation mode (SEM) was estimated to anticipate the effects of the explanatory variables. This study shows that only protected transaction, have significant impact on consumers’ perception about e-banking security, followed by service quality and regulatory frame work issues. This study is the first that seeks to ascertain the insight into e-banking in Malaysia, which has not been previously been investigated and much statistical significance makes this study a potential cornerstone for future research. Therefore, this study thus sets an important benchmark for further research in the area

Customer heterogeneity in operational e-service design attributes: n empirical investigation of service quality

Purpose – This study aims to empirically examine whether heterogeneity in personal customer profiles translates to heterogeneity in the valued operational e-service design attributes. It focuses on a key operational e-service design attribute – service quality – by investigating whether customers with different profiles (demographics, pattern of use of the service, and pattern of channel use) attach different levels of importance to different dimensions of web site quality. Design/methodology/approach – The study is based on path analysis of data collected from multiple sources in a commercial e-service setting (e-banking): data from an online survey of the customers of the e-service; data stored in the transaction and log files generated by the operation of the e-service over time; and data from the e-service provider’s customer database and back office IT systems. Findings – The results suggest that: customer demographics, pattern of service use, and pattern of channel use have no influence on the importance attached by customers to web site quality dimensions; and customer demographics affect the pattern of use of an e-service. Research limitations/implications – Future research should examine this question in other types of e-services and should examine other types of profile variables. Practical implications – Service providers may not need to employ customization at the level of web site quality dimensions. The findings support the existence of the concept of an “optimal” web site design for quality. Originality/value – The paper answers calls for an increased understanding of the design of high quality e-services and for multidisciplinary research in the field of services management, in particular, incorporating operations management perspectives

A study of EU data protection regulation and appropriate security for digital services and platforms

A law often has more than one purpose, more than one intention, and more than one interpretation. A meticulously formulated and context agnostic law text will still, when faced with a field propelled by intense innovation, eventually become obsolete. The European Data Protection Directive is a good example of such legislation. It may be argued that the technological modifications brought on by the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) are nominal in comparison to the previous Directive, but from a business perspective the changes are significant and important. The Directive’s lack of direct economic incentive for companies to protect personal data has changed with the Regulation, as companies may now have to pay severe fines for violating the legislation. The objective of the thesis is to establish the notion of trust as a key design goal for information systems handling personal data. This includes interpreting the EU legislation on data protection and using the interpretation as a foundation for further investigation. This interpretation is connected to the areas of analytics, security, and privacy concerns for intelligent service development. Finally, the centralised platform business model and its challenges is examined, and three main resolution themes for regulating platform privacy are proposed. The aims of the proposed resolutions are to create a more trustful relationship between providers and data subjects, while also improving the conditions for competition and thus providing data subjects with service alternatives. The thesis contributes new insights into the evolving privacy practices in the digital society at an important time of transition from the service driven business models to the platform business models. Firstly, privacy-related regulation and state of the art analytics development are examined to understand their implications for intelligent services that are based on automated processing and profiling. The ability to choose between providers of intelligent services is identified as the core challenge. Secondly, the thesis examines what is meant by appropriate security for systems that handle personal data, something the GDPR requires that organisations use without however specifying what can be considered appropriate. We propose a method for active network security in web software that is developed through the use of analytics for detection and by inserting data generators into a software installation. The active network security method is proposed as a framework for achieving compliance with the GDPR requirements for services and platforms to use appropriate security. Thirdly, the platform business model is considered from the privacy point of view and the implication of “processing silos” for intelligent services. The centralised platform model is considered problematic from both the data subject and from the competition standpoint. A resolution is offered for enabling user-initiated open data flow to counter the centralised “processing silos”, and thereby to facilitate the introduction of decentralised platforms. The thesis provides an interdisciplinary analysis considering the legal study (lex lata) and additionally the resolution (lex ferenda) is defined through argumentativist legal dogmatics and (de lege ferenda) of how the legal framework ought to be adapted to fit the described environment. User-friendly Legal Science is applied as a theory framework to provide a holistic approach to answering the research questions. The User-friendly Legal Science theory has its roots in design science and offers a way towards achieving interdisciplinary research in the fields of information systems and legal science

PROFILING - CONCEPTS AND APPLICATIONS

Profiling is an approach to put a label or a set of labels on a subject, considering the characteristics of this subject. The New Oxford American Dictionary defines profiling as: “recording and analysis of a person’s psychological and behavioral characteristics, so as to assess or predict his/her capabilities in a certain sphere or to assist in identifying a particular subgroup of people”. This research extends this definition towards things demonstrating that many methods used for profiling of people may be applied for a different type of subjects, namely things. The goal of this research concerns proposing methods for discovery of profiles of users and things with application of Data Science methods. The profiles are utilized in vertical and 2 horizontal scenarios and concern such domains as smart grid and telecommunication (vertical scenarios), and support provided both for the needs of authorization and personalization (horizontal usage).:The thesis consists of eight chapters including an introduction and a summary. First chapter describes motivation for work that was carried out for the last 8 years together with discussion on its importance both for research and business practice. The motivation for this work is much broader and emerges also from business importance of profiling and personalization. The introduction summarizes major research directions, provides research questions, goals and supplementary objectives addressed in the thesis. Research methodology is also described, showing impact of methodological aspects on the work undertaken. Chapter 2 provides introduction to the notion of profiling. The definition of profiling is introduced. Here, also a relation of a user profile to an identity is discussed. The papers included in this chapter show not only how broadly a profile may be understood, but also how a profile may be constructed considering different data sources. Profiling methods are introduced in Chapter 3. This chapter refers to the notion of a profile developed using the BFI-44 personality test and outcomes of a survey related to color preferences of people with a specific personality. Moreover, insights into profiling of relations between people are provided, with a focus on quality of a relation emerging from contacts between two entities. Chapters from 4 to 7 present different scenarios that benefit from application of profiling methods. Chapter 4 starts with introducing the notion of a public utility company that in the thesis is discussed using examples from smart grid and telecommunication. Then, in chapter 4 follows a description of research results regarding profiling for the smart grid, focusing on a profile of a prosumer and forecasting demand and production of the electric energy in the smart grid what can be influenced e.g. by weather or profiles of appliances. Chapter 5 presents application of profiling techniques in the field of telecommunication. Besides presenting profiling methods based on telecommunication data, in particular on Call Detail Records, also scenarios and issues related to privacy and trust are addressed. Chapter 6 and Chapter 7 target at horizontal applications of profiling that may be of benefit for multiple domains. Chapter 6 concerns profiling for authentication using un-typical data sources such as Call Detail Records or data from a mobile phone describing the user behavior. Besides proposing methods, also limitations are discussed. In addition, as a side research effect a methodology for evaluation of authentication methods is proposed. Chapter 7 concerns personalization and consists of two diverse parts. Firstly, behavioral profiles to change interface and behavior of the system are proposed and applied. The performance of solutions personalizing content either locally or on the server is studied. Then, profiles of customers of shopping centers are created based on paths identified using Call Detail Records. The analysis demonstrates that the data that is collected for one purpose, may significantly influence other business scenarios. Chapter 8 summarizes the research results achieved by the author of this document. It presents contribution over state of the art as well as some insights into the future work planned

On the innovation mechanisms of fintech start-ups: insights from Swift's innotribe competition

The emergence of nascent forms of financial technology around the globe is driven by efforts to deconstruct and reimagine business models historically embedded within financial services. Entrepreneurial endeavors to this end are diverse. Indeed, the propensity towards complexity across the fintech landscape is considerable. Bridging as it does a diverse range of financial ser-vices, markets, innovations, industry participants, infrastructures and technologies. This study aims to improve the comprehension of the global fintech landscape. It is based on the analysis of start-ups who participated in SWIFT’s Innotribe competition over a three-year period. We used cluster analysis to group 402 fintech start-up firms, and then selected representative cases to create a foundational understanding of the structure of the fintech landscape. We found that six clusters capture the variety of firms and their activities. The main findings of this work are: (1) the development of fintech clusters to classify core services, business infrastructures and underlying component technologies, which characterize the fintech landscape; (2) an analysis of how fintechs synthesize different technologies to restructure and coordinate flows of financial information through competitive and cooperative mechanisms of disintermediation, extension of access, financialization, hybridization and personalization; (3) an analysis of related strate-gies for value creation connected with the competitive and cooperative mechanisms that were identified. Collectively, our results offer new insights into the diversity and range of emergent innovations and technologies which are transforming the financial services industry worldwide

Identity crimes in the UK: An examination of the strategies employed by front-line practitioners in the public and private sector to detect, prevent and mitigate against this crime

Identity related crimes are becoming increasingly prevalent in modern society. It is a crime type that concerns and impacts governments, private institutions and consumers worldwide. The aim of this research was to provide a better insight into how this crime is perceived by government and commercial institutions in the UK (including their views on offenders and victims), to review the processes employed by the public and private sector to assess risk and develop mitigation and prevention strategies and, in doing so, to discover how the most prominent criminological theories contribute to these efforts. Its final aim was to examine the current state and effectiveness of the collaborations and partnerships which have been developed across the public/private sector spectrum to understand and combat this crime. The methodology employed to undertake this research was based on conducting interviews with the key identity fraud and crime practitioners within major public and private organisations. Qualitative research was used in order to generate as much information as possible to form ideas. In addition, documents were also examined to complement the data collected from interviews. The researcher, due to previous employment within the UK financial sector dealing payment fraud, was ideally placed to access, and generate participation across government, law enforcement and other commercial organisations. The study highlights the current thinking and approaches by front-line identity crime prevention practitioners in defining, perceiving, measuring, policing, detecting, preventing and mitigating identity crime. It also highlights how heavily existing situational crime prevention techniques are being used to combat this issue and how they are complemented by partnership approaches and, most importantly, data-sharing which is widely accepted by practitioners as being a vitally effective tool in dealing with this issue. Problems exist in the majority of these areas with the central concern being the lack of leadership from the government in taking ownership of this insidious and escalating crime type which creates commercial and individual victims but also significantly, enables serious crimes such as human and drug trafficking and terrorism. Equally pressing is the need for the commercial sector, instead of treating identity crime as a phenomenon to be denied or ignored (or as one which needs to be accepted as a cost of doing business) to improve data sharing, strengthen its defences and review its approach to the treatment and support of victims

Trust assessment of account information services providers in Portugal : Banks, Bigtechs, and Fintechs

Account Information Services (AIS) enable users to consolidate all of their payment accounts information in a single platform. Banks, Bigtechs, and Fintechs are the main candidates to compete in the AIS market. Banks argue that consumers’ trust puts them in a favourable position to dominate this market. However, since the recent global financial crisis the level of trust in banks is considered debatable. The main purpose of this research is to conclude if banks are right to hold consumers’ trust as a positive differentiator from other providers. After a careful assessment of the elements determinant to the levels of trust in financial services, the usage of a primary data source allowed this research to compare different scores between institutions, not only regarding overall trust, but also in each determinant. Furthermore, this study measured the strength of the correlations between determinants and the overall institutional scores, as well as between individual’s trust in the financial system and in each institution. The results showed that there is no apparent sign that banks are about to be overthrown as AIS market leaders due to the levels of trust in financial services providers. However, individuals’ strong association of banks with the system, along with the highest score of Bigtechs in several determinants, and Fintechs opportunity from their image’s disconnection with the system, can make the outlook change in the near future.Os Serviços de Informação sobre Contas (AIS) que permitem aos usuários consolidar todas as suas informações de contas de pagamento agregadas numa plataforma. Bancos, Bigtechs e Fintechs são os principais candidatos a competir no mercado de AIS. Os bancos argumentam que a confiança dos consumidores os coloca numa posição favorável para dominar este mercado. No entanto, desde a crise financeira global, o nível de confiança nos bancos é discutível. O principal objetivo desta investigação é concluir se os bancos estão certos ao julgar a confiança dos consumidores como um fator positivo de diferenciação em relação às outras instituições. A utilização de uma fonte primária de dados permitiu que esta pesquisa comparasse diferentes pontuações entre instituições, não apenas no que se refere à confiança geral, mas também em cada determinante. Além disso, este estudo mediu a força das correlações entre os determinantes e as pontuações institucionais gerais, bem como entre a confiança do indivíduo no sistema financeiro e em cada instituição. Os resultados mostraram que não há indícios aparentes de que os bancos estejam prestes a ser derrubados como líderes do mercado AIS em Portugal devido aos níveis de confiança nos prestadores de serviços financeiros. No entanto, a forte associação dos bancos com o sistema por parte dos indivíduos, junto com a pontuação mais alta das Bigtechs em vários determinantes, e a oportunidade das Fintechs de sua desconexão de imagem com o sistema, podem fazer a mudança o paradigma em um futuro próximo