21-04-2010, 11:56 PM
SMS Banking
The Short Message Service (SMS) is a GSM service to exchange text messages up to 140 byte (or 160 characters of 7 bit). The transmission of mobile-originated short messages is carried out by the short message service Center (SMSC) of the particular network operator. The SMSC is receiving the message from the mobile device And routing it to the destination device. For generating mobile-terminated short messages, it is possible that a Company or a special service provider runs an own SMSC. Thus, a bank could generate SMS from bank data like account balance or account movements and send it to the mobile device of the customer. This technique is used at SMS-banking: The customer sends an SMS with a request to the bank, and gets the desired data as an answer. The customer has to include a PIN for authorization in every SMS he sends to his bank. Alike the WAP banking, one should pay special attention on the security of the location of the SMSC. The operation of SMSC is offered as a service by many service providers. The usage of such a service is out of question for banks, because of the high sensitive character of the transmitted data. For this reason it is mandatory for banks to run their own SMS-Gateway and secure it from unauthorized access. The main problem with this kind of transmission is the Missing encryption of the data during the on-the-air transmission between the service center and the mobile phone. An encryption of pure text-SMS is not possible (unless an application on the mobile device would be able to decrypt the information). So the data is transmitted unencrypted. Because of this missing encryption, banks Are only offering pure information services like a request for the account balance via SMS. Thus, it is not possible to make transactions via SMS banking.
Objective
The main objective of this project is to develop a WAP enabled website and SMS based transaction system. WAP enable website will allow user to access the site of the bank from any place at any time by there WAP enabled phones. That system will do following tasks.
There must be some authentication technique to validate the user. This authentication will get done by there pin number which user use for ATM transaction. And to do the fund transfer system should incorporate extra authentication.
The system should be able to send various report like balance report, transaction repot of particular date this all report will get generated after user request.
The system should be capable of transferring the fund from one account to another account.
The system should have feature of feedback option where user can send there query or request.
The system should have capability to send various alerts to user which will not generate on user request. But the information can be useful for user.
To build an application like this I need to know the various mobile configurations and which mobile will be suitable for my application. I have researched on j2me and WML and I found that j2me is good for making such application and there is wide range of mobile product supporting java so it is feasible to make application using j2me which is the part of java. And here I am limiting my project functionality by keeping in mind of security, platform and cost. My area of interest is to get mastery in developing mobile application using j2me because there is a huge demand of mobile application developers. And this is my learning objective in this project.
