Whiz student duo develops mobile banking system

The system, labeled 'ASD Mobile Banking System' (MBS), if implemented, promises to offer the convenience of almost all of the present day banking systems to the clients. 'ASD' stands for the company name, Advanced Software Development Ltd, a software solution firm integrated by the two young developers in recent times.

"With this banking system you can perform a wide range of query-based transactions from your mobile phone, and that is exactly how it is different from SMS banking systems," explains Mohammad Jamil Hossain, executive director of ASD, who is also in his fourth year at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) at the University of Dhaka.

With SMS banking, one may only send a text message as a query and receive a reply from the bank's customer-service end. "Unlike SMS banking, you can actually perform real-time transaction directly through this system anytime from anywhere using your mobile phone, and without even making a phone call," Hossain stated, who was also speaking on behalf of the other brainchild behind the MBS project, Mohammad Sayedul Islam, director, Application and Web (ASD), a recent graduate from the American International University Bangladesh (AIUB).

While MBS carries the prospect of being pursued by the local banks, ASD will work with the banks to provide any technical and methodological support for implementation of the system in the banks' central server. "We will have at least two of our trained technical personnel working 24-hours for providing client satisfaction of the system," assured Hossain.

Under the system, the host bank will hold the copyright to offer this service to it's customers, who will have to have a JAVA enabled mobile phone to have the associated software to be configured into the phone. The account-holder or the credit card holder will then have to fill up a registration form for the bank, providing all necessary information, and the user will be notified from the bank with a message providing a personal-identification-number (PIN) code when the registration process is done in due time.

While a customer accesses the MBS embedded in his or her mobile, the very interactive user interface comes up on the screen, offering a choice of selection. On choosing a listed module, the gateway server at the bank-end is accessed via SMS, which is read by a SMS control agent, which interacts with the gateway server using microprocessor architecture language, and another program runs to identify the message for authenticity on user mobile number and the PIN that allows access to the gateway server prompted from the client-end. On clarity, the server applies the requested action and retrieves information from the central database to send into the client mobile confirming pursue of the requested practice. "We may also provide training for the employees if the bank plans to build a 24-hour customer service for the MBS," stated Islam.

List of services used in the system includes -- personal account balance and transaction details, account-to-account money transfer, credit card balance and transactions, along with categorised push-services, where alert-messages will be automatically sent to the account holder's mobile based on preset criteria in case of balance falling below the preset amount, usage of credit amounts nearing a preset limit, or even past due-notices on loans and credit cards.

When asked about the security of the system, Hossain said, "Security issues are well-maintained in the application of the system," citing how any information sent out from the client-end or the server-end is completely encrypted, in case local hackers pursue their ways in looking for the credit card numbers, or bank account numbers, or even the associated passwords. "We have developed an encryption and decryption algorithm, using 128 bits for the codes, for the sent and received information packages, both from the client-end and the server-end," he said, assuring how retrieval of information by any unauthorised access is thus completely prohibited.

"You can also pay your utility or phone bills though the MBS," cited Hossain, claiming these options will further enhance user experience for the service. As the user selects to make payments for such bills, the query will be read from the server end, and after listed verifications, the host-bank will make arrangements to pay the bills from the client's account.

Remarking on the aspects of losing the copyright of the product the executive director exclaimed how they are not worried about other software inventors of the country to be influenced by their model. "We actually want it like that," Hossain stated, further adding, "Our model should be used as a prototype and people like ourselves should know about the existence of such a system." Hossain believes this will bring in a prospective level of technical competitiveness among the new-generation inventors of the country, essentially working towards building a cybernetic population in the upcoming years. "You will see a lot of local companies today trying to make the most even out of a small customer service software solution package, ultimately bringing up the price in millions at times, making it totally unavailable for the general citizen," he said. According to Hossain, an open market in the local electronic software industry is vital at this point to attain an even-distribution for such local productions.