As smartphones increasingly become a nexus for consumers’ financial lives, their value to fraudsters has risen accordingly. Mobile shopping, mobile wallets, and person-to-person (P2P) payments all offer new avenues for fraud, and much of the next generation of authentication solutions flows through consumers’ phones. Although mobile malware is still a nascent threat in Western markets, the potential risk is tremendous as malware operators and fraudster shift their focus from foreign markets to the U.S. Existing malware features have the capability to circumvent the most prevalent authentication methods used in the U.S. This necessitates that financial institutions begin securing apps and adapting authentication to address the threat of mobile malware before it fully migrates to Western markets.

Key questions discussed in this report: