Several Founders, Co-Founders, CXO Bankers, CXO Fintech professional & people who participated in the ePanel discussions:
- Mr. Arun Tanksali, Co-founder & CTO, Nearex
- Mr. Aditya Soni, Senior Director Flipkart
- Mr. Amit Jadhav, Program Lead, SVP – DBS Bank
- Mr. Ishan Vaish, India Partnership Manager, Apple
- Mr.Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Founder & CEO Paytm
- Mr. Ratnakar V, Head – Mobile Money, Phongsavanh Bank, Lao PDR
- Mr. Shubhrant Singh, Vice President, Yes Bank
- Mr. Rahul Dayal, Senior Vice President & Head-Business Solutions Group Liabilities, cards & BI, RBL Bank
- Mr.Vishweshwaran R, Vice President – Business Technology Group at IDFC FIRST Bank
- Mr. Shirsha Ghosh, Founder Torit Innovations
- Mr.Amarto Chakrabarty, Global consulting Group, Wipro Limited
- Mr. Subbiaa Olimuthu, Product Manager – Rupay Product
- Mr.Taron Mohan, CEO & Promoter, NextGen Telesolutions Pvt Ltd
- Mr. Prasad Likhite, Sales Director, ACI Worldwide
- Mr. Alok Jha, Managing Director Cyberplat India
- Mr. Ashutosh Khetan, AVP, HDFC Bank
- Mr. Anand Kulkarni, former Director, IDFC Bank
- Mr.Paresh Rajde, Founder & Chairman at Suvidhaa Infoserve Private Limited
- Mr.Vikas R Panditrao, Co-Founder, Forum of Industry and Academic Knowledge Sharing (FIAKS)
- Many other CEO/CXO Bankers & Fintech professionals on FIAKS Forum requested to remain anonymous
With the increase in usage of mobile phones in our digital age, usage of mobile applications also known as apps has become an extremely common feature to download and use on our devices. Mobile apps have made our cellphones so much more interesting, efficient, easy and fun to use than it already is. These mobile applications can be downloaded from Google play store for Android and Apple app store for iPhones and there are multiple apps available in the different categories of gaming, shopping, education, social media, banking, payments, fitness, reading books, etc. When you try to download these apps from the app store what you will notice is that a dropdown list appears, the list is a permission list that appears on the screen asking for access to a number of your phones intricate details for example devices location, SMS, camera, microphone, wi-fi connection, gallery, call logs, identity, Bluetooth information, etc, the list varies depending on the kind of apps you are downloading.
The question that this discussion has raised is that while downloading banking apps is it compulsory for those apps to ask for access to your contact book, SMS, call logs, etc? How will access to your phonebook help a banking company? Does this raise any concerns in your mind as well? Most of the apps have this list as we know but the concerns regarding the same pinpoint to that fact, where our community members have asked that do calls, or contacts help in lending decisions. Could that be a possible reason as to why such banking apps ask for phonebook details? Consent base data gathering on apps has become business as usual for all. In the case of microfinance institutions, it is a physical verification of surrogates but here it’s just a virtual list. Truthfully it does not help many developers but instead, it is more of a data-gathering effort in order to gain more control of your phone. Even if the contact list may be a parameter for creditworthiness the process will be very tedious so it’s very unlikely that they may actually use it. Though some professionals have said that conventional credit rating may not need phonebook details to assess creditworthiness, but this data can help many micro-lending services which rely only on call records and prepaid top-up history. Some of the payment companies seeking contact information and because of this, it seems like android tracks you completely. In that case what happens to the General Data Protection Regulation? In some cases, it may be valid but this does not justify calls/ Sms management, in fact here, in this case, it seems like it holds no utility and is more of a generic practice instead. Mobile apps nowadays seem more dangerous as compared to debit/credit cards since they store personal as well as payment instrument details of customers
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