Digital technology and the advancements in the technology have been replacing manual labour all around the world. With the advent of technology, the real life currencies are being replaced by the digital currencies. This report highlights the research problem, the research aim and objectives. An in-depth research has been conducted using the peer-reviewed journal articles. An appropriate research methodology is provided along with analysis if the results and findings. Finally, a suitable conclusion and recommendation is also provided. The various kinds of digital currencies include the extensive use of credit and debit cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, Internet banking are some of the modes of digital currencies (Perez 2015). The use of digital currency has been increasing, as it is less hazardous and easy to carry. Carrying real cash is hazardous and the fear of being stolen is high. However, in case of digital cash, the money is protected, along with increasing the ease of transactions. With the enhancement in the digital technology, and the increase in the use of digital technologies, the real currencies are being easily replaced by the digital currency (Wakamori and Welte 2017). However, with the wide use of the digital currency, a major issue that has been highlighted is the security issue in the use of digital currency. Since the transactions are made online, hence, it is hack able and a major security issue has aroused, when the users reported that they PayPal accounts were being hacked or their credit card pins were hacked and the money from their accounts were withdrawn (Preibusch et al. 2016). The terms digital currencies and virtual currencies are often used as synonymous. However, that is not true. The digital currencies are the electronic form of actual money that could be easily converted into cash. However, virtual currency, such as bit coins are not a form of the actual money. These cannot be exchanged or replaced by currency, and the bit coins operate in a market of alternative economy (Preibusch et al. 2015). Thus, the security has become a major issue that hinders the use of digital currency widely. This research proposal highlights the problem of security and safe use of the digital currencies.
With the increase in the use of digital technologies, the conventional currencies have been replaced by the digital currencies. However, with the increase in the use of the digital currencies, money started becoming more and more easily accessible by hackers and unauthorized people. The pins of the credit cards and debit cards started being hacked and the users lost a huge amount of money (Wakamori and Welte 2017). Moreover, the PayPal accounts and the Apple pay accounts are also being hacked and the money is being transferred to the hacker’s account. Thus, the advantage with which the digital money came into use is much doomed by the trespassers and hackers. The ease of use of the digital money has attracted a huge number of customers to use this more widely than the conventional currency (Wakamori and Welte 2017). However, the lack of adequate security of the users and their accounts being easily hack able results in the loss of trust of the people on digital currencies. Moreover, with the increase in the use of the digital currencies, the banks have been facing issues with their servers as well. The increasing load on the server of the bank is often unable to take up such excessive load and hence crashes. The overloading of the server and the increasing dependency on the digital technology results in failure of transactions all over the world, if the servers fail to support the increasing load. This research proposal highlights the problem of lack of security and safety in the online transactions and the use of the digital currencies.
The research aims to highlight the wide use of digital currencies and the security issues that arises with the extensive use of the digital currencies. This proposal attempts to mitigate the security issues such that the digital currencies could be used widely.
The research objectives are as follows:
Digital currencies have been penetrating the conventional economy and have made a secure position in the market. The ease of carriage and use of the digital currencies made it popular day by day (Agarwal et al. 2013). In order to cope up with the rapid spread of the digital currencies, the business organizations have been changing their policies and the mode of payment that they accept. The introduction of the alternate accounts such as the PayPal and the Apple Pay are being introduced. The use of credit cards is not a new concept (Zhu, K et al. 2013). Credit cards made its first appearance in the year 1914, when the General Petroleum Company of America issued the first credit card. In order to highlights the factors that has caused the sudden increase in the use of digital currencies, along with the potential threats to the use of the digital currencies, various books and journal articles have been reviewed. This literature review acts as a secondary source of data collection for the research.
Factors affecting the increase in the use of the digital currencies
The various factors that have been affecting the increase in the use of the digital currencies include the following:
Potential threats to the use of digital currencies
One of the greatest threats to the use of digital currencies is the identity threat. In case of identity theft, the intruder poses to be the original user and steals the account details of users. Thus, posing to be the original user, the credit card details are used to shop for a huge amount of money (Guseva and Rona-Tas 2014). As a result, the credit card company charges the original users for a huge bill and the user has least idea that his card had been misused with the help of identify threat. This is one of the most significant thefts and is a major threat to the use of digital currencies, especially credit cards (Wakamori and Welte 2017).
The cost of compliance of the credit cards and the digital currency accounts are often very high that becomes a significant barrier to the effective use of the credit cards. Moreover, the online accounts such as the Pay Pal and Apple Pay often force the users to maintain a fixed amount of money in the accounts. This might not b possible for the users, thus, acting as a barrier to the use of the digital currencies (Van Vlasselaer et al. 2015).
With the increase in the use of credit cards, the fraudulent people started imitating the actual credit cards. They made imitation cards and stole the pins from the databases of the banks. Using high-end softwares, the authentic pins are assigned to the fraud credit cards (Wakamori and Welte 2017). Thus, the unauthorised people use the fraud credit cards and the authentic pins to withdraw huge amount of money from the accounts of the users. This is a major threat to the use of the credit cards and people started submitting their credit cards, in panic. Thus, the market of credit card was reduced significantly (De Montjoye et al. 2015).
Another issue that arose with the use of credit cards is the late payment issue. The authentic users started using the credit cards to shop for a huge amount. However, during the time of repayment, they failed to pay back the amount of money charged by the credit card provider bank (Duman and Elikucuk 2013). Thus, many of the authentic users started using credit cards to shop for a large amount. However, during the payment time, they submitted the cards and failed to pay back the amount used (Koh et al. 2015). Thus, the credit card companies started running in great loss. This loss incurred made the credit card issuing companies pose high fine of the users, failing to repay the amount within the stipulated time (Wakamori and Welte 2017). Thus, this situation resulted in the genuine users refrain from using credit cards and thus it acted as a barrier to the use of credit cards.
The credit cards and the accounts such as the PayPal and the Apple Pay are easily exposed to hackers. The accounts of the users such as PayPal and the Apple Pay lack adequate security. The lack of security makes the users lose a huge amount of money (Patel and Singh 2013). Moreover, since the credit cards and the PayPal accounts are linked with the bank accounts, hence hacking these accounts makes the bank accounts easily accessible. Thus, the safety of the bank accounts is often at stake when the PayPal account is hacked (Seeja and Zareapoor 2014).
Digital transactions are likely to face a variety of attacks. These attacks include the keystroke logging, pharming, Malware, attack through public Wi-Fi. Vishing and Phishing, POS attacks, using unreliable applications, sim duplication (Lallmahamood 2015). In case of keystroke logging, the attacker downloads a software that records the key strokes and as an authentic user enters his login credentials, the banking details are recorded. Thus, the hacker steals the banking details of the users (Agarwal et al. 2015). In case of pharming attack, the customer is redirected to a website made by the hacker. This fake website looks exactly like the original banking website or the website of the Pay Pal (Gambino et al. 2016). Thus, the user, unaware of the fake site, enters all his banking details in the fake website, thus resulting in the details being stolen. Another risk that is faced by the digital transactions is the use of public Wi-Fi (Amin 2013). The hackers often target the public Wi-Fi and extract the private data by hacking into the public Wi-Fi. These are major threats to the extensive use of the credit cards and the digital currencies. The phishing is a kind of attack in which the identity of authentic user is stolen using spam mails. Vishing is the similar kind of an attack that is initiated using the messaging system on the mobile phone. These are spam call and messages. However, it appears to come from authentic sources such as the bank. Using these attacks the sensitive information of the users are stolen. Thus, these attacks results in threats to the extensive use of the digital currencies as well as credit cards.
The research methodology assists in getting an overview of the entire research. The research methodology includes the research approach, research philosophy as well as the data collection method. This research aims to highlight the issues that are faced by the extensive use of credit cards as well as by the digital currencies (Taylor et al. 2015). A suitable research design that has been selected by the researcher is the positivism theory. The deductive approach has been selected out of the deductive and inductive approaches (Taylor et al. 2015). The descriptive design has also been chosen for conduction of this research. For this research, the qualitative and quantitative research will be conducted. The method of non-probabilistic sampling method has been used for the collection of primary data.
Research philosophy lies in the first layer of the research onion. The appropriate selection of the research philosophy is important since this selection highlights the way in which the research needs to be conducted (Taylor et al. 2015). The researcher has chosen the positivism philosophy such that the factors that caused the wide use of the credit cards and the digital currency could be easily found (Taylor et al. 2015). Hence, positivism philosophy is chosen.
The research approach lies in the second layer of the research onion. The two basic research approaches that are usually used includes the inductive and the deductive approach. The inductive approach follows the collection of primary and secondary data, along with the observations, data analysis as well as the establishment of relevant theories. However, the deductive approach includes the selection of various theories data analysis, testing of the hypothesis along with the successful implementation of the theories (Taylor et al. 2015). This approach also requires the confirmation of the theoretical evidences. In this research, the researcher has reviewed various articles and has discussed the relevant literatures. In this research, the primary data will be collected and analysed in order to supported the mentioned theoretical evidences (Taylor et al. 2015).
Research design lies in the third layer of the research onion. The research design interprets the results of the data analysis. The three basic types of research design include the exploratory, explanatory and the descriptive research design (Taylor et al. 2015). The significance of the research design highlights the further progress in the research design. The researcher has chosen the descriptive research design and it helps in relating the objectives to the findings of the research.
The data collection method has a key role to play in the research. In this research, both primary and secondary data has to be collected. The researcher has emphasized on the collection of primary as well as secondary data, such that the research objectives set could be achieved. Since there are various security issues regarding the security of the online transactions and digital currencies, as highlighted in the literature review, hence it is essential that the credit card users are interviewed regarding the issues of security they face (Taylor et al. 2015). For primary data collection, the users of the credit cards and the online transactions are to be interviewed. The primary data collected by interview is reliable and authentic. The secondary data could be collected by reviewing books and journals.
While the research is being conducted, it is essential that the ethical considerations needs to be followed. The ethical considerations include the conduction of the research in a valid way. Consideration of the ethics is essential while the research is being conducted. It is to be ensured that the participants are not forced to take part in the survey. Moreover, the participants have been asked to sign a consent form before they took part in the survey. It was ensured that the participants were not asked any personal questions. Their identities as well as their banking details were also not revealed. Moreover, the researcher had to ensure that the data collected would be used for research purpose only, and not for any commercial purpose. The data and privacy act has to be maintained such that the privacy of the participants is not breached. Thus, maintenance of the ethics has to be ensured.
From the responses of the questionnaire given in the appendix, it is highlighted that out of the 20 respondents, mostly the people of age group 26 to 35 uses the digital currencies. Most of them has agreed to the fact that they use the digital currencies mostly and these are much more convenient than that of the conventional currencies. However, most of them have faced security issues. The main reasons that their accounts are hacked lies in their response that most of the people never change their pins and passwords. Thus, the objectives that have been set, are successfully met.
8. Conclusions
The use of digital currencies and credit cards are inevitable with the advent of digitalization. The use of digital currencies is a good alternative to the conventional money. However, the lack of enough security among the users might result in the effective use of the credit cards and digital currency. The ease of use and the safety to carry makes it convincible and useable by all. However, if security and safety becomes a major issue, then the use of digital currency is reduced. Thus, it could be concluded that the use of digital currencies are inevitable and a necessity in order to cope up with the age of digitalization. However, it is to be ensured that in the urge of digitalization, the safety and security of the financial details of the users are not lost. The use of digital currencies is a sign of modernization and should be imparted successfully, for the enhancement of business as well as human lives.
The extensive use of the digital currencies and the credit cards over the conventional currencies is a sign of progress in the society. However, with the advent of digitalization, the security of the hard earned money is being at stake due to the use of digital currencies. Thus, it is recommended that the digital currency be used, along with the assurance of the privacy and security. The government and the cyber cells have to take initiatives. The users also have a proactive role to play. The government has to ensure that the people under its control get safe and secured money transactions. Moreover, the cyber cell needs to ensure that the firewalls are made even more protective, along with increasing the security levels, such that the hackers cannot crack the codes using brute force or trial and error methods. Moreover, the users also have a proactive role to play. While carrying out financial transactions, it is recommended that the users are aware of installation of key loggers. Moreover, the users need to avoid using public Wi-Fi or unprotected Wi-Fi while carrying out financial transactions. Thus, following these recommendations, the online transactions could be made safer. The issue of credit card fraud by the users themselves could be mitigated, it the banks keep a large amount of security money, before the issues of the credit cards. The users need to be careful, such that they do not share their account details with unauthorized personnel. Finally, it could be said that the extensive use of digital currencies is indeed a boon and a sign of progressive society, however, the intelligence use of it, will result in a boon for the society and its people. The government also needs to spread awareness among the people, such that they report all such fraud cases in the used of credit cards, Pay Pal and Apple Pay. It is to be remembered that digital currencies are introduced to make human lives easier, not make it difficult and complex.
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