Cybercrime has astronomically risen with technological advancements alongside the business opportunities in cyberspace. Cybercrime is now viewed as one of the top 10 global risks. In recognition of the threat posed by cybercrime, organisations are investing in controls and countermeasures that would combat the threat of cybercrime and its impact. However, incidences of successful cyberattacks are still on the rise. The advent of mobile devices has created a means of providing financial services to over two billion people globally that hitherto had no access to formal banking services. Also, banks and other financial institutions use mobile platforms as an alternative delivery channel for financial services. However, the dark side of using mobile devices to bridge the banking gap is that mobile devices are now an added vector for cybersecurity threats. This has affected trust in the use of the system and consequently slowed down the uptake of mobile financial services (MFS). This article presents an in-depth analysis of the opportunities mobile platforms provide for the unbanked and how cybersecurity is hampering the uptake of MFS. Furthermore, the article proposes an approach for mitigating cybercrime in the complex MFS ecosystem and presents preliminary results from the research conducted so far.

Advances in mobile computing have presented a huge opportunity to provide Mobile Financial Services (MFS) to half of the world's population who currently do not have access to financial services. However, cybersecurity concerns in the mobile computing ecosystem have slowed down the adoption of MFS. The adoption of MFS is further hampered by the lack of a clear understanding of the interaction between the complex infrastructures and human factors that exist in the ecosystem for Mobile Financial Services Socio-Technical Systems (MFSSTS). This paper presentsthe work in progress of investigating the problem of MFSSTS. It discusses the preliminary results and understanding obtained from using Human Factor approaches to build and analyse the model for MFSSTS.

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The trade-off between Usability and Security has been well researched with various models proposed on how best to improve Usability without jeopardizing Security and vice visa. Usable Security has become a key factor in Mobile Financial Services (MFS), the new frontier for mobile phones utilisation. However, have the compromises gone too far? The trustworthiness of MFS system has already slowed down new adoption and impacted ongoing security trust issues and user confidence in spite of potential MFS benefits for its users. To understand this growing lack of trust with MFS, we need to comprehend the nature of Usable Security in assuring the behaviours of MFS users and determine the right trade-off to improve trust whilst facilitating future uptake. We conducted an empirical survey of 698 user's experience of MFS and here present our findings of this investigation for further synthesis towards proposing practical control elements to assure Usable Security in MFS.

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