Usability meets security: enhancing digital security and privacy practices for low-literate users in Bangladesh’s mobile financial ecosystem

Abstract

This thesis explores and investigates the digitals security awareness and practices of rural populations in Bangladesh: focusing on Mobile Financial Service(MFS). Now that Digital MFS is becoming a foundation tool for more inclusive financial services, especially in rural areas, keeping these digital platform is a critical way to ensure secure transactions in Mobile Money. However, rural areas are less literate and they have challenges in comprehending and using security policies when using MFS. Yet this is a population that often lacks the requisite digital literacy to navigate through complex security features, and fall victim to fraud, phishing, and even more alarming, allowing a cyber criminal access to compromise their financial health. A mixed methods design has been followed to conduct semi-structured interviews with community members and surveys for an in-depth study of the experiences and challenges in using MFS among the community members across rural Bangladesh. Lastly, this research explores how individuals interact with MFS platforms to uncover some pain points-e.g., misapplication of security instructions, transaction dependency on intermediaries, and cultural elements affecting trust in digital financial architectures. The results are presented with a wide gap in the design of MFS security features and what is really needed by low-literate users. The thesis uncovers not only the threats to this demographic but also proposes concrete solutions to those threats in the form of simplified user interfaces, the use of visual cues, and security awareness programs tailor-made for a rural and low-literacy population. Finally, the paper highlights the importance of involving MFS providers, policy makers, and local communities together with the view to create solid security frames for this population in their specific context. Added to this ongoing effort in paving ways toward a more digitally secure and hence financially inclusive setting, where in rural Bangladesh, digital security will facilitate the wide acceptance of the MFS system; lessons learned from this study have implications not only for improving more inclusive digital financial systems, which can meet the needs of vulnerable customers but also for contributing to trust and confidence in the conduct of digital transactions more broadly.