Signature ecosystem!

A mobile PKI system constitutes of many components and players to form an ecosystem and main stakeholders of the ecosystem are financial institutions, applications providers, certification authorities and mobile network operators.

Signature is actually done by an application in mobile SIM and private key is also stored in it so it is normally thought that the major player is the mobile network operator who owns the SIM. But it is very important to understand that only financial institutes have license to do financial transactions. This makes it clear that if we are talking about financial transactions using mobile then financial institutions and mobile network operator both are equally important in the ecosystem.

Although financial institutions and mobile network operator can themselves be certification authority but to make the system trusted by third parties it is very good practice to involve trusted and known certificate authorities in the region for managing digital certificates. Involving such certification authorities bring quality and specialization of service in the ecosystem too.

The presence of financial institutions, mobile network operator(s) and one or more certification authorities make it a complete system to run digital signature but fetching of business can not be done without introducing application providers to this ecosystem. These application providers are merchants or service providers who create value for customers by offering exciting products and services and use digital signature ecosystem to run their businesses effectively.