Sustaining Digital Assets Through Mobile Estate Planning

Abstract

Many people own online accounts, with some having financial values like Internet banking, e-wallet and cryptocurrency. In the case of sudden death, their heirs are unaware of the digital assets possessed by the deceased person, which causes the assets to be lost forever, and the heirs might not receive the assets. If an estate plan did not account for digital assets properly, the beneficiaries would not be able to access them. Therefore, this paper addresses this issue by implementing a software development approach in designing a suitable model for sustaining digital assets through smartphones to allow the inheritance of digital assets to the heirs. The software development life cycle was adopted as the methodology to identify the model’s components through four phases: requirements analysis, system design, implementation and test and evaluation. First, this work proposed a model named Mobile Estate Planning for Digital Assets (MEPDA). Second, the study demonstrated the component of the model in a smartphone application, and finally, it was tested and evaluated through a usability study with a group of users. Most users suggested that MEPDA is useful and easy to use. Further, they were also satisfied with its functionalities and features. Mobile application for digital asset estate planning is necessary today due to the exponential increase of digital asset ownership with financial values. It could be one way of helping users to allow an efficient inheritance process for their heirs in the case of death.