Read the following passage and answer the item that follows. Your answer to this item should be based on the passage only.

Modern payment systems increasingly link bank accounts directly to mobile phone numbers and biometric identifiers, systems originally designed for convenience and financial inclusion. But the same infrastructure that lets a farmer receive a subsidy instantly also becomes a single point of failure: a compromised phone number or a spoofed fingerprint can, in principle, redirect real money, not just a login session. Financial-security researchers have already demonstrated proof-of-concept attacks against several such linked systems.

Which one of the following statements best reflects the most critical inference that can be made from the passage given above?