Consumers Wary of Entrusting Retailers with Data
A global study of more than 6,100 consumers across 20 countries finds that 29% don’t trust retailers – including stores, online shopping sites and restaurants – to protect stored personal and financial data against hacking attempts and data breaches.
The survey suggests that only just over half (55%) feel the stores where they shop use security systems that adequately protect their financial data against hackers and data breaches.
Entitled
‘Global Consumers: Concerned and Willing to Engage in the Battle Against Fraud,’
the survey is the second in a two-part series conducted by ACI Worldwide and Aite Group.
Among other findings, 58% of survey respondents think that financial institutions (FIs), such as large multinational institutions, community banks and credit unions, do a better job of protecting their data than do retailers, or for that matter, government agencies and law enforcement.
Seventy-seven per cent of global consumers said they would like to be contacted about suspicious activity on their cards or accounts via a phone call, email or text message, while 73% prefer that their banks not post transactions to their cards until they respond to fraud alerts.
Regarding consumer awareness 42% do not recall receiving any anti-fraud information from their FI, while 32% think theft by a computer hacker is the greatest fraud risk.
In many countries, prepaid card usage and the rate of fraud on such cards correlates. China and India have the highest rates of prepaid card fraud, at 17% and 18% respectively, and very high consumer use rates, at 93% and 91% respectively.
Conversely, in countries with use rates of 70% or less, such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US, fraud rates are 4% or less, indicating that the fraud rate may rise as more consumers use prepaid cards.
Commenting on the findings, Mike Braatz, senior vice president, payments risk management solutions at ACI Worldwide, said that consumer distrust had been exacerbated by the widely publicised retail data breaches over the past year.
“Retailers have their work cut out for them – to change consumer perception that shopping, be it online or in-store, is unsafe,” he added.