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Survey reveals improvements to mobile payment security

Friday, March 21, 2014 - 09:19 by Mike Price

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A new report carried out to look at the levels of fraud in the m-commerce industry, has found that retailers are wising up to the dangers they face, thus making it easier for consumers to carry out safe shopping online from their smartphones and tablets.

The study was led by Kount Inc and is the largest of its kind, in spite of only being in its second year. Two thirds of online retailers were found to offer some form of dedicated m-commerce service to customers, reflecting the fact that more and more people are choosing to browse for goods and go through with purchases while using a portable device.

Report spokesperson, David Montague, explained that retailers were getting better both at preventing m-commerce fraud from occurring, but also at identifying any weaknesses and amending them, so that future breaches are less likely to occur.

He went on to say that m-commerce does present new challenges for retailers when it comes to security, so many are embracing a fresh raft of tools, to ensure that customers can still carry out safe shopping online, even if they are not doing so from a desktop PC.

A third of retailers questioned in the study said that they see m-commerce as being a fundamentally more perilous prospect in terms of security than traditional e-commerce. This is in part because of technical factors, but also as a result of the growth of mobile shopping and the idea that this makes it a more attractive target for cybercrime.

The majority of respondents said that being able to detect the type of device being used by a shopper when they visit a site is critical to helping improve both the security levels and the user experience. So more is being done to perfect m-commerce by the biggest firms in the business.