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Online fraud seen as unavoidable by British consumers, study finds

Tuesday, October 24, 2017 - 10:39 by Simon Crisp

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Fifty two per cent of people questioned in a new report from Paysafe said that it was impossible to entirely avoid fraud when making online purchases, suggesting that retailers are not doing a good enough job of tackling this issue.

When it comes to the implementation of tougher security to make it harder for criminals to compromise legitimate sites, 60 per cent said that they would be willing to put up with less convenience to achieve this.

Two thirds said that they thought better protection should be offered when carrying out financial transactions online, with the rollout of two step authentication seen as being a move in the right direction by many.

Sixty eight per cent of the retailers that participated in the study said that they did not think that rolling out improved security measures to ensure safe shopping online would be something that their customers would appreciate. This shows that there is a disconnection between expectations and that businesses are worried that if the checkout process is made more secure, if less streamlined, they could see sales take a hit.

The vast majority of retailers believe that it is necessary to tackle fraud, although there is disagreement about how best to go about this, even in the face of rising consumer support for tighter security.

Two fifths of stores estimate that more than five per cent of the transactions that they handle represent some kind of fraud, which is a worrying statistic in its own right and reveals the extent of the problem that is being faced today.

Report spokesperson, Andrea Dunlop, said that assuming consumers were only looking for convenience was dangerous. Instead people are willing to make sacrifices to enjoy safe shopping online, which retailers need to recognise.