UK merchants continue to invest heavily in online payment fraud prevention
Despite the continuous and often unbelievable growth rates experienced by the online retail sector in the UK, it continues to face threats from online fraud. Cybersource has released its Fourth Annual UK Online Fraud Report, based on a survey of about 165 UK merchants of varying sizes.
The report says that merchants are having to invest heavily to ward off the threat of online fraud, with annual expenditure in the vicinity of GBP160,000 for mid-sized companies! The main issue seems to be the lack of a coherent effeort to tackle this problem. Currently, the responsibility for overcoming the problem seems to rest with the retailers, ISPs and card schemes, with very little proactive assistance from the regulators or the police. The need for a single, independent body to track organized fraud and handle it appropriately is very obvious; question is when and if it would happen.
As affiliates are mainly dependent on successful online transactions, anything that impedes e-commerce is an issue. The last thing affiliates need is a lack of confidence or doubts amongst online shoppers about security of their credit card information; unfortunately there is very ittle in their control to prevent or reduce these fraudulent activities.
