Fraud prevention - a key consideration for UK businesses

The ‘Online & mobile payments: New opportunities & threats study, released by Belgium-based online payment processing services provider Ogone, explores differing regional and cultural attitudes towards online and mobile transactions, as well as the use of fraud management and prevention tools by e-commerce businesses in five major EU territories including UK, Germany, France, Belgium and The Netherlands,

According to a recent European Commission report, UK had the second highest rates of online sales with around three quarters of consumers (71%) purchasing something online in the last 12 months. That compares to The Netherlands (which was top with 74%), Germany (63%), France (58%) and Belgium (44%).

Mobile is definitely providing the impetus for increase of e-commerce. The growth of mobile-commerce is buoyant in the UK: 12% of all e-sales were made with a mobile phone, tripling from 4% in 2011 and 0.9% in 2010. With the continued growth in e-commerce and ever evolving fraud patterns, most e-commerce businesses rely on fraud prevention strategies in order to protect against attacks and maintain and secure sales. However, a worrying 14% across those surveyed in Europe by Ogone had no specific fraud management process in place.

According to the Ogone report, 80% of UK e-commerce businesses were clear that their aim was to eliminate fraud altogether.

Only 22% of UK businesses were relying on shopper authentication such as 3-D Secure. Furthermore, 34% wanted a fraud management tool that covers the main liabilities, but accepted they may be vulnerable to more complex fraud. As the most fraud conscious Europeans surveyed, 37% of those UK businesses wanted ‘the most comprehensive fraud management tool possible to protect my business from complex fraud’. This was around double of those in Belgium (18%), France (18%) and Germany (29%) and more than ten times those surveyed in the Netherlands.