Why Merchants Must Consider Both Online and Mobile Shoppers Regarding Security

  Each year, online merchants and their customers suffer billions of dollars in losses at the hands of hackers and others fraudsters. This year will be no different, and it will be up to the ecommerce industry to take on a more relevant and robust strategy to take the bad guys down. It could mean the difference whether a retailer is able to stay in business. For the purpose of this blog, we will discuss the differences between online and mobile shopping and how preventing fraud differs among the two. But first, let’s briefly talk about why online mobile fraud is only getting worse. It is actually do in part to the success of fraud prevention strategies in brick and mortar stores. The EMV chip, for example, that is used on credit cards and debit cards has significantly reduced hackers’ ability to create a fake card and use it in a store. The advent of the EMV chip, combined with updated POS systems, has been very effective in reducing fraud. In addition to that, customer data is routinely shared on the deepest corners of the internet. More than 1.4 billion records were exposed in the first three months of 2018. Although this is actually down from the year before, it is still a concerning number and shows why ecommerce fraud continues to be a major problem. In all, there was a 30% increase in ecommerce fraud incidents than the year before.

Online Shopping Vs. Mobile Shopping

Although online shopping still represents the larger percentage of how shoppers find and purchase goods on the web, more consumers are using their mobile devices to shop for goods than ever before. Forrester estimates that U.S. consumers will spend $93.5 billion on their mobile devices in 2018. To put things in perspective, they spent just over $60 billion on their mobile devices in 2016. As consumers get more comfortable with shopping on their mobile devices, this number should continue to go up. Mobile shoppers differ from online shoppers in part because they are more likely to use alternative forms of payment like mobile wallets, PayPal, and cryptocurrencies. Desktop e-commerce shoppers are more likely to pay by entering their credit card information. This is not necessarily a bad thing for retailers, but it means they will have to look into investing in a payment gateway and other ecommerce security solutions that mitigate any fraud risk. Ecommerce merchants should assess their current platform and determine whether it is up to the task of preventing online and mobile shopping fraud. The data indicates that thieves will continue to pursue their malicious activities until they are stopped or deterred.