While South Africans believe that online retailers and service providers have security systems in place to protect against fraud, they still don’t trust them to protect personal and financial data from hackers.<\/p>\n
This is according to the second part of the ACI Worldwide and Aite Group global consumer study, looking at the impact and perceptions of fraud.<\/p>\n
The study of more than 6,100 consumers across 20 countries, including 314 people from South Africa, previously noted that 3 in ten consumers from South Africa had experienced card fraud in 2014.<\/p>\n
South Africa was seventh on the list in this regard, behind the UAE (44%), China (42%), India (41%), the US (41%), Mexico (33%), and Australia (31%).<\/p>\n
Over 80% of the South African respondents indicated that they do shopping online, a majority of which (58%) said that they believe sites have security in systems in place to protect data.<\/p>\n
However, not all of the respondents trusted these systems.<\/p>\n
33% of survey respondents said that they do not trust online firms to adequately protect their data from hackers, with only 28% indicating that they do.<\/p>\n
The largest group (39%) said they were unsure.<\/p>\n
The findings fall in line with the global data, which showed that nearly 3 in 10 global consumers (29%) do not trust retailers to protect data against hacking attempts.<\/p>\n
“Consumer distrust is exacerbated by the widely publicized retail data breaches over the past year,” Mike Braatz, senior vice president, Payments Risk Management Solutions, ACI Worldwide.<\/p>\n
“Retailers have their work cut out for them–to change consumer perception that shopping, be it online or in-store, is unsafe,” he said.<\/p>\n
South African respondents perceived hackers stealing data to be the greatest threat for possible fraud (25%) while filling out details on physical forms was the second biggest risk (19%).<\/p>\n
Other big perceived threats were announcing details over the phone (16%) and shopping online (16%).<\/p>\n
More than half of the South African respondents (56%) feel that the government is doing a poor to very bad job of combating fraud, while only 5% believe the government is doing a good job.<\/p>\n
Card fraud shocker in South Africa<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Profile of a South African fraudster<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Debit card fraud costs SA R117.7 million<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n