More than one quarter (29%) of consumers worldwide do not trust retailers and restaurants to protect their stored personal and financial information against data breach attempts, according to a report from ACI Worldwide and Aite.
The report, titled: Global Consumers: Concerned And Willing To Engage In The Battle Against Fraud, surveyed more than 6,100 consumers across 20 countries in March 2014.Confidence in financial institutions such as community banks and credit unions is higher among survey respondents, as 58% believe they protect data more effectively than any other institution. Conversely, 31% of respondents said they think governments and law enforcement agencies are doing a “very bad” or “poor” job at fighting fraud.
As a result of recent data breaches at major retailers, 77% of consumers said they are “very interested” in being contacted about suspicious activity on their cards or accounts via a phone call, email or text message. Nearly three quarters (73%) of respondents prefer that their banks do not post transactions to their cards until they personally respond to fraud alerts.
Advertisement
To prevent data breaches and fraud from affecting their lives, shoppers need to know which precautionary measures they can and should take. However, 42% of consumers said they don’t recall receiving information from their financial institutions about how to protect themselves against fraud.
“Consumers want to engage in the battle against fraud,” said Shirley Inscoe, an analyst at Aite Group. “Financial institutions must take a proactive role in not only engaging customers in fraud-alerting activities, but educating them on preventative measures to take to most effectively combat it.”
Fraud risk also extends to prepaid cards, although their fraud rates are much lower than debit or credit cards. Internationally, cards from India (18%) and China (17%) had the largest fraud rates by a wide margin in 2014. Prepaid cards in Indonesia had the third highest fraud rate percentage (11%), and saw the greatest increase in fraud of all countries monitored since Q3 2012, up from 4%.
Click here to access the 2014 Global Consumer Fraud Survey.
