Data Breaches Change Customer Behavior
According to a Gartner report interpreted on InformationWeek’s Security Weblog, consumers affected by the large number of data breaches occurring lately are more apt to alter their online payment behavior.
In fact, according to this report, shoppers — who are already online at the merchant’s Web site — are more likely to pick up the phone to provide payment information. So much for convenience always trumping security.
This only goes to show that security matters. And that it’s time for merchants to stop treating security as a necessary burden, and as the responsible cost of business it is, and as the competitive differentiator that it can be.
The date in the report called U.S. Consumer Secure Payment Preferences Create Opportunities for Nonbanks was published after analyzing the results of a survey of 4,500 online U.S. adults conducted last year in August. It shows that customers switching to payment methods that they find safer will eventually lead to less profits for banks handling online payments.
The same Gartner report showed that over 33% of all adult Internet users have decided to completely ignore the Internet retail channel as a result of ongoing data breaches.
This not only shows that good security pays, but that online shoppers will reward merchants that go the extra mile to provide a safer shopping environment, communicate those efforts to them, and also make available payment options that shoppers feel to be more secure.
