Questioning Consumer Confidence in Fraud Protection: Are Banks and Retailers at Risk?

The report, based on an ACI survey from Spring 2014, features data from more than 6,100 consumers across 20 countries globally. The research indicates that fraud concerns have consumers questioning their confidence on several fronts: 

• The ability of their financial institutions in protecting them against fraud 

• Their comfort in using replacement cards after a fraud event or data breach

• Not using cards or switching banks as a result of a fraud event

The report, the first in a two-part series, delves into card fraud rates (credit, debit, and prepaid) and highlights consumer impact from fraudulent activity. 

While overall consumer card fraud has remained relatively flat from our 2012 report, the concern of identity fraud is slowly creeping up (up to fifty-five percent of respondents being “very concerned” about reclaiming their financial identity post-event). I think that has as much to do with the visibility of fraud in today’s media (social or otherwise). 

Just the other night, I noticed three commercials by banking and card association entities promoting their fraud prevention techniques (primarily around mobile alerts on transactional activities and locking down personal information through hosted subscription programs).  Consumers are so much more aware of the implications of a fraudulent event that the financial industry is using major advertising dollars to promote their services on prime-time broadcast networks (not an insignificant investment).  Surely this type of information should help instill confidence in the industry at some level?

It’s not all gloom and doom for the industry. Global card fraud rates have remained relatively flat from the last report. And there are additional bright spots in the report, which talk to high consumer satisfaction rates related to the handling of fraud events after the fact. That said, given recent global news related to data breaches, cybercrime and crypto-currencies, there is much more work to be done to instill confidence in payments and banking.