Do you like to purchase items online? If so, you are in good company: E-commerce sales make about $1.2 million every 30 seconds on a global scale. Buying or researching an item online is great for comparison shopping. You can even get an opinion on what you are debating about buying in the form of a product review from other buyers to help you in your decision.
There are two concerns people have when making a purchase online. One, will the product arrive as pictured on the website? Secondly, does the website use one of the more secure payment processing systems? Credit card fraud is a real threat. Secure processing systems have a few things that they do differently to make sure their customers’ payment information stays private and secure.
Who worries about someone stealing their information? It turns out most of us online shoppers do. One survey showed six out of 10 internet users indicated concern that their credit card or debit card information could be easily stolen. It is more than just replacing a card when it happens to you. There is a sense of betrayal directed at the store, whether it was directly their fault or their payment processing system’s.
Paying by card is what makes internet shopping so convenient and potentially risky. In 2013 alone, over $4.3 trillion was spent by consumers at online stores; that is more than half of the total number of all consumer purchases, which topped out at 8.6 trillion in 2013. Online shopping shows no signs of slowing down, especially when many stores offer free shipping.
The only real way to avoid any risk of credit card or debit card fraud would be to avoid using them at all. As that is completely impractical, one method is to shop at retailers who you trust and have a proven record of reliability. It is true that even big conglomerates can be hacked. But what matters is how the company handles such a blow to their trustworthiness. If they reassure customers that they have identified the problem and have fixed it, they are likely to have a strong, secure payment processing system.