Tag: mobile commerce fraud

Mobile commerce fraud comes with a price to retailers

The results of a new study have shown that while this is already expensive, the problem is only going to grow.

A new report has recently revealed the results of a study that has shown that at the moment, fraud in mobile commerce is costing an average of 3 percent of the total revenues of retailers who are selling over this channel.

Moreover, the faster the growth of this ecosystem, the more the cost of fraud is likely to rise, said the study.

This research was conducted for RSA – an encryption vendor – and TeleSign – a vendor of fraud prevention – and it analyzed the responses of 250 different enterprises that had an average revenue of $2.54 billion. Among them, it was determined that the annual loss as a result of fraud over mobile commerce was $92.3 million. In certain cases, the impact of fraud on m-commerce was a s great as 25 percent of the sales of the retailer over that channel.

This mobile commerce study showed a great deal of insight into the impact of fraud on retailers.

Mobile Commerce - Retail and FraudThe survey was conducted online, and among the respondents, 8.4 said that they had not detected any losses as a result of fraud that had occurred either online or over m-commerce channels. That said, 34 percent of the respondents said that they had lost up to 5 percent of their revenues to fraudulent purchases. Another 13.6 percent claimed that the losses they had experienced from fraud online fell between 11 percent and 25 percent. Just over that amount, 14.4 percent, said that their fraud rate was between 26 and 35 percent. And finally, 11.6 percent experienced a staggering online fraud rate of 36 to 50 percent of revenue over those channels.

Although the overall average losses from fraud was from 6 to 10 percent of online revenues for most companies, when looking specifically at medium sized businesses that had revenues within the range of $500 million to $1 billion, the situation was not as “good”. In that group, the average online rate of fraud was between 11 to 20 percent, according to the research.

When it came to mobile commerce fraud, specifically, it was only the very smallest companies that experienced a rate that was under 10 percent. The average large company lost between 10 and 24 percent of their revenues to fraudulent transactions.

Mobile commerce is facing rising challenges from fraud

Merchants are losing an average of $334 for every $100 of fraudulently made purchases on their sites.

According to the results of the recent True Cost of Fraudsm Mobile study, which is held annually by the Reed Elsevier from LexisNexis Risk Solutions, mobile commerce is facing a very expensive problem through fraud.

Merchants have been increasing to m-commerce on a steady basis and fraudsters are seeing this as an opportunity.

According to the study results, revenue from mobile commerce that is lost as a result of fraud has increased by 70 percent, last year. It rose to 1.36 percent in 2014 after having been 0.80 percent in 2013. Comparatively, among all merchants, 2014 saw an increase that brought the total lost revenue from fraud to 0.68 percent, after having been 0.51 percent in 2013.

There are a number of different avenues for fraud in m-commerce, due to the complexity of the broader range of payment channels, such as online payments programs and digital wallet apps. This in combination with added access channels such as native apps, shopping comparison apps, and mobile websites can considerably increase the risk of fraud.

The research has revealed that the average number of payment channels offered by mobile commerce merchants is 4.5.

Mobile Commerce - FraudThis is notably greater than the average number of payment types accepted by online or in-store merchants, which is 2.6. This higher number of acceptable types of payments has placed those companies at a notably higher level of fraud exposure.

Twenty one percent of all fraudulent charges that were recorded were linked to mobile commerce. This is upsetting as the number of transactions that are actually occurring over smartphones continues to be a small percentage of the total sales for merchants. Last year, 14 percent of all of online transactions occurred over mobile channels.

According to the LexisNexis Risk Solutions vice president of corporate markets, Dennis Becker, “Mobile commerce is going to be more widely adopted by merchants because customers are clamoring for the convenience. To reduce customer friction and sell more through the mobile channel, now is the time for mCommerce retailers to put in place fraud prevention tools to counter the disproportionate amount of fraud that is currently occurring.”