Category: Mobile Security

Despite the fact that consumers in Canada want to use their smartphones to buy, it’s not meeting their expectations.

According to the 2015 Holiday Shopping Survey from Accenture, consumers in Canada are actually eager to embrace mobile commerce, but retailers aren’t providing them with the type of experience that meets their expectations.

This means that most Canadian shoppers who would use smartphones are turning to laptops instead.

Canadians aren’t happy with what retailers are offering them by way of mobile commerce, so they are having to fall back on more traditional channels such as laptops and brick and mortars stores throughout the holiday shopping season. This, despite the fact that many shoppers across the country have said that they would be interested in using their devices to buy throughout this most important shopping season of the year. Almost half of the consumers who said they enjoy shopping in-store claimed that they liked it enough to continue their purchasing right through Christmas, itself.

Even though smartphone penetration is high in Canada, only 2 percent of Canadians use mobile commerce for most shopping.

Canada is one of the countries with the highest amount of smartphone use. Still, only 2 percent of the shoppers in that nation will be using their mobile devices for the majority of their holiday purchasing this year. The mobile apps and smartphone optimized websites are not swaying consumers to use their favorite devices for buying.

Among the leading reasons that shoppers in the country are staying away from m-commerce are that they have security concerns (38 percent), they are frustrated with retailers that haven’t mobile optimized their sites (28 percent) and they simply find it too difficult to be able to locate the products they want on retailer sites and apps (18 percent).

According to the Accenture managing director of retail, Robin Sahota, “The way Canadians think about shopping for the holidays is changing, and retailers must offer a more enhanced mobile browsing and shopping experience to drive sales at the busiest time of year.” Sahota went on to say that consumer demand remains high during the 2015 holiday shopping season and over a third of customers intend to spend more this year than last year; it just won’t necessarily be done over mobile commerce.

House Energy & Commerce Committee is looking into concerns regarding mobile payments security

Mobile payments will reach a new high this year in the United States, powering by the growing adoption of new payment services that allow consumers to shop online more conveniently. According to recent reports from CNET and Juniper Research, some two-thirds of adults in the country now own a smartphone, with approximately 36 million people expected to make a mobile transaction this year. This information was presented to a hearing of the House Energy & Commerce Committee, which has been expressing concerns regarding mobile payments fraud.

Security continues to be a significant problem in the mobile space

Security in the mobile payments field has been a point of concern for federal officials for some time. Many consumers have become the victims of fraud in the past, following high-profile data breaches that targeted some of the country’s largest retailers. The hearing found that while most mobile payments solutions are, indeed, quite secure, they do not have the same legal and legislative protections that more conventional payment solutions enjoy.

Committee will not yet be taking legislative action on mobile security

The House Energy & Commerce Committee has noted that the hearing was a preliminary hearing concerning mobile payments security. The committee has not yet announced plans concerning what can be done to improve security. As such, there will be no legislative action taken on issues regarding security for the time being. The committee is seeking more information from stakeholders in the mobile payments space. This information could be used to improve the overall mobile payments space, ensuring that consumer information is well protected in the future.

Ensuring the security of consumer information remains a top priority in the mobile space

The mobile payments space is still relatively new. While many of the organizations participating in this space have extensive experience regarding commerce, they are finding the mobile space to be exposed to significant risks that they are still attempting to adapt to. More regulatory oversight may be needed to ensure consumer protection, but the federal government must collect more data before taking any significant legislative action on the matter.