Mobile Security Is Everyone's Problem

By Matt Pillar, chief editor

January 2014 Integrated Solutions For Retailers

Here’s some sobering news on the heels of the holidays: 34 percent of smartphone owners didn’t use their phones to make a retail purchase last holiday season, citing security concerns. In fact, 21 percent of smartphone owners wouldn’t use them at all — not even to access non-purchase related retail applications — due to perceived security risks.

This data, revealed by CFI Group’s 2013 Holiday Shopping Trends Survey, doesn’t reveal a paranoid public. Consumers’ mobile security concerns are justified indeed, whether they know it or not. According to the U.S. Retail Fraud Survey 2013 from Volumatic and Kount, mobile sales channels are overlooked in fraud prevention strategies, despite 34 percent of retailers having a mobile sales option available to their customers. As the mobile retail sales channel grows at an estimated 20 percent over the next 18 months — making it the fastest-growing sales channel in the U.S. — ignorance of mobile security must change. Mobile payment transactions, expected to rise to more than $1.3 trillion by next year, are fertile ground for fraudsters. Yet the research indicates that retailers have a lot of catch-up work to do if LP and payment security professionals are to protect consumers and their retail brands from mobile-based cybercrime.