The Mass Market Lacks Online Trust

The mass market simply does not trust the internet channel. And why should they? Every day Americans see horror stories in the news of identity theft and credit cards scams orchestrated by high-tech online fraud rings (annual fraud losses have hit the $ billions). http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2012/02/20/irs-warns-taxpayers-to-avoid-scams/

GDC Expo, March 7-9

Online sales represents only 7% of total US retail sales. http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/08/forrester-forecast-online-retail-sales-will-grow-to-250-billion-by-2014/. The Federal Reserve reports that credit cards are used more than 20 billion times a year in the U.S., with the total value of these transactions at about $1.9 trillion. A growing majority of Americans 64% report they have not made an online purchase from a specific website because of security concerns. When asked to explain why they did not make that purchase, 60% said it was because they were not sure if the site was secure, 51.4% were worried about providing information requested, and 48.4% felt a website requested more information than was necessary for the transaction. The pool found that 69.3% research potential purchases over the Internet. All this may be spun into good sounding news, but at the end of the day, the bottom line is this - after all our efforts to grow eCommerce it still only represents 7% of the total annual US credit card spend.