PayPal: Online Shopping in Singapore to Hit $3.5B Despite Security Fears
In a recent survey, PayPal found that while online shopping continues to grow in Singapore, 57 percent of consumers hesitate to make online payments due to security concerns.
In a recent survey, PayPal found that while online shopping continues to grow in Singapore, 57 percent of consumers hesitate to make online payments due to security concerns.
While e-commerce is on rise in Singapore and is expected to grow to $3.5 billion by 2015, many consumers in the region remain concerned about cybercrime. That’s according to PayPal.
In its latest survey, the digital payments company analyzed responses from 1,000 adults in Singapore and found 78 percent of respondents shop online at least once a month and 55 percent prefer mobile payments.
And even though demand for online shopping is increasing, more than half of the consumers surveyed still worry about making purchases online.
Their primary concern? Security. In fact, 57 percent of respondents are concernd that their financial details will be stolen by cyber-criminals and 20 percent say they don’t want to disclose their credit card information to a website they have never visited before.
These respondents have even more security concerns when they transact with online merchants overseas.
And yet while online security is the top concern, only 9 percent of respondents have actually been victims of fraud.
“It is interesting to see that while the majority of online shoppers in Singapore have not encountered fraud, there remains a deep concern about becoming a victim of cybercrime,” says Rahul Shinghal, country manager for southeast Asia at PayPal, in a release. “This is something we must address so that online shoppers do not need to hold back on making purchases online due to security fears, which stifles the potential for e-commerce to grow.”
To make consumers feel safer shopping online, PayPal suggests merchants incorporate policies that protect customers in the event of unauthorized transactions or damaged or undelivered products. PayPal says merchants can also support online transactions that do not require disclosing credit card details to the merchant/website.
And, of course, Shinghal says, merchants should partner with a trusted digital payments provider to give consumers peace of mind.