Credit Card Security Study!
There is a strong relationship between a consumer’s perception of a retailer’s reputation for safeguarding card account data and the consumer’s willingness to shop there, according to new findings published by Javelin Strategy & Research. The study is based on a nationwide survey of 1,200 credit or debit cardholders. The survey was conducted by phone in February 2007 from a random sample of US adults.
Javelin also found that consumers believe retailers share an equal responsibility with banks, credit card companies, processors, and cardholders themselves for protecting their credit and debit card account information.
According to the study, consumers perceive that retailers are lagging in their responsibility to keep their credit or debit card information out of the hands of criminals. In fact, 63 percent of consumers said retailers are the least secure in terms of protecting their account information, ahead of companies that process the transaction (16 percent), payment networks like Visa or MasterCard (5 percent), and the bank that issues their card (5 percent). Additionally, if informed that their account information had been compromised and without being provided any other information, 49 percent of consumers would judge the retailer where they shopped to be the most likely source of the compromise.
Key Consumer Findings:
85% of consumers would be likely to increase their shopping at a store if they knew it was a leader in devoting resources and technology to protecting its customers’ personal credit and/or debit card account information and had an excellent record in protecting its customers’ personal data.
•Only 20% said they would likely continue shopping at a store if they learned it had a data breach that may have compromised their card account information, while 78% said they would be unlikely to continue to shop there.
•Retailers and merchants and credit card companies like Visa and MasterCard share an equal responsibility to secure and protect their customers’ credit and debit card account information, according to 76% of consumers.
•Banks (46%) were rated the most secure in terms of protecting account information, followed by payment networks like Visa or MasterCard (22%), the companies that process the transactions (9%) and the retailers where the respondents shopped (8%).
•Rated the least secure in terms of protecting account information were the retailers (63%), followed by the companies that process the transactions (16%), the payment networks like Visa or MasterCard (5%), and the banks that issue their cards (5%).
•95% of cardholders said it was important that their bank tell them the name of the retailer after being alerted to a data breach.