Securing your best chance for success
With the online retail sector set to grow, security experts PayPal are leading the charge against the fraudsters.
A new report released today has revealed that more than 15,000 people have become victims of fraud in the first six months of 2010. The report, which focuses on UK consumers, was compiled by Action Fraud – the national fraud reporting centre – and reveals that the amount of money people had been tricked out of ranged from just GBP£6 to more than GBP£1m.
However, the issue of just how secure online shopping is has long been debated. In 2008, for instance, a report by security consultancy firm SecureTest investigated 100 UK websites, only to discover that many did not meet industry standards. Now though, new technologies and pioneering innovations are working to ensure that standards are met and consumers can shop online securely and safely.
At the heart of such innovation is PayPal, the secure online payment method that allows users to pay or get paid quickly and easily without sharing any financial information. “Payments is a very complicated business,” explains Scott Thompson, President of PayPal in a recent interview with executive channel MeetTheBoss.tv. “As a consumer you probably look at it and say ‘Wow, this is easy; it works all the time; it works exactly as I expect it to,’ but when you’re down inside the business and trying to understand how you build products, how you move transactions around, how you clear and settle things around the world, it’s very, very complicated.”
What’s more, with all signs indicating that the online retail is expected grow exponentially for the retail sector, at least according to the second annual PayPal Online Retail Report released last month, PayPal’s innovate technology is set to become even more critical in the fight against fraud.
“The last two and a half years have indicated to me that the opportunities for PayPal are enormous,” adds Thompson. “So as president, as general manager for this business, what you have to do is to take a step back and ask the question: ‘what do our customers need? What do they want from us? What do they expect from us and then how are we going allocate our capital to best serve those customers?’”
