71% of UK consumers have purchased online in the last year

According to a recent European Commission report, the UK had the second highest rates of online sales with around three quarters of consumers (71%) purchasing something online in the last 12 months. That compares to The Netherlands (which was top with 74%); Germany (63%); France (58%) and Belgium (44%).

Mobile is definitely providing the impetus for increase of e-commerce. The growth of mobile-commerce is buoyant in the UK: 12% of all e-sales were made with a mobile phone, tripling from 4% in 2011, and 0.9% in 2010.

With the continued growth in ecommerce and ever evolving fraud patterns, most e-commerce businesses rely on fraud prevention strategies in order to protect against attacks and maintain and secure sales. Ogone, an online payment service, surveyed businesses in a new report entitled ‘Online & mobile payments: New opportunities & threats’. The report has revealed that 14% of businesses across those surveyed by Ogone in Europe had no specific fraud management process in place.

According to the Ogone research, in the UK, ecommerce businesses aspire to complete fraud prevention rather than pragmatism. 80% of UK e-commerce businesses surveyed were clear that their aim was to eliminate fraud altogether.

Julian Wallis, Head of Sales in the UK and Ireland at Ogone said: "With the increased opportunity of e-commerce comes the inevitable increased threat of fraud and security issues. Our research shows that in the UK, the attitude towards introducing effective online fraud prevention measures are taken very seriously. UK e-commerce businesses see that hard-earned profits are, of course, impacted by the existence of online fraud. Any ecommerce business wishing to sell their products internationally needs to ensure they are properly protected against payment fraud."

Only 22% of UK businesses surveyed were happy to rely on shopper authentication such as 3-D Secure (a facility which verifies authenticity by initiating a redirection to the website of Bank/credit card company that issued the card). 34% wanted a fraud management tool that covers the main liabilities, but accepted they may be vulnerable to more complex fraud. As the most fraud conscious Europeans surveyed, 37% of those UK businesses surveyed wanted "the most comprehensive fraud management tool possible to protect my business from complex fraud" This was around double of those in Belgium (18%); France (18%); and Germany (29%) and more than ten times those surveyed in the Netherlands.