With almost everything available on digital, unsurprisingly, people prefer to do their payments and transactions online. Yet, with this advantage comes the question of security. Aiming to find out the public’s perception regarding digital payment security, a recent study concluded that underlying online payment issues can be addressed and resolved by blockchain and cryptocurrency.

Highlights

  • About 80% of participants are confident in making online transactions.
  • Over 40% of participants say that digital payments are secure yet some issues can still be experienced and unavoided.
  • Frauds and scams, chargebacks, and data errors are the most common online payment issues experienced by the participants.
  • More than half of the participants believe that blockchain and cryptocurrency can make digital payments more secure.
  • 80% of participants believe that with blockchain and cryptocurrency, there will be less payment frauds and fewer requirements for cross-border transactions.

Also Read: McKinsey Survey: COVID-19 Speeded the Adoption of Digital Technologies

To be able to deliver better solutions in terms of payment security, ABBC Foundation partnered with Real Research in conducting a survey for 3,000 participants. These selected participants shared their opinions and experiences upon making payments, particularly digital payments.

Real Research data revealed that the majority of participants (over 65%) prefer to make their payments online using either a credit or debit card (37.4%) as well as mobile payment providers (28.3%) like Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and Google Pay. On the other hand, 24.1% of participants still prefer to do their payments in the traditional way of using cash. Some also prefer to do payment-in-kind transactions that involve trading or swapping of items.

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Demographics-wise, 67.3% of those who answered the survey are single, while the minority were married. This shows a fairly active online payment transaction activity among single people compared to committed ones. Additionally, 80.5% of the participants were male, showing a higher level of interest in digital payment security for men.

Majority of Platforms Offer Online Payments Nowadays

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the majority of platforms have embraced the convenience of offering online payments to consumers. With this in mind, ABBC Foundation has built the foundation of being the future of payment security as its vision. Undoubtedly, the availability of online payments nowadays is the main reason why the participants are more confident in making online transactions.

As online payments become more accessible, over 80% of participants felt convinced to make online transactions. The norm that a lot of merchants and businesses have set made an inevitable domino effect on the consumers’ payment habits.

Despite that, 34.8% of participants think that online payment processing can be improved. Hence, 15.1% of them are still hesitant to make online transactions because they find it hard to know which are the trustworthy platforms to use.

A small number of participants (3.9%) also answered that they don’t feel secure when making online transactions so they rather make cash/swap transactions.

Digital Payment Security Can Be Improved (e.g Frauds and Scams, Chargebacks, etc.)

As a matter of fact, 95% of participants think that digital payments are secure, but the majority of them (41.5%) think that digital payment security can be further improved — by fixing some existent and unavoidable issues. While 17.6% of participants believe that digital payments are secure but they rather pay in cash or trade. Despite that, many participants are still certain that digital payment transactions are 100% secure and convenient.

The remaining 5% don’t feel secure with digital payments as they believe those are vulnerable to cybercrime. To explain further, frauds and scams (33.8%) are on the top of the most common online payment issues encountered by the participants. These are very rampant and cause minimal to huge losses to consumers. To avoid these, they usually consider PCI compliance standards, two-factor authentication, and website security to ensure that their online payments are secure.

Moreover, participants also experienced chargebacks (20.6%), card data errors (17.7%), approval and cancellation processing delays (11.4%), and low conversion rates (10.7%).

Almost 6% of the participants are lucky to have never encountered any online payment issues before. Yet, overall, the majority have encountered issues that can be reduced and avoided altogether by emerging technologies like blockchain and cryptocurrency.

Blockchain and Crypto Will Lead to Better Digital Payment Security

ABBC Foundation is a blockchain-based company that focuses on enhancing digital payment processing, particularly on e-commerce. Its blockchain can handle over 5,000 transactions per second and its native cryptocurrency ABBC Coin can be bought and sold on over 20 crypto exchanges.

In support of the company’s vision, over 50% of the participants agree that blockchain and crypto will result in better digital payment security. While 33.4% of them think that the effectiveness of these technologies relies on their implementation. If implemented properly, it can bring better security for digital payments and online transactions.

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On the other hand, over 10% of the participants think that current payment methods already offer enough security. Hence, better technologies are not needed. But apparently, these technologies are already existing and will soon be adopted in the mainstream.

Blockchain and Crypto Have Numerous Benefits for Digital Payments

In particular, there are numerous benefits that blockchain and crypto can offer for digital payments. Real Research data revealed that 36.5% of participants already use cryptocurrency for payments. They are using crypto because it is very secure and efficient for them.

The majority answered that they are not using cryptocurrency for payments but 37.4% are planning to if their preferred merchant starts accepting crypto. Although, around 17% have no plants to use crypto at all for payments as almost 9% don’t have any cryptocurrencies at all in their possession.

The Real Research data clearly shows that cryptocurrency usage for the majority of consumers is still a work-in-progress. Despite that, the participants shared their optimistic opinions regarding the influence of blockchain and cryptocurrency on digital payments.

According to the conducted survey, ‘no payment fraud and manipulation due to lack of centralized control’ is the top benefit of incorporating blockchain into digital payments. This is closely followed by enabling cross-border transactions with less requirements. Then, eliminating transaction fees and processing delays, as well as improved transparency and privacy consecutively.

Less than 4% of participants think that all of these benefits are possible with blockchain and crypto. Above all, fraud and manipulation is the highlighted benefit, in connection to the high number of frauds and scams experienced by the participants.

Mass Adoption of Crypto for Payments

Out of almost 80% of participants, 47.2% think that payment security should be a priority for fintech platforms to protect users. Although 32.3% think that payment security is important, it can be implemented later on.

Conforming to this, mass adoption of crypto for payments is primarily considered to drive the digital payment revolution. ABBC Foundation intends to be at the forefront of this. Others have the same belief but they think that the public still needs to be knowledgeable about crypto and blockchain.

In totality, blockchain and crypto are innovating the digital payment sector today and it will continue to do so in the coming years. It is not a question of what and why, it will be a question of when and how. Sooner than later, crypto and blockchain will lead to immense fintech innovation. Accordingly, ABBC Foundation will significantly contribute to this progressive action.

Methodology

Insights derived from Real Research’s survey entitled “Are Digital Payments Secure?” fielded to males and females aged 29-59 years old in South Korea, Ukraine, Russia, China between November 26 – December 1, 2020.

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