According to a new study, business success is largely dependent on how smooths consumers find their digital transactions.
The global study by The Economist Intelligence Unit and consumer credit reporting agency TransUnion found that close to 85% of global executives surveyed said they believe “smooth digital transactions are ‘essential to business survival’ rather than merely a competitive edge.”
In a survey completed by over 1,600 senior execs — including 180 from the US — @TheEIU study for TransUnion assesses attitudes toward various long-term trends affecting #fraud, #security and #commerce in the #digital domain. https://t.co/wBXnnOsZoL pic.twitter.com/LvBldFXz9s
— TransUnion B2B (@TransUnionB2B) October 23, 2020
The report — titled New Dimensions of Change: Building Trust in a Digital Consumer Landscape — featured responses from 1,610 executives in Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Hong Kong, India, the Philippines, South Africa, the UK, and the US.
One of the biggest takeaways is that technologies like AI, national IDs, and super-apps (apps that act as all-in-one experiences like WeChat and Alipay) “can help overcome hurdles and possibly create new challenges to building digital trust.”
New transformations mean new risks
Going hand in hand with the COVID-related acceleration of digital transformation — in conjunction with work-from-home and stay-home mandates — there’s been a massive surge in online spending. According to the report’s introduction, global e-commerce monthly traffic has grown from 16 billion to 22 billion between January and June this year.
But of course, with this acceleration comes a whole new range of risks, with a rise in cyber-fraud and phishing scams.
Per its introduction, the report asks these important questions:
How can executives both grow their business, while also mitigating fraud and managing the upheavals of the pandemic? What changes have they made to the digital transaction process? And how has the pandemic played into longer-term digital transformation initiatives such as artificial intelligence (AI), digital wallets and national digital identification schemes?
“All of this digital progress will be wiped out if we can’t remove these barriers to building bilateral digital trust,” explains Shai Cohen, senior vice president of Global Fraud Solutions at TransUnion. For instance, two-thirds of executives in the study who said their company changed their digital transaction process as a result of the pandemic experienced glitches.”
Building trust
When looking at ways of building consumer trust, en route to preventing fraud, respondents overwhelmingly indicated that:
- Biometrics will emerge as the dominant method for customer authentication (85%).
- AI can go a long way in security and fraud detection (43%).
- Consumer fraud can be mitigated through a national digital ID system (79%). It should also be noted that 7 in 10 respondents believe that such a system would allow low-income groups to have better access to services.
“Technological innovations like AI, biometrics and national digital IDs paired with proven fraud prevention methods like device intelligence can provide a more convenient and inclusive way for consumers to transact that still protects security and privacy,” said Cohen.
