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Online shopping flourishes through additional authentification
By siliconindia
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Saturday, 21 November 2009, 02:48 IST |
9 Comments
Bangalore: E-commerce market in India may not be on the same level as it is in the U.S, but following the implementation of additional authentication process by RBI in August this year, the online shopping witnessed an unexpected growth.
While presenting Visa e-Commerce Consumer Monitor Q2 2009, Uttam Nayak, Country Manager, South Asia, Visa said, "We have seen huge growth after the implementation of the additional authentication." According to the Visa Report, consumers' satisfaction with the security of online payment systems is one of the reasons why more people in India have been shopping online. At least one in three respondents polled reported that they were very confident when using their payment cards online.
The survey also found that Indian respondents spent an average of $2,086 in the past 12 months, while respondents from Asia Pacific spent an average of $2,526 during the same period. The top three reasons for shopping online, cited by a majority of Indian respondents are the freedom to shop anytime (75 percent), the ability to compare prices and save money (74 percent) and save time (74 percent).
For the majority of Indian respondents who had shopped on overseas sites, the main overseas online shopping destination was the U.S. with 51 percent of them saying that most of their international online purchases were from U.S. based websites.
Despite the positive incidence of cross-border shopping in India, Indians are more concerned about the security of online cross-border shopping as compared with other Asia Pacific respondents. Even the new mandate brought by RBI is only applicable to Indian Banks. International cards that are the largest perpetrators of fraud are not governed by RBI's directive. So, merchants can expect little respite from online card fraud even with the directive. The e-commerce Industry in India experiences only 0.16 percent online fraud and most of the online card fraud is international.
The most popular online purchase items in the past 12 months were music downloads (50 percent), airline/airline tickets (49 percent) and travel information (without booking functions; 49 percent).
"Travel remains attractive for many consumers even as the global economic outlook remains cautious. Being able to search for a good deal, compare prices and save money is definitely a driver for consumers to go online," said Nayak.