The online sales figures for this year’s festive shopping season were at their highest ever, totaling an estimated £49.8 million globally, according to Retail Decisions (ReD) . In the UK, predicted sales for “Cyber Monday” (a trendy retails term for the first Monday in December) were £350 million but actual sales were 16% higher than that, totaling an estimated £534 million.

Mondays tend to be the busiest online shopping days and this year, for the first time ever, a “Post Christmas” Monday (28th December) featured in the top two best performing online shopping days, beaten only by “Cyber Monday” itself. 

So the January sales have gone digital. (They certainly have for me – I’ve managed to hurt my leg skiing so there’s no chance of me getting to the shops!).

For those that don’t know, “Cyber Monday” tends to refer to the first Monday in December. Christmas shoppers spend the previous weekend traipsing the high street planning what to buy. They then spend the following Monday surfing, looking for the best bargains.

To cope with 2009’s online shopping frenzy; Amazon opened additional depots and contracted several hundred seasonal helpers to manage the Christmas rush. (They failed deliver my presents on time I might add, even though I paid a premium for postage – I expect it was the snow!)

E-retail is a growing industry, mainly due to the expansion of Broadband and people having confidence in the Internet. Devices like the iPhone and other Smart phones are also playing an important role, making the Internet available to us wherever we are and thus leading to more spontaneous purchases.

But as online shopping continues to grow, so does the opportunity for credit card fraud. I am sure you are all aware of the TK Maxx debacle – where the credit card details of millions of customers were downloaded via a coat hanger in the car park!

It’s vital that less-experienced surfers become more Internet-savvy so they do not become victims of fraud. Most of us would think twice about trawling the back streets and buying goods out of a suit case. Well, the Internet is the same but much more risky. Not only is there a risk that your ordered goods won’t turn up; there is also the possibility that your card details will be stolen and sold to third –party rogues.

I recall, with fond memories, an incident that happened to me a couple of years ago. I was trying to buy a Nintendo DS as a Christmas present; high-street retailers had run out, “Toys R Us” only had pink ones left so I resorted to the Internet. Most online stores had also run out and in a moment of panic I visited a less well-known website. Before my brain had a chance to catch up with my frenzied actions, I discovered, I had ordered a Nintendo that was not suitable for resale in the UK. Fortunately for me everything worked out in the end but I share this story simply to illustrate that even experienced e-shoppers can get caught out.

However, online shopping is becoming increasingly costly for retailers themselves, as banks and credit card companies introduce more vigilant measures in order to try and reduce online fraud.

An initiative known as PCI DSS, endorsed by American Express, Discover Financial Services, JCB International, MasterCard Worldwide and Visa Inc, requires that online merchants and service providers who store, process or transmit customer payment card data, strictly adhere to information security controls and processes to ensure data integrity.

Any breaches or failure to comply with these measures will result in merchants being fined heavily or, worse still, loosing their trading licenses all together. Under Visa’s current enforcement scheme, a non-compliant service provider or merchant can expect to be fined a one-off penalty of at least £10K and continued not compliance is likely to give rise to monthly fines of between £5K and £15K.

For the last nine months C3 has been helping its customers develop IVR and web-based billing systems that are PCI compliant. Have a look at our website to find out more about who we are and what we do.

Tags: credit card fraud, cyber monday, E-Retail, PCI DSS

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 7th, 2010 at 10:05 am and is filed under Author's update. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.