Saudi consumers increasingly trust digital payments over cash, according to latest Visa-mada security survey

An important finding that emerged from the survey and one for retailers to take note of was offering card payment option (mobile POS) upon product delivery could help with converting Cash on Delivery (COD) customers into digital payers. According to the survey, 98% of those customers preferring COD would pay by card if a mobile POS machine was available upon delivery.

Visa also provides insights on how online merchants can tackle consumer security concerns and encourage more shoppers to use their sites. Consumers prioritized the following factors when transacting on an online platform:  Visibility of logos of payment providers & trust badges (65%); providing strong customer service (62%); displaying customer reviews (50%); and avoiding the promotion of unrealistic discounts (39%) on the eCommerce platform, stood out as the top features that would offer consumers the confidence to shop on their sites.

Consumer Security Measures

Consumers prefer Captcha for authenticating digital transactions – with 39% claiming to prefer it and 37% considering it more secure compared to fingerprint scanning (27%), OTP (16%), iris scanning (11%), facial recognition (7%) and voice recognition (3%). However, this is an

opportunity for online retailers to partner with Visa to adopt Verified by Visa, an authentication protocol for shoppers that uses OTPs to ensure payments are made by the rightful owner of the Visa account.

Digital wallets for contactless payments are protected by multiple layers of security, so shoppers can use these new payment technologies both in-store and online with the comfort that they are secure. Visa’s tokenization technology, for example, replaces card data, including the 16-digit card number, with a “token”, a random number, to protect cardholders’ account information. During the transaction, the token is submitted instead of the actual card information. Digital wallets such as Apple Pay and mada Pay are enabled by Visa tokenization, meaning shoppers have a safe and seamless experience whether paying in person or online.  Visa also recommends consumers protect their mobile phones with passcode and biometrics as an added layer of protection for mobile payments.

Some of Visa’s key recommendations for consumers to engage in safe online shopping practices include: (i) shop at well-known eCommerce sites, (ii) avoid using unsecured and public WiFi connection for transactions, (iii) look out for the ‘s’ after ‘http’ in website addresses to confirm that a site offers (SSL) protection, and (iv) activate Verified by Visa with your bank to secure online payments; log out whenever you leave a website, especially if using a public computer; and (v) never share your personal account information on social media, over email, phone or chat.

The Visa-mada Stay Secure campaign will run for one month on Facebook and Instagram. Consumers can also visit the Stay Secure campaign page to learn more about digital payments security.