Our survey shows that ID theft is about twice as likely in Canada, the UK and the U.S. than in France, Germany and Spain. And folks in these English-speaking countries are also more likely to know somebody who has been a victim of ID theft. This isn’t surprising, considering the high concentration of e-commerce in these markets; but consumers in other countries shouldn’t interpret this to mean that they’re intrinsically safer. As e-commerce becomes more popular around the world, fraudsters will follow the money.

The survey results can be read here.
The new website can be found here.

Other Global Findings
• Spanish consumers are relatively new to e-commerce, and more than 80 percent of those respondents said they are concerned that products purchased online will not be as pictured or expected, will be of poor quality, or will not arrive at all.

• Privacy is the number one concern among Canadians, with more than half (53 percent) indicating that they are “very concerned” about protecting their privacy.

• Consumers in Germany, the UK and Canada are least likely to store their passwords on their browsers (70 percent, 61 percent and 58 percent, respectively, never do so). About half of the consumers in the U.S., France and Spain store passwords on their browsers.

• Americans are most likely to write down their passwords in order to remember them (36 percent do so). Fewer than 20 percent of consumers in all other countries surveyed write down passwords.

• More than half of all consumers receive financial statements in the mail. Only 17 percent of consumers in France and 23 percent of consumers in Spain own shredders, compared to a large majority in all other countries.

PayPal Introduces Special Pricing for Micropayments
In related news, I saw that Bobby Tzekin on PayPal’s merchant services team let folks know that they recently expanded their micropayments pricing, making it available now to any member with a PayPal Business or Premier account.

While micropayments is not new to PayPal, our micropayments pricing was previously available only to account holders in select countries. With this expansion, we are making it available to any PayPal Business or Premier account holder worldwide using any of PayPal’s 19 supported currencies. In addition, our micropayments pricing can be used with any of PayPal’s payment products including Website Payments Standard, Website Payments Pro and for eBay sellers.

To learn more about micropayments and to sign up, visit the new website here.

Cheers,
RBH