Merchants more concerned with online fraud

Merchants are spending higher portions of their revenue on fraud prevention - 17% of merchants spent greater than 2% on fraud prevention this year, versus 13% in 2002. The proportion of e-commerce businesses with fraudulent charge-back rates greater than 1% has dropped into single-digit levels, averaging an overall rate of 9.7% - a significant improvement from 2002 when almost twice as many (18%) of the merchants experienced a greater than one% fraudulent charge-back rate. 38% of responding businesses in 2003 declared international fraud to be "out of control" or "a big problem" - a drop from 2002, where 41% reported this level of concern.