Aussies trust Apple, Google with credit card details more than local retailers
After a string of online security breaches, Australians are wary of storing their credit card details online and mistrust local retailers more than tech giants Apple and Google.
Less than a quarter of Australian internet users (23.5 per cent) are happy to attach a credit card to their Apple ID or Google Play accounts, according to finder.com.au research. The rest either manually enter their credit card details to cover the cost of apps and content, top up their accounts using gift cards or else link their account to PayPal which has more than six million active Australian accounts.
While Australians are wary of attaching credit card details to the Apple and Google accounts linked to their smartphones and tablets, they're even more apprehensive about trusting these details to online retail stores.
Only 15.6 per cent of Australians are prepared to store their credit card details with their online shopping accounts. Apart from manually entering their credit card details to cover transactions, other payment options for Australian online shoppers include gift cards, bank transfers and third-party payment services like PayPal.
Online retail giant Amazon tops the list of trusted shopping sites.Credit:Bloomberg
The security reputation of Australian online retailers has been tarnished by a spate of data breaches in recent years including incidents affecting Kmart, David Jones, Aussie Farmers Direct and Aussie Travel Cover in 2015 alone – breaches which saw customer details leaked online but not credit card details. Meanwhile, Catch of the Day took three years to reveal a data breach that occurred in 2011.
US online retail giant Amazon tops the list of trusted shopping sites – with 12.1 per cent of Australians linking their credit card to their Amazon account – although this figures is influenced by the fact that, unlike most online retailers, Amazon shoppers can not easily use PayPal to pay for online purchases.
"While saving your card details can seem convenient, there's an understandable reluctance to give your credit card information to someone who is unfamiliar," says finder.com.au editor-in-chief Angus Kidman. "For online shopping, using PayPal provides another convenient alternative for many people."
"The fact that we're still happy to share those credit card details with smartphone providers highlights just how central phones are to our lives."
Australians are more apprehensive about trusting details to retail stores.Credit:Andy Zakeli
Rather than saving their credit card details with online shopping sites, 11.8 per cent of Australian internet users store their card details using their browser's auto-complete features – allowing them to easily enter the card details into a website for each purchase. While this bypasses concerns over online retailers storing card details, it now shifts security concerns to the end user's computer and Kidman recommends the use of a password management app and strong master password.
Along with security issues, Kidman says many Australians are also concerned that the ease of one-click shopping can lead to expensive mistakes.
The charges related to 24 different incidents in which credit cards were stolen.Credit:Jessica Shapiro
"For starters, you can be much more easily tempted when shopping online if something is only one click away," he says.
"Also your kids can accidentally, or intentionally, buy something that's not refundable – we keep hearing stories about children spending up big on their parents' devices, which reminds us that making it easy to buy things online isn't always a good thing."
Adam Turner is an award-winning Australian technology journalist and co-host of weekly podcast Vertical Hold: Behind The Tech News.