The biggest hurdle facing European financial institutions wanting to maintain and increase their online client base is people’s belief that online banking is not safe, according to a report by Forrester Research.
“Consumers’ deep-seated security fears remain one of the biggest barriers to online banking use in Europe, particularly in countries like Italy, France, and the UK, where two-factor online banking authentications is rare or unknown,” said Benjamin Ensor, a financial services senior analyst at Forrester.
Forrester surveyed 22,907 Europeans and asked them how concerned they are about the privacy and security of their personal details in different situations.
Confidence appears to differentiate those that use online services and those that do not. Those who are confident are four and a half times more likely to use online banking, but just 30% of European Internet users believe that their personal financial information is secure during online transactions.
Forrester also found that two-fifths of the European Internet users that abstain from online banking do so because of security fears, and that these fears can actually cause some existing users to abandon the online service.
When asked about other financial situations, the majority of consumers in Germany, Spain, Italy, France and the Netherlands were less concerned about paying by card in a restaurant than they were about using online banking.
Forrester concludes that education is key when attempting to make online services attractive to consumers. The more users understand about security precautions the more inclined they’ll be to sign up for those online services.