AI

Country differences with online banking adoption

There are significant differences showing up between Europe and North America.  In addition, Banks are responding differently, with North American banks using software anti phishing solutions, and generally slow or not at all on chip.  Europe is gung ho on chip and using token type authentication for online banking.  Which is right?

So lets start and see where this goes.  Here is a snippet from a May 2006 survey from Forrester Europe suggesting, Europeans like branches, yet interestingly are only 42% worried on security.  Generally this reads like we aren’t too worried about online, we just don’t like it and prefer branches.  The survey goes on to indicate that Europeans are frustrated by badly designed online experiences.  Take a look, here and here. Wear your sunglasses.

 The Canadian Internet use survey had this result:

Concerned about security – 73% (includes ‘very concerned’ – 40%)

So now I am starting to see much higher rates of concern about security in Canada, than Europe.  The survey questions are not necessarily aligned, but 73% (Canada) vs 42% (UK) is too dramatic to ignore.

Why is there a difference in attitudes?  We all use the same internet.  Some hypotheses:

  1. cultural differences
  2. online tenure
  3. banks approach to security
  4. technology differences

1) News media differences in treatment of security don’t appear to vary that much.  Its not clear there are cultural reasons.

2) Tenure is the similar for everyone in the North Atlantic, although UK was slower off the mark because of costly local telephone calling.  In North America local calls are free so dial up in the early days was adopted faster.

3) Banks are definitely approaching this differently.  There is much greater preponderance to token devices in Europe. 

4) Europe is very phone/ SMS centric. In North America we were early PC addicts.

Its too early for conclusions. I would welcome views on this, so please feel free to comment. 

Relevance to Bankwatch:

The question is to explain why there are apparent differences between Europe and North America in security concerns.  The answer will help us understand which approaches to security are appropriate for our customers.

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