READING, UK — January 24, 2012 —

UK online merchants are bucking the downward business trend and expecting continued growth in 2012 according to the eighth annual UK Online Fraud Report, an independent survey undertaken by CyberSource, a Visa company (NYSE: V). Digital goods businesses are growing particularly strongly; those anticipating growth in 2012 are forecasting an average 33% increase in online revenues.

In all, 73% of merchants expect online revenue growth in 2012 whilst 24% forecast no change. Amongst those expecting to grow, smaller businesses (annual online revenue less than £500,000) are the most optimistic, with ambitious plans for 35% growth on average. The largest businesses (those greater than £25m annual online revenue) are more conservative, forecasting an increase of 18%.

“The mobile channel presents a real opportunity for merchants,” said Dr Akif Khan, co-author of the report and Director, Products and Services, CyberSource EMEA. “38% of merchants now have a dedicated mobile website and 26% have their own app. But just a quarter of those merchants are tracking fraud originating on their mobile site and only 16% are tracking fraud through their mobile apps. With interfaces often streamlined to make mobile commerce simpler for the user, the fraud risks on mobile channels are different and still need to be properly understood. If fraud costs are to be managed efficiently across multiple channels in 2012, each should be measured and configured individually.”

Fraud challenges vary by sector

The impact of fraud varies by sector, showing the diversity of UK online merchants. For the travel and services sectors, the biggest concern is sheer revenue loss. 51% of travel and 46% of services vendors selected revenue loss as the greatest fraud concern. For physical goods retailers the challenge is different: 50% say their greatest concern is inadvertently turning away good orders. For digital goods businesses the main challenge is the cost of manually reviewing too many orders (41%).

Manual review: usage falling but burden remains

Since the 2009 survey, the percentage of merchants using manual review has fallen by 10%, with 61% of merchants reporting that they engaged in manual review in 2011. The practice remains most common in small businesses where one fifth of respondents review almost every order. Very large merchants are the most efficient users of manual review, examining only 11% of orders on average.

Manual order review rates are fairly consistent across business sectors with each just a few percent either side of the average rate of 22%. However, manual review remains inefficient: merchants ultimately accept 75% of the orders that they review. These results suggest merchants should devote increased attention to improving their automated order screening procedures to increase detection accuracy and lower the need for manual review.

The report will be released on Tuesday 24 January 2012. To receive a copy of the report, please visit: www.cybersource.com/en-EMEA/ukfraudreport. Journalists or analysts please contact Lucy Jones on +44 (0)1628 628 080 or cybersource@noiseworks.com.

The eighth annual UK Online Fraud Report survey was conducted by technology market research specialists Vanson Bourne and was commissioned by CyberSource Ltd. The survey was fielded from 5 to 30 September 2011 and yielded 200 qualified responses. The sample was drawn from a database of companies involved in eCommerce activities, including both CyberSource and non-CyberSource merchants. Incentives to respondents included entry into a prize draw for an iPad.

About CyberSource

CyberSource, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Visa Inc., is a payment management company. Over 390,000 businesses worldwide use CyberSource and Authorize.Net brand solutions to process online payments, streamline fraud management, and simplify payment security. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, and maintains offices throughout the world, with regional headquarters in Singapore (Asia Pacific), Tokyo (Japan), Miami/Sao Paulo (Latin America and the Caribbean), and Reading, U.K. (Europe/Middle East/Africa). CyberSource operates in Europe under agreement with Visa Europe. For more information, please visit www.cybersource/emea.

© 2012 CyberSource Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of CyberSource Corporation. All rights reserved.

Media Contact

Lucy Jones
Noiseworks
+44 (0)1628 628 080
cybersource@noiseworks.com

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Aida Hadzibegovic
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globalmedia@visa.com