Fraud is still one of major issues driving customers away from e-commerce. They don't trust foreign sites to handle their payment details.

According to new reports, in Netherlands, there were 28.000 reported online fraud complaints, majority involved phishing cases, where fraudsters send a seemingly official email to try and gain access to consumers' banking details. It is said that the 28,000 complaints are only the tip of the iceberg, with no more than 10 % of fraud attempts actually reported.

In UK, fraud dropped by 11% "but it still remains at a much higher rate than in pre-recessionary times", which is proof of the positive preventative impact of counter fraud measures such as data sharing.  Plastic cards are now the product most commonly targeted by fraudsters, up by 24% from the levels of 2012 and accounting for 30% of all confirmed fraud in 2013.

CBEC describes prevention techniques to counter the fraud. "More and more high profile data breaches are now being reported. (...) Research suggests that incidents of identity fraud now occur every three seconds and this alarming trend is having a huge impact on costs for merchants" Fraudsters operating online can prove to be more difficult to detect and with tendency to use foreign merchants as a testing ground for compromised cards. "Authenticating foreign customers has always been a challenge for cross-border merchants, particularly where those merchants operate across multiple geographies, often due to the limited customer and trend information they have on those markets. (...) It is vital that cross-border merchants have access to detailed payment and fraud trend information for each local market they are serving or looking to enter."

ThreatMetrix in new report states that "financial institutions must become more proactive when it comes to collecting data on customers’ digital behaviour to fight financial losses through criminals’ growing use of cross-channel fraud. (...) Gaps in the bank's security profile leave many institutions exposed to cross-channel attacks."

To fight with online fraud, Paymetric creates XiVerify, which promotes a secure environment by removing all credit card data from the merchant environment. "Merchants no longer transmit or store credit card numbers, yet can continue to conduct business as usual with ‘tokens’ that span the entirety of the customer relationship." 

In 2013, the Brazilian e-commerce market has registered sales of USD 13.01 billion (BRL 31.11 billion), up 29% from the year before. 53 million e-customers. Main categories: fashion and accessories, home appliances, health and beauty, electronics and computers. Predicted rise of 27% in 2014 reaching USD 16.5 billion (BRL 39.5 billion).

In 2013, Northern European e-commerce market was expected to reach  EUR 31 billion. Northern European region, including Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Iceland and the Baltic states, is now in fourth position for e-commerce size, with a 9.2% European market share.

In 2013, Western European e-commerce was expected to reach EUR 173.8 billion. The Western European region (Belgium, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom) is now in first position for e-commerce size, with a 51% European market share. E.g. Irish consumers are buying online above the curve with 25% sales growth year on year - however, in 2012 25% of Irish online spending went overseas due to lack of choice.

In 2013 Southern European e-commerce reached EUR 39.5 billion. The region, consisting of Spain, Italy, Turkey, Greece, Portugal, Croatia, Cyprus and Malta has 128 million active internet users, of which 40 million are buying goods or products online. With total e-commerce sales of €12,9bn, Spain is heading up the Southern European Region, but Turkey represents an enormous market potential, boasting a 90% growth rate over 2012 and an expected 40% year-on-year growth for 2013, thereby ranging ahead of all other Southern European countries in terms of growth.

Invesp published a infographic regarding how social media influences purchase decisions. As recent news showed (Twitter teaming up with Stripe, Report: On-site social descovery going mainstream, Pinterest gets an e-commerce promotion) there is a rise of new, social e-commerce on the market. Which can be a future of cross-border e-commerce - customers will be searching more and more for items shared on social sites.

Infographic by- Invesp

Vouchercloud prepared a infographic regarding consumer psychology and the e-commerce checkout. Knowledge of consumer psychology and their expectations during a checkout can be usefull in building a good cross-border e-commerce system.

Jumio published a report, where it is said that mobile commerce missed out on USD 16 billion over the 2013 holiday season.

"51% of consumers opted to abandon their digital shopping carts because of security reasons. These people did not believe that a mobile commerce platform would be capable of keeping their financial information safe."

"47% abandoned carts because of difficulties regarding mobile payments, while 41% claimed that a mobile commerce platform they were using was simply too difficult to manage."

"23% of consumers reported that their transactions would not go through during the checkout process, causing them to seek out more convenient forms of shopping."