NEW YORK – Unfortunately for retailers, consumers today remain wary of the measures that merchants have in place to protect their personal information, despite extensive retailer efforts. According to a recent survey of more than 6,000 online consumers, Bizrate Insights (a division of Connexity, formerly Shopzilla) found that more than three-quarters (76%) of online buyers were dissatisfied with the strength of credit card and personal information among retailers.

“That was much higher than I expected it to be,” Hayley Silver, vice president of Bizrate Insights, told Marketing Daily in an interview about the survey.
Among institutions, consumers overwhelmingly identified their own banks as the most trusted with their credit card and personally identifiable information. Among all consumers, nearly three-quarters (72%) said they trusted banks or credit unions. The next most-trusted institution was Paypal, which was trusted by just under half of consumers (49%).

Below them on the list were Amazon (45%), Apple (21%), American Express (21%), eBay (19%) and Google (13%). Among younger consumers, however, Paypal (trusted by more than 50% of Generations Y and X) and Amazon (trusted by more than 50% of Generation Y) fared better. American Express, meanwhile, had substantially more trust from older generations than younger generations.

Silver told Marketing Daily that this is an opportunity for retailers to tell their own security stories, such as highlighting the proactive steps they’re taking to protect consumers and/or looking into emerging payment systems that are viewed as more secure. “If a retailer has its own private-label card, this might be an opportunity to push that card and its security,” Silver told the news source.