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WORLD’S LARGEST MOBILE PAYMENTS & FRAUD SURVEY RELEASED

Significant jump seen in perception of risk with mCommerce
While the mobile channel grows in importance and revenue for merchants, so does their fear of fraudulent attacks and the realization that combating that risk requires specialized tools. Those are some of the key findings from the 2nd Annual Mobile Payments and Fraud Survey, which is now available for free download at the Kount website.
The 2014 Survey, conducted by Kount, Inc., The Fraud Practice LLC, and CardNotPresent.com, is the biggest survey ever undertaken focused entirely on fraud and the mobile channel, surveying more than 1000 merchants across the globe.

Mobile Survey
“After establishing the benchmark last year, the 2014 Mobile Payment & Fraud Survey shows continued development in mobile commerce and risk management initiatives as well as changes in expectations and priorities for the mobile channel,” noted David Montague, president & executive consultant, The Fraud Practice LLC. “Not only are organizations now more likely to find that the fraud risk associated with the mobile channel is higher than with standard web eCommerce, but organizations are also more likely to believe the mobile channel requires additional tools for managing risk.”
Conducted from November 2013 to January 2014, the Mobile Payments and Fraud Survey had nearly 2000 participants, including merchants, service providers, acquirers, card associations and issuers. Of the 1000 merchants participating, more than half reported annual revenues exceeding $50 million.
Notable merchant insights from the survey include:
- The mobile channel accounts for 20% of their business double that of last year
- 66% of merchants surveyed now actively support mobile – up by 30% year to year
- Merchants that offer a mobile app for online shopping more than doubled from 21% to 54%, while nearly half of merchants now offer a dedicated mobile website
- 32% percent see mobile as riskier than standard e-commerce – up from 24% last year
- Merchants that believe standard eCommerce fraud processes are enough for managing mobile channel risk fell from 37 to 26 percent since the inaugural survey
- 32% say fraud prevention specific to mobile is increasingly necessary – nearly double the sentiment of last year’s responses
“Clearly mobile commerce is a source of tremendous opportunity for online retailers and their focus on this channel has grown considerably each year,” said Don Bush, vice president of Marketing at Kount. “Merchants also realize that fraud follows opportunity, and there may be no greater opportunity for fraud today than in mobile. Protecting and growing your business requires a fraud solution that integrates with all mobile platforms without any impact to the customer experience or your business.”
Regarding fraud prevention, survey respondents varied by sector and revenue size about the need for specialized tools for fraud prevention. However, more than half considered the ability to detect a mobile device as “very important” and 89% of respondents considered it at least “important” or “somewhat important.” Despite this sentiment, only 34.2% of those surveyed can detect a mobile device and merchants able to detect the specific type of mobile device decreased from last year.
“As our report fully captures, mobile acceptance is on the rise across virtually every category of merchant,” said Steven Casco, CEO of CardNotPresent.com. “Much of our coverage in CardNotPresent.com is chronicling how and why commerce – and fraud – is shifting to the mobile channel, and this report reinforces the notion of that evolution with hard data. As valuable as this data is to us, as a publication, it’s even more important for merchants that want it straight from the source.”
In its second year, the Mobile Payments and Fraud Survey combined the industry insight and expertise of The Fraud Practice LLC and CardNotPresent.com and support of Kount to provide a thorough analysis of one of the most dynamic and challenging environments facing online retailers today.
A free copy of the 2014 Mobile Payments & Fraud Survey is available now at the Kount website. Additionally, the CNP Expo in Orlando on May 19-22 will feature a keynote with a comprehensive look at the report’s findings.
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Australia says no further Facebook, Google amendments as final vote nears

By Colin Packham
CANBERRA (Reuters) – Australia will not alter legislation that would make Facebook and Alphabet Inc’s Google pay news outlets for content, a senior lawmaker said on Monday, as Canberra neared a final vote on whether to pass the bill into law.
Australia and the tech giants have been in a stand-off over the legislation widely seen as setting a global precedent.
Other countries including Canada and Britain have already expressed interest in taking some sort of similar action.
Facebook has protested the laws. Last week it blocked all news content and several state government and emergency department accounts, in a jolt to the global news industry, which has already seen its business model upended by the titans of the technological revolution.
Talks between Australia and Facebook over the weekend yielded no breakthrough.
As Australia’s senate began debating the legislation, the country’s most senior lawmaker in the upper house said there would be no further amendments.
“The bill as it stands … meets the right balance,” Simon Birmingham, Australia’s Minister for Finance, told Australian Broadcasting Corp Radio.
The bill in its present form ensures “Australian-generated news content by Australian-generated news organisations can and should be paid for and done so in a fair and legitimate way”.
The laws would give the government the right to appoint an arbitrator to set content licencing fees if private negotiations fail.
While both Google and Facebook have campaigned against the laws, Google last week inked deals with top Australian outlets, including a global deal with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
“There’s no reason Facebook can’t do and achieve what Google already has,” Birmingham added.
A Facebook representative declined to comment on Monday on the legislation, which passed the lower house last week and has majority support in the Senate.
A final vote after the so-called third reading of the bill is expected on Tuesday.
Lobby group DIGI, which represents Facebook, Google and other online platforms like Twitter Inc, meanwhile said on Monday that its members had agreed to adopt an industry-wide code of practice to reduce the spread of misinformation online.
Under the voluntary code, they commit to identifying and stopping unidentified accounts, or “bots”, disseminating content; informing users of the origins of content; and publishing an annual transparency report, among other measures.
(Reporting by Byron Kaye and Colin Packham; Editing by Sam Holmes and Hugh Lawson)
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GSK and Sanofi start with new COVID-19 vaccine study after setback

By Pushkala Aripaka and Matthias Blamont
(Reuters) – GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi on Monday said they had started a new clinical trial of their protein-based COVID-19 vaccine candidate, reviving their efforts against the pandemic after a setback in December delayed the shot’s launch.
The British and French drugmakers aim to reach final testing in the second quarter, and if the results are conclusive, hope to see the vaccine approved by the fourth quarter after having initially targeted the first half of this year.
In December, the two groups stunned investors when they said their vaccine would be delayed towards the end of 2021 after clinical trials showed an insufficient immune response in older people.
Disappointing results were probably caused by an inadequate concentration of the antigen used in the vaccine, Sanofi and GSK said, adding that Sanofi has also started work against new coronavirus variants to help plan their next steps.
Global coronavirus infections have exceeded 110 million as highly transmissible variants of the virus are prompting vaccine developers and governments to tweak their testing and immunisation strategies.
GSK and Sanofi’s vaccine candidate uses the same recombinant protein-based technology as one of Sanofi’s seasonal influenza vaccines. It will be coupled with an adjuvant, a substance that acts as a booster to the shot, made by GSK.
“Over the past few weeks, our teams have worked to refine the antigen formulation of our recombinant-protein vaccine,” Thomas Triomphe, executive vice president and head of Sanofi Pasteur, said in a statement.
The new mid-stage trial will evaluate the safety, tolerability and immune response of the vaccine in 720 healthy adults across the United States, Honduras and Panama and test two injections given 21 days apart.
Sanofi and GSK have secured deals to supply their vaccine to the European Union, Britain, Canada and the United States. It also plans to provide shots to the World Health Organization’s COVAX programme.
To appease critics after the delay, Sanofi said earlier this year it had agreed to fill and pack millions of doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine from July.
Sanofi is also working with Translate Bio on another COVID-19 vaccine candidate based on mRNA technology.
(Reporting by Pushkala Aripaka in Bengaluru and Matthias Blamont in Paris; editing by Jason Neely and Barbara Lewis)
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Don’t ignore “lockdown fatigue”, UK watchdog tells finance bosses

By Huw Jones
LONDON (Reuters) – Staff at financial firms in Britain are suffering from “lockdown fatigue” and their bosses are not always making sure all employees can speak up freely about their problems, the Financial Conduct Authority said on Monday.
Many staff at financial companies have been working from home since Britain went into its first lockdown in March last year to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
One year on, the challenges have evolved from adapting to working remotely to dealing with mental health issues, said David Blunt, the FCA’s head of conduct specialists.
“During this third lockdown, there has been a greater impact on mental well-being, with many people struggling with job security, caring responsibilities, home schooling, bereavements and lockdown fatigue.”
Bosses should continually revisit how they lead remote teams, he said.
“The impact of COVID-19 is creating a huge workload for those considered to be high performers, while the remote environment potentially makes it much more challenging for those who were previously considered low performers to change that perception,” Blunt told a City & Financial online event.
Companies should consider “psychological safety” or ensuring that all employees feel confident about speaking out and challenging opinions.
“We’ve heard varying reports of how successful this has been,” Blunt said.
Pressures in the financial sector were highlighted this month when accountants KPMG said its UK chairman Bill Michael had stepped aside during a probe into comments he made to staff.
The Financial Times said Michael, who later apologised for his comments, had told staff to “stop moaning” about the impact of the pandemic on their work lives.
Blunt was speaking as the FCA next month completes the full rollout of rules that force senior managers at financial firms to be personally accountable for their decisions to improve conduct standards.
There have only been a “modest” number of breaches reported to regulators so far as firms worry about being “tainted” but more cases will become public as sanctions are revealed, Blunt said.
“Regulators won’t be impressed by lowballing the figures.”
(Reporting by Huw Jones; Editing by Mark Heinrich)