Topic: People not serviced by existing e-payment infrastructure.

Question:  How much money are e-commence  sites loosing in American
due to lack of payment options?

What percentage of Americans surfing the Internet have no way to use
e-commerce since they do not have access to credit-card or offline
debit cards? What percentage of adults in general in the USA do not
have credit cards or offline debit cards?   What about numbers of
people who do have cards, but are afraid to use them on the Net? While
e-checks are becoming more popular, what % of people still do not use
them since due to security concerns? (Or merchant's not accept them
due to their high fraud rate) How much does this effect teenagers, who
surf the Internet a lot, but generally do not have credit cards.

[Note: Offline debit cards can be used anywhere credit cards are used,
and you just sign for the transactions.  Online debit cards only work
with a PIN code and can not be used on the Internet today without a
hardware device]

Thank you for using Google Answers.

A good source of statistics on US credit card ownership is the Bank
for International Settlements (BIS), an international organisation
that fosters international monetary and financial cooperation and
serves as a bank for central banks.
< www.bis.org/index.htm >

You'll find at 
< www.bis.org/publ/cpss44.pdf#xml=http://search.atomz.com/search/pdfhelper.tk?sp-o=199662,100000,0
>
on page 105 (it's an Adobe Acrobat PDF file) a table showing the
number of credit cards in circulation in the US in years 1995 through
1999, itemized by function (charge, debit, etc.).

You also asked for information on the numbers of people who own credit
cards but are fearful of using them on the Internet.  Their concerns
are not unfounded:

"A recent study by the Internet Fraud Complaint Center (IFCC) showed
that online auctions accounted for 48.8% of fraud complaints.
Non-delivery of goods ordered online came in second, at 19.2%. Other
top fraud complaints to the center involved: securities and
commodities (16.9%), credit cards (4.8%) and identity theft (2.9%).
The IFCC, which is jointly run by the FBI and the Justice Department's
National White Collar Crime Center, received an average of 1,000
complaints per week after opening in May 2000."
< www.cpawebtrust.org/online.htm >

Accordingly, according to an April 2000 poll, credit card fraud fears
are a "major barrier" to E-commerce:
	Two thirds (65%) of Internet users are "very concerned" about the
security of their credit card information and credit card transaction
online.
	A majority (54%) of Internet users say they purchase only "small
ticket" items or do not make purchases online because of their concern
about the security of their credit card information online.
	Internet users say they would be more likely to shop online if they
felt secure about their credit card information online. Eight in ten
(79%) say they would be "much more likely" (37%) or "somewhat more
likely" (42%) to shop online if they were convinced their credit card
information was secure.
	 Nearly nine in ten (86%) of Internet users say they would be either
"very likely" (52%) or "somewhat likely" (34%) to use a credit card
that didn’t require them to give out their credit card number instead
of one that did to make purchases online.
	Finally, two thirds (64%) of Internet users say they would spend
"much more" (19%) or "somewhat more" (45%) money online than they do
now if they didn’t have to give out their credit card information when
making a purchase.

< www.swrworldwide.com/news/cyota.htm >

	Similar polling results are reported at
< www.computeruser.com/newstoday/00/04/19/news19.html >
and
< www.procheckup.com/news/articles_01/dec.html >

I hope you find this information useful, and thanks again for using
Google Answers!