€57bn
€57bn. That’s how much business 451 Research estimates could be lost as a result of the implementation of Strong Customer Authentication (SCA), this autumn.
According to a paper commissioned by payments firm Stripe – who aren’t what you would call a disinterested observer, to be fair – the new requirements stemming from the EU’s Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) may reduce EU-wide ecommerce revenues by 10% or €57bn annually.
SCA broadly means that consumers will have to verify their identity more often when making online payments. SCA will be mandatory from September, but (unsurprisingly) according to 451 most people have never heard of it- and nor have a lot of merchants selling online.
So, if you don’t want to be hit by confused customers and a 10% drop in online sales this autumn what should you do? Well, SCA’s all rather complex (no surprises there), but there’s plenty of guidance available online and for starters I’d have a read of this introduction to PSD2 from the DMA Contact Centre Council (by Ultracomms‘ Tom Davies) and have a word with your bank or payment processing provider.