Majority of Saudis prefer paying with cards: survey

Saudi consumers are increasingly comfortable paying and transacting with cards with 89 percent of respondents finding cards more secure than cash, according to a recent survey by the Saudi Payment Network (mada) and Visa.

Card payments remained the predominant mode of payments (66 percent) driven by factors such as security (82 percent), budget management (66 percent), and availability (60 percent) among online shoppers and e-commerce users.

Eighty-two percent of the respondents claimed to have started making more card payments online in the past two years.

For in-store transactions, security (86 percent), budget management (71 percent), and convenience (68 percent) were identified as being the top three drivers.

The survey also found that 84 percent of respondents trust digital wallets (contactless transactions with mobile) and 80 percent trust contactless cards.

“Saudi Arabia’s payments landscape is rapidly evolving to offer online shoppers with a range of payments options. With Apple Pay being launched in the Kingdom earlier this year, and digital payments on the rise, it is important to raise public awareness on how consumers can stay safe while shopping and transacting online," said Ziad Al Yousef, managing director of Saudi Payments.

Meanwhile, 98 percent of customers preferring COD said they would pay by card if a mobile POS machine was available upon delivery.

Additionally, consumers preferred Captcha for authenticating digital transactions – with 39 percent claiming to prefer it and 37 percent considering it more secure compared to fingerprint scanning (27 percent), OTP (16 percent), iris scanning (11 percent), facial recognition (7 percent) and voice recognition (3 percent), the survey said.