While merchants have made a lot of progress when it comes to mobile security, they have a long way to go in order to minimize fraud risk, with 28 percent of merchants still not able to identify whether a mobile transaction came from abroad, according to the results of a new survey from Kount. 

Despite consistent gains in mobile adoption, merchants are showing that they are becoming more complacent about managing risk in the mobile channel, according to the fifth annual Mobile Payments and Fraud Study. Only a small fraction of merchants (8 percent) today believe that the mobile channel is far riskier than traditional e-commerce, surprisingly down from 14 percent last year. Merchants also remain fairly trusting of mobile wallets, with more merchants believing that fraud will decrease rather than increase as consumers more widely adopt mobile wallets (37 percent vs. 29 percent, respectively).

While strides have been made in identifying the device origin of a mobile transaction — five years ago, more than 55 percent of merchants were not able to detect whether a transaction came from a mobile device but only 14 percent of merchants report this inability today — nearly one-third (28 percent) of merchants are still unable to tell whether a mobile transaction originated abroad.

"This survey has shown that merchants have made a lot of progress over the years when it comes to their commitment to mobile payments and fraud detection technologies," Don Bush, Kount's vice president of marketing, said in a statement. "However, card-not-present fraud rates will continue to grow alongside rising online and mobile commerce so it's important that merchants not become complacent in their security efforts, but rather research specific tools, like comprehensive fraud platforms, that can best protect their business without any negative impact to the customer experience."