A study from GoCardless has revealed that consumers based in the UK are more interested in having access to a frictionless experience when carrying out safe shopping online than their continental counterparts.

43 per cent of shoppers in Britain put having access to speedy, simple checkout processes at the top of the agenda, while this was true of just 32 per cent of French respondents and only 17 per cent of Spanish participants in the survey.

Interestingly, this trend seems to correspond to a lower level of interest in security amongst Brits. Just 55 per cent of UK citizens questioned in the report said that they were especially concerned about staying protected when shopping online, while almost two-thirds of both French and German participants asserted similar sentiments.

27 per cent of those from the UK even admitted that they would duck out of committing to a purchase if the website in question had a long checkout process, even if this was a step taken in order to improve security.

This creates something of a catch 22 situation for retailers. If they beef up security to avoid reputation-damaging breaches, they face the likelihood that loyal customers will shop elsewhere, while if they make the checkout process simpler and thus less secure, they could be hacked and be hit with serious repercussions.

There are a number of options for making the online checkout process slicker and less complex and yet still suitably convenient to accommodate the expectations of modern shoppers. Using more biometric-based ID verification solutions could be one option, although as with any potential route there will need to be significant cooperation between retailers and the banks which provide the underlying payment infrastructures and handle the billions of daily e-commerce transactions.