Sécurité des paiements et développement du commerce électronique

This paper deals with the question of the security of the payments on Internet and proposes a formal framework to study its impact on the development of the electronic commerce. We show, within the framework of a competitive supply of the security of the payments, that a weak development of the trades can be attributed to the risk of fraud perceived by the "honest consumers", but not to the fraud of the "opportunist consumers" which increases the traded quantities. We also show that, even if the level of security can be higher with a monopoly, a competition between suppliers of security is always (1) preferable to stimulate the development of the electronic commerce and (2) socially desirable. Classification JEL: L1 ; L86.