Avoiding Not-So-Happy Holidays
What Every Ecommerce Business Needs to Know About Fraud
Top Ecommerce Fraud Indicators
With Black Friday falling on November 29 and Cyber Monday on December 2 this year, the holiday shopping season is about a week shorter than usual. That means there’ll be a lot of frenzy packed into the few weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
If you’re an ecommerce business, your plan may be to authorize, process and ship as quickly as possible to accommodate all those gift-givers. That’s a great plan as long as you make sure you’re not ignoring the signs of online fraud.
Card-not-present (CNP) fraud is now 81% more likely than point-of-sale fraud. This is mostly due to chip card technology at the POS taking such a huge bite out of the in-store capabilities of fraudsters. It makes sense that if one fertile ground dries up, the bad guys would look for another one to exploit. And they’ve found it on the internet. Your ecommerce site doesn’t have to be a vulnerable target for fraudsters though – not if you know the signs of fraud and have taken steps to protect yourself.
On Monday, November 18, we hosted a 15-minute Facebook Live event to walk through various types of fraud, what to look for, and what to do to enhance your protection. Specifically, we addressed:
- stolen card purchases
- stolen card testing
- e-skimming
I encourage you to watch the video above so you’ll be aware of the signs and some very simple things you can do to thwart fraudulent activity on your website.
Here are a few signs we discuss in the video:
- Orders that contain multiples of easily resold items
- Customers that want to use more than one credit card on their order
- Higher than average first order from a new customer
- Declined transactions
- Hundreds or thousands of attempts of small transactions with different expiration dates
Please keep in mind that in an ecommerce CNP environment, the merchant is generally on the hook for 100% of cardholder disputes. With those numbers estimated to be in the billions of dollars, that’s a risk you don’t want to take.
So, check out the video. Invest 15 minutes of your time to learn what to look for and know how to protect your business. Then, it’ll be a happy holiday season for all!
