How to curb eCommerce fraud as people migrate to online shopping

Investing in fraud detection and prevention solutions that verify a user’s identity and cross-reference before allowing transactions, merchants can curb significant losses from fraud

Figures from the annual BRC Retail Crime Survey report an exponential increase in eCommerce fraud, specifically fraudulent Card Not Present (CNP) refunds. As consumers shift away from spending on the high street and adopt a proclivity for online shopping, eCommerce fraud is growing at twice the rate of eCommerce sales. It’s expected that retailers will lose around $130 billion in digital CNP fraud between now and 2023.

To combat this risk, online retailers have spent a staggering £8 million, adopting a reactive measure rather than a proactive one. However, by investing in fraud prevention and detection solutions that verify a user’s identity and cross-reference it against fraud data before allowing transactions, merchants can curb significant losses from fraud.

A data trail is at the heart of every transaction, even the fraudulent ones. If used effectively, data can expose malicious actors, especially when verifying identities at account creation. With the rise in eCommerce fraud, the use of specific data points can create barriers that prevent criminals from gaining access to eCommerce accounts, while simultaneously authorizing legitimate customers to effortlessly access their accounts.

In mere seconds, smart data can be referenced, verified and used to prevent fraudulent transactions — saving online retailers time, money and resources — while allowing legitimate customers to easily and efficiently complete a purchase.

Additionally, many online retailers are expanding into emerging markets around the world where mobile phones are proving an effective cost-efficient tool for identity verification.

As eCommerce continues to grow, so too does the risk and cost of fraud. Fraudsters will always go for the easiest, fastest and most lucrative payoffs, and that means targeting retail sites that do not implement vigilant, vigorous practices for verifying customers and detecting fraud. In the burgeoning eCommerce landscape of today, an agile and data-centric approach to combat fraud is the need of the hour.

This article first appeared on RetailSector.