New Types of Fraud Affecting More E-Commerce Merchants, Says Report

An oft-repeated truism among fraud professionals is that fraud and fraudsters’ tactics are always evolving. A new report from antifraud technology provider Ravelin actually quantifies the extent to which that axiom is true. Online Merchant Perspectives: Fraud & Payments Survey 2022 found new fraud types affected 62 percent of merchants in 2021, contributing significantly to the $20 billion merchants lost to fraud in their e-commerce channels last year.

Refund abuse, for instance, increased 51 percent from 2020 to 2021, with 60 percent of merchants saying they had experienced a surge in this type of fraud. Promotion abuse, another relatively new type of fraud, also rose in 2021 with 55 percent of merchants experiencing an increase in this type of fraud.

The study found digital goods merchants are attacked more than any other kind of online seller. Promo abuse, account takeover and friendly fraud attacks rose more for those selling virtual or digital goods than any other merchant type.

“2021 was another turbulent year for e-commerce,” said Martin Sweeney, CEO of Ravelin. “Despite the tentative return of in-person buying, e-commerce continued to boom, and it became clear that the digital shift isn’t going anywhere. But with rising digital sales came increasing fraud attacks. It’s imperative that businesses invest in fraud teams and budgets in 2022, to create an ecosystem that comprises of fraud detection technology data and human insight to combat new types of fraud attacks fast.”

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