Consumers are spending more online than ever before. With an increase in online shopping comes an increase in ecommerce fraud. Fraudsters are taking advantage of our increasingly digital world and finding new ways to get their hands on your hard-earned money.
The more we embrace modern conveniences regarding ecommerce online stores, the more thieves and fraudsters will take advantage of these systems. As long as there is money to be made, there is an incentive to steal and trick hardworking online shop owners. In 2021 alone, ecommerce fraud surpassed $20 billion, an 18% jump compared to the previous years.
There are methods to protect your WooCommerce or Shopify store. Using bespoke plugins and apps like Xero for Business is an excellent place to start. It will allow you to track all the currency moving through your company. However, to really protect your business, you need to understand why this increase in fraud happening in the first place is.
1 – Increase in Digital Transactions
As digital transactions increase, so does the risk of fraud. This isn’t exactly a revelation—it’s just common sense. The more opportunities for fraud exist, the more likely you are to encounter it.
Digital transactions offer greater access and convenience than their analog counterparts, and as people continue to move away from physical payment methods like cash and checks toward digital ones like credit cards and mobile apps, the number of available options for fraudulent activity will only increase.
To combat this issue, retailers must adopt new strategies designed specifically for online shopping environments.
2 – Including New Methods of Payment
As we mentioned, credit cards are the most popular method of payment on the internet. However, there are other options as well. Bank accounts (e.g., PayPal and Venmo) or cryptocurrency (e.g., Bitcoin) are also available. These methods can be convenient and easy to use because you don’t have to carry a physical card with you everywhere you go—but they aren’t as secure as credit cards.
The more ecommerce platforms offer various payment methods, the greater the risk of fraud. Therefore, you must be sure that anytime you integrate a new payment method, you are also increasing your security and anti-fraud features.
3 – Integration of Chips in Credit Cards
The credit card industry is on the verge of a significant shift. Chipped cards are being introduced to combat fraud, with most cards in circulation now chipped. The chips make it more difficult for criminals to counterfeit or clone your card and easier for you to protect yourself against fraud.
The result is fewer stolen credit cards and more fake credit card numbers. If the fraudsters cannot get a hold of your physical card, they will simply copy down the number, name, address, and CCV. This can be done through the dark web by purchasing thousands of credit card details for practically nothing and then running them through an automated program to bombard an ecommerce site with attempted purchases.
4 – Lack of Jobs & Increased Inflation
Unemployment leads to a decrease in purchasing power. This means that when people don’t have jobs, they can’t spend money on goods and services. This results in a decline in sales, which causes stores like Amazon to lay off employees and cut costs wherever possible. It also means that some people will seek other methods of getting what they want.
If there are no jobs that pay well enough to overcome rising inflation costs, then more people are likely to embrace underhanded methods of acquiring cash. This can be done relatively anonymously through fraud automation against ecommerce storefronts.
5 – Increase in Delivery Services
One of the main reasons for higher ecommerce fraud is the rise in delivery services. With an increase in the number of delivery services available, fraudsters have more opportunities to commit fraud. As an example, you may see a listing claiming that there’s a physical address where you can pick up your package. However, after making contact with them and agreeing on a pickup time and place, they’ll request that you pay via Apple Pay or Venmo so they can send their driver over immediately with your package (which doesn’t exist).
Things You Can Do to Prevent Ecommerce Fraud
The best solution to combating fraudsters is having a fully updated and integrated ecommerce platform. Of course, you can try to put together a list of apps or plugins that will help, but a simple answer is the powerful WooCommerce Anti-Fraud app from OPMC.
This bespoke development team uses modern technology and updated fraud protection to prevent users from making illegal purchases on your ecommerce store. The anti-fraud plugin places value on the transaction and then ranks it compared to other data points. This way, if more transactions occur in the future, they can be easily blocked.
There are also manual controls like blacklisting emails, accounts, IPs, and countries from making purchases on your ecommerce store. The high-quality layer of proactive protection against everything from refund fraud to velocity attacks is why every WooCommerce store needs this powerful plugin.
You can learn more by visiting the plugin’s webpage. Once you see all of the exceptional benefits, you will most likely download and install the plugin to give your ecommerce store a fighting edge against fraudsters.
Ecommerce fraud is on the rise, but it is not too late. By implementing the right measures, you can avoid the risks associated with ecommerce and protect your business from unnecessary losses.
Download WooCommerce Anti-Fraud today
WooCommerce Anti-Fraud assigns a score to orders as they are placed. The higher the score, the higher the risk of fraud.
