eCommerce fraud: A time sink, but sometimes by design

This article is brought to you by Retail Technology Review: eCommerce fraud: A time sink, but sometimes by design.

The nature of fraudsters changes all the time. What's clear is they're organised, and are experts in finding workarounds to classic fraud checking. The greatest cybercrime risk, then, stems from retailer and brand apathy towards preventing online fraud.

Many retailers, especially UK-based operations that are still growing their international presence, do not have their own fraud departments. Others leave it all to chance, intentionally not being too strict on their fraud processes because they want to avoid complaints or negative brand experiences from false-positives. Online fraudsters are taking advantage of this situation, as ecommerce platforms get more secure it becomes a better use of a cyber criminal's time to attempt to defraud a retailer than try and gain access to their systems.

The challenge this presents for retailers is to make fraud prevention economically viable. However, no matter what approach they take, many are still concerned about spending too much time manually reviewing orders or losing business by turning away good customers when attempting to detect fraud themselves.

A data-led tool like WorldPay's that takes the pain out of fraud detection will not only be a more cost-effective and efficient way for brands to spot fraudulent transactions and subsequently protect their bottom lines, but will also enable them to focus on their 'real' jobs – providing a quality service to customers – rather than sweating over administration and grunt work.