Holiday shopping has changed a lot since the first Cyber Monday in 2005. Consumers spent just $608 million on that inaugural Cyber Monday. This year, we spent more than $3.5 billion – with about a third of it coming from mobile devices.
Online and mobile shopping are expected to continue growing apace through the rest of the holiday season. Unfortunately, they’re not the only things on the rise: As chip-enabled cards have made brick-and-mortar shopping safer, fraudsters are increasingly targeting online stores. The widely-publicized Target credit card hack cost the company $252 million. A hefty sum, for sure, but nothing close to the $32 billion that online retailers spent preventing and remediating hacks and attacks the following year.
This discrepancy is largely down to the fact that, unlike their brick-and-mortar counterparts, online businesses are responsible for not only detecting fraud, but also paying the associated costs. On average, every $1 of fraudulent orders costs an online business an additional $2.62 and a mobile business $3.34. These costs add up quickly, largely because online businesses are susceptible to a wider range of fraud schemes, including credit card fraud, payout scams and faux refunds.
So what can online businesses do about it? Let’s start with the basics.
Getting started with fraud prevention
To begin, businesses should examine the address verification code (a postal code that matches what’s on file with the cardholder’s bank), require a card verification code (the 3- or 4-digit code on their card), and delay shipping. The latter step is especially helpful for expensive items, as it provides a safety window when the actual cardholder might flag a large fraudulent purchase……
Read MORE: How To Protect Your Business From Online Fraud This Holiday Season