Fraud

Internet fraudsters are on the prowl more than ever before due to the COVID-19 e-commerce boom. Consider that by mid-March 2020, online shopping in the U.S. surged 35 percent from 2019 levels, and card-not-present spending grew 30 percent in the last quarter of 2020, primarily driven by retail spending, as reported in Visa’s Q1 earnings. Cybercriminals…

Sleigh bells ring, are you listening? In July? While carols and snow might seem far away, spending peaks are no longer relegated to the holiday season. In fact, summer can generate significant and unexpected retail revenue. Consider this: Online shopping grew nearly 20 percent in the last 12 months. July marked the highest year-over-year increase…

With margins already tightened by the financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the oft-undetected but constant siphon of funds caused by fraud is devastating for retailers. A recent study revealed the cost of fraud to U.S. retailers and e-commerce companies rose 7 percent in 2020, with every $1 of fraud costing companies $3.36 in losses.…

As Walmart CEO Doug McMillon pointed out in an earnings call: “Changes in customer behavior have accelerated the shift to e-commerce and digital[.] We’re convinced that most of the behavior change will persist beyond the pandemic. The reality is that customers want everything. They want to go online to see hundreds of millions of items…

While herd immunity and the end of the pandemic are still months off, the time does feel right to consider how the world — including the world of e-commerce — has changed after more than a year of the COVID-19 pandemic. No question the once-in-a-lifetime medical catastrophe acted as the Great Accelerator, advancing trends throughout…

Online marketplaces eBay, Etsy, Mercari, OfferUp, and Poshmark have launched "the Coalition to Protect America's Small Sellers" or the PASS Coalition, in opposition to a federal bill aimed at curtailing sales of fake and stolen goods through online marketplaces, reports Yahoo Finance. The federal bill in question is the bipartisan INFORM Act, which was introduced in…

QR code payments have finally caught on in the U.S. after lagging behind adoption in China and other Asian markets. Why the change? The need for contactless payments brought on by the pandemic sent retailers looking for inexpensive, quick-to-implement ways to let customers pay from a distance, and QR codes fit the bill. However, with…

The pandemic has accelerated the rise of many existing trends over the past year, one being the buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS) delivery channel. For merchants that already had this option available to consumers prior to the pandemic, transactions through this channel increased 70 percent by volume and 58 percent by value in 2020,…

In my previous article about Magecart web skimming attacks, I recapped some of the noteworthy victims of this cybercriminal collective and how attackers managed to breach them. Today, security teams in retail are mostly aware of this threat, however, navigating the different technologies and products that claim to be effective towards Magecart isn’t an easy…

Magecart was certainly one of the most infamous names in 2020 when it came to cybercrime in retail. Just a few years ago, the notion of having cybercriminals silently place a skimmer in your own e-commerce website would sound absurd. Yet, to date, thousands of retailers have been breached, unknowingly allowing attackers to steal their…