The conventional wisdom is that along with the holiday season’s higher sales volume comes a greater risk of fraud. But fraud rates actually decrease during the holidays, at least in the e-Commerce arena, according to this infographic from Riskified. Online purchases are 55% less likely to turn out to be fraudulent during the holidays compared to the rest of the year, and fraud rates are 70% lower on the peak online shopping days of Black Friday, Cyber Monday and New Year’s Eve.
Is there a downside to this good news? Yes, because if retailers decline too many “suspicious” transactions, they will lose sales and turn away good customers. For example, the prevalence of online gift-giving at this time of year means mismatches between billing and shipping addresses are higher than usual. Retailers declining too many of these transactions will punish innocent Santas along with would-be fraudsters.
Source: Riskified
