Online Merchants Cut Fraud Losses

Increased use of antifraud procedures has helped e-commerce merchants reduce the amount of revenue lost to fraud to $3.3 billion this year, an 18% decrease from $4 billion in 2008, according to a CyberSource Corp. survey.

This is the first decrease in revenue lost to fraud since 2003, the Mountain View, Calif., provider of electronic payments and risk management products said.

"The e-commerce fraud picture has typically been one of worsening merchant losses," said Doug Schwegman, CyberSource's director of market and customer intelligence. "This year, [e-commerce] merchants have won back some ground."

Roughly one-third of online merchants reported changing businesses procedures, such as implementing automated decision tools to sort purchase orders, to respond to fraudsters. However, 21% of survey respondents report fraudsters are creating increasingly complex schemes, and 48% believe fraudulent orders appear more like valid orders compared with orders a year ago. CyberSource conducted the online survey, its 11th annual, between Sept. 10 and Oct. 7, receiving responses from 352 businesses.

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