E-commerce businesses are fighting on two fronts - retaining discerning consumers while protecting and growing their businesses in a challenging economic climate. Managing fraud contributes to the success of these outcomes. But it’s on the rise and increasingly more sophisticated.

We surveyed ecommerce CFOs across 10 countries and found that fraud continues to be a significant contributor to profit erosion. Here are some key takeaways...

You can't afford to overlook opportunistic fraud

Payment card fraud by criminals remains high. And organized, entrepreneurial fraudsters continue to conjure up more sophisticated schemes like “fraud as a service”. But more noteworthy is the rise of the “criminal customer”.

Likely fueled by the cost of living crisis, more and more customers are chancing their luck on “friendly fraud”, returns and promotions abuse. To the extent that a third of finance leaders say this is the number one risk factor facing their business.

Is the solution bigger fraud teams?

In response to these emerging trends, CFOs overwhelmingly expect their fraud teams to grow over the coming months - with a third of respondents agreeing their teams could increase by 20 percent or more.

Yet this is unsustainable: fraud will continue to mutate, customers will become more demanding and fickle, and losses will continue to grow.

A scalable fraud strategy needs automation

It's clear that brands must think differently about managing fraud if they want to stay relevant to time-poor customers, minimize losses, and emerge stronger from the current economic slowdown.

This means automating more and relying less on manual investigations. Essentially, fixed rules need to give way to machine learning.

Using automation to nip fraudulent transactions in the bud will help free up expert human fraud investigator to help minimize profit erosion, inform product development, and support business growth.

Find out more...

Check out all the findings from our survey in our in-depth report. Discover how CFOs are handling an increasingly complex fraud landscape and its impact on their business.

Get the full report and some specially selected additional resources here