19.5% increase in suspected digital shopping fraud attempts in Namibia during the festive shopping season – report
TransUnion, a global information and insights company, recently released new findings highlighting e-commerce fraud that occurred between the Thursday before Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
In a press statement released last week, the company revealed that the average number of suspected digital fraud attempts on any given day during this holiday period where the consumer was located in Namibia at the time of the transaction was 87.5% higher than the same period in 2022. “It was 19.5% higher than the rest of 2023(01 January to 22 November)”.
Additionally, according to TransUnion’s findings around global e-commerce fraud trends that occurred during the current holiday shopping season, 3.1% of e-commerce transactions from Namibia during that period were suspected to be fraudulent, compared to 2.8% the rest of the year.
“Globally, the analysis found that 3.6% of all e-commerce transactions during the Black Friday period (23-27 November) were suspected to be fraudulent. TransUnion also determined that the average number of suspected digital fraud attempts on any given day during that period was 15% higher than in 2022, yet 50% lower than the rest of 2023,” according to a TransUnion quarterly fraud analysis report.
“Just as the holiday season drives consumers online to begin shopping for gifts for their loved ones, so does it become a destination for fraudsters seeking to take advantage of this time for their financial gain,” said Steve Yin, Global Head of Fraud at TransUnion.
He continued: “Online retailers must ensure that consumers shopping their sites for the best deals are at the same time protected from fraud in the most seamless and friction-right way possible.”
The study also revealed the suspected digital fraud rate for each day in the holiday shopping period for transactions where the consumer was in Namibia during the transaction and globally.
Unlike last year, when Black Friday (25 November 2022) saw the highest suspected digital fraud rate of 4.7%, this rate was the highest on Thursday, 23 November, at 5.6%, the study indicated.
Meanwhile, TransUnion also revealed that it has identified the top indicators of fraudulent e-commerce transactions during the holiday shopping season globally. Transactions per Internet Protocol (IP) and transactions per device were identified as the leading indicators for potential fraud attempts, as they indicate unusual activity from a single IP address to a customer’s site in a short time, it noted.
“The upcoming holidays mark the biggest shopping season of the year for retailers, but equipping themselves with the proper tools to detect fraud at the first warning sign is a year-round priority,” said Lara Burger, Country Manager at TransUnion Namibia.
“A critical way to minimize fraudulent transactions while at the same time protecting legitimate ones involves implementing holistic fraud solutions that can verify customer identity and authenticity at the very beginning of a transaction, including both account creation and login,” Burger advised.
Furthermore, TransUnion maintained that it came to these conclusions primarily based on intelligence from its identity and fraud product suite, TransUnion TruValidate™, which helps secure trust across channels and improve consumer experiences.
Moreover, TransUnion asserted that the rate of suspected digital fraud attempts reflects interactions customers denied in real time due to fraudulent indicators or determined fraudulent after a manual review process compared to all transactions assessed for fraud.
TransUnion’s holiday fraud insights can be found at https://bit.ly/3RlWWOk to learn more about how this data varies by country and more. Consumers can obtain their TransUnion credit report, credit score, and additional credit planning tools by visiting https://bit.ly/3RmCQUp.
TransUnion has over 13,000 associates operating in more than 30 countries, including Botswana, Namibia, Malawi, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, Swaziland, and Zambia.
