Online fraud attempts forecasted to peak on Thanksgiving Day

Dive Brief:

This holiday season, online fraud attempts on retailers will peak on Thanksgiving Day, according to new data from ACI Worldwide, a payments solutions provider.
ACI predicts fraud attempts will increase 14% during the peak holiday season between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday. That is down from ACI's final 22% fraud attempt increase number for last year's holiday season, as reported by Payments Next. The average ticket price of the fraud is forecasted to rise 3% from $236 to $243.
As retailers fine-tune their omnichannel sales efforts, fraud across channels is growing. Besides the usual e-commerce channels, fraudsters will be targeting call centers and buy online, pick up in-store programs, said ACI.

Dive Insight:

Hold the apple pie. Retailers are preparing for a forecasted 14% increase in fraud attempts between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, based on hundreds of millions of merchant transactions, according to ACI.

In other findings, ACI reported that in the peak holiday season the volume of purchases is predicted to increase by 18% over last year while the value of purchases is expected to go up by 19%. ACI expects the stated value of fraud attempts to increase by 17%.

"Fraudsters prepare for peak holiday season just as much as merchants and consumers do," Erika Dietrich, ACI's global director of payments risk, said in a statement. "As the market matures and EMV technology makes card-present fraud harder, we expect overall fraud attempts to increase at a lower rate this year than they did in the last two years. In addition, as more consumers purchase big-ticket items like smartphones, TVs and other electronics, we expect the attempted fraud average ticket price to be higher this year than in previous years."

Meanwhile, LastPass announced its Online Retail Naughty and Nice list of U.S. retailers which ranked the top 10 e-commerce companies for how well they protect customers' personal information in case of a cybersecurity data breach. Apple topped the "Nice" list, followed by Best Buy, The Home Depot, Amazon and Qurate Retail Group (owner of QVC, HSN and Zulily). Wayfair led the "Naughty" list, followed by Walmart, eBay, Macy's and Costco.

ACI's numbers are at their highest for Thanksgiving Day and then decline. On Thanksgiving Day, the volume of transactions is predicted to go up 23% compared to 2017, with the volume of fraud attempts reaching 1.8%. On Black Friday, ACI expects the volume of transactions to increase 19% compared to last year, while the volume of fraud attempts will be 1.3%. On Cyber Monday, the volume of transactions is predicted to rise 14% from last year, while the volume of fraud attacks will be 0.93%.

The sales volume increase during the holiday season are good for retailers, but there is a price as they present a "perfect storm" for fraudsters, wrote ACI's Michael Grillo in Enterprise Innovation.