Home › News › Apr 2017

E-commerce Fraud Increased 33% in 2016

Staff Report

Monday, April 17th, 2017

Understanding where fraud takes place matters so businesses and consumers can be diligent in protecting themselves. Fraudsters continue to migrate their activities online as more merchants switch to EMV terminals and consumers receive chip-and-pin credit cards. Experian analyzed this trend in a new report, the 2016 E-commerce Fraud Attack Rates rankings, that analyzes millions of e-commerce transactions and ranked the top states, cities and ZIP codes for shipping and billing fraud across the United States.

The data represents the attempted fraudulent e-commerce transactions against the population of overall e-commerce orders ranked by the fraud attack rate.Delaware, Oregon, and Florida were the top-ranked states for billing and shipping e-commerce fraud in 2016. Both Oregon and Delaware saw an increase in e-commerce billing fraud attacks of over 200 percent. Three states, Florida, California and New York, accounted for more than 70 percent of total e-commerce billing fraud attacks.

"One of the major drivers for the increase in fraud attacks is the continued adoption of EMV terminals for chip-and-pin credit cards. While these cards reduced counterfeit credit card fraud at the point-of-sale, they have driven fraudsters online. This pattern is similar to what other EMV markets saw when transitioning to chip-and-pin cards," said Adam Fingersh, Experian general manager and senior vice president of Fraud and Identity Solutions. "As more compromised data becomes available from breaches, it's easier for fraudsters to get their hands on identity data requiring consumers and businesses to stay diligent in protecting themselves."

According to Experian's rankings of e-commerce fraud attack rates for 2016 the data shows:

  • South El Monte, CA was the top ranked city for both shipping and billing fraud in 2016. The billing fraud attack rate was nearly double that of the second-ranked city, Port Reading, NJ.

  • Miami, FL, was home to the most ranked ZIP codes for e-commerce fraud accounting for 17 of the top 100 for shipping fraud and 20 of the top 100 for billing fraud.

  • 10 states saw an increase of over 100 percent in shipping fraudulent orders — Alaska, Colorado, New Mexico, Idaho, North Dakota, Maine, Montana, Iowa, South Dakota, and Wyoming.

Experian hosted a recent EMV fraud webinar with Julie Conroy from Aite that looked at how businesses and customers are affected. Additional fraud analysis of the rankings shares more of that data trends.

Having the right fraud solution in place can help businesses prevent losses especially when it comes to authenticating consumers while still maintaining a positive customer experience. Experian's fraud and identity business is a global leader in the identity and fraud market saving more than $2 billion worldwide.