Those who love to shop online for just about everything, especially during the holiday season, should be a little more careful this year. Attempts by criminal hackers to steal consumers’ payment information in order to commit online fraud will significantly rise this holiday season. According to recent research by ACI Worldwide, consumers and retailers must be ever-vigilant as they prepare for the 2015 holiday shopping season.
United States merchants and companies that issue credit and debit cards are increasingly switching from the traditional magnetic stripe cards to the more secure chip cards for in-person purchases. This makes it more difficult for criminals to hack an individual’s card information from the point of sale at the register. Therefore, the fraudsters are moving to the Internet to steal payment information used for online sales.
The new ACI research shows that the overall volume of fraud rates for transactions that do not actually involve a physical swiping of a card have increased this year – with a fraudulent attempt happening one out of every 86 transactions, compared with one out of 114 transactions last year.
Moreover, as consumers use more types of devices to conduct their online shopping, fraud attempts have risen by 30% compared to that in 2014. Also leading to the increase in fraud is the fact that card issuers are slower to close accounts after fraudulent activities take place.
Mike Braatz, a senior vice president at ACI Worldwide, noted that, “When it comes to fraud, 2015 is likely among the riskiest season retailers have ever seen. It is critical that [consumers and companies] prepare for a significant uptick in fraud, particularly within e-commerce channels.”
ACI delivers electronic payment and banking solutions for retailers, processors and financial institutions globally. The data used in the new research is based on an analysis of hundreds of millions of transactions from January to July 2015 compared with the same time period last year.
