Big Scammers

Monday, March 6, 2017

The Financial Benefits of Learning How to Avoid Online Fraud


Does your company need to learn how to avoid online fraud? It’s important to consider the various ways your company can prevent fraudulent Internet transactions because it can provide several benefits for your company.

How important is it? In fact, one of the main benefits of preventing online fraud is that it can save your company a ton of money. This is certainly a plus regarding your company’s financial health. You might be surprised about the high costs of fraud regarding how to avoid online fraud.

In fact, studies show that the cost of fraud is a sky-high 7.6% of online companies’ total revenue. Depending on the size of a company’s yearly revenue that figure could be in the millions of dollars. The study also showed that companies rely too much on a username/password.

The study was done last year, so the results are relevant regarding Q1 2017 not being over yet. There are several causes of the high costs of fraud. They include chargeback losses, false positives, and other factors. This highlights the need to focus on how to avoid online fraud.

The report was published in October 2016. The findings also include an online study that was done in June 2016, which included 500 e-commerce merchants that have year sales of at least $1 million.

The average amount of funds that the companies spent yearly on fraud prevention was $14.6 million. That includes 7.6% of both online/offline sales. About three-quarters of the expenditures were for fraud management software, 19% was from false positives, and 7% was due to chargebacks.

The bottom line is that companies should focus more on how to avoid online fraud. There’s a certain amount of fraud that’s to be expected but nearly 8% of a company’s yearly revenue is quite a high price tag for fraud prevention.

The company that conducted the study reported that the figure was quite high. This is especially due to the issue of the opportunity cost. The funds that the companies spend on fraud protection could have spent on its core business, for example. This is why it’s critical to figure out how to avoid online fraud.

In fact, the conductors of the study reported that the findings showed a fraud environment that was “very aggressive.” That’s especially true among online companies.

The company recommended that companies use more fraud-battling tools that check the customer’s device, purchase activity, and behavior. There are various options including fingerprinting, which uses data for identifying individual smartphones, tablets, or PCs. This is done to verify the identity of a shopper. These elements are tougher for criminals to overcome.

The company also argued that retailers shouldn’t rely as much as they do on various data elements that are static on. The reason is the security code located on the back of the credit/debit card. Another major benefit is that geolocation as well as device fingerprinting doesn’t need much effort from customers.


These are some of the main issues related to the cost-effectiveness of learning how to avoid online fraud.