According to Salesforce, global online holiday spending is expected to increase about 3% to an estimated total of $1.19 trillion, over $20 billion from last year’s totals. Given this boom, online retailers should be feeling the holiday cheer, but the risk of online fraud may have some people feeling like Scrooge.  

With an estimated $48 billion in global e-commerce fraud in 2023, you need to know what your organization is up against this holiday season.  Let’s look into common types of e-commerce fraud and how you can minimize the risk to your business this season. 

Types of Fraud 

“Friendly fraud” may sound harmless, but it’s anything but friendly.  Chargebacks, or when a customer disputes a legitimate charge with their bank or credit card, and return fraud can move loyal, nice-list worthy customers to the bottom of the naughty list. Return fraud cost U.S. retailers over $101 billion in 2023 and 40% of online shoppers in the UK, France, and Germany admitted to committing friendly fraud. 

Brand imposters are another type of fraud that both retailers and consumers have to be concerned with, as this accounted for almost half of the fraud reports received by the Federal Trade Association (FTC) in 2023.  Lookalike sites and counterfeit goods are used to deceive consumers and provide scammers with the consumer’s information, which can then be used to open up fraudulent accounts. 

Identity theft is a concern for most customers when participating in e-commerce.  Consumers’ data can be accessed through data breaches, synthetic engineering, and phishing.  Scammers then use this data to conduct transactions or make new accounts.  With a 21% increase from 2023 to 2024 (Veriff Identity Fraud Report, 2025), synthetic identity fraud is the fastest growing type of fraud.  This form of identity theft uses real and fabricated information to create entirely new identities, then using the identities to open accounts and take out credit.  Synthetic identity fraud can take years to catch as the identities only exist on the web.  

How Retailers Can Minimize Risk of Fraud

With a busy holiday shopping season around the corner, retailers need to be bolstering their protections against online fraud.  Try implementing these tricks to reduce the Scrooges shopping your products today: 

• Monitor the web: Counterfeit goods can harm consumers, but they can harm retailers, too, by eliciting poor product reviews and losing brand loyalty.  Regularly search the web for lookalike sites, fake social media accounts, and ads for counterfeit products.  Report them to law enforcement to have them taken down. 
• Reduce incentives for return fraud: By providing consumers with store credit for returned items instead of money back, retailers can retain their income.  Prevent “wardrobing,” the practice of using an item once to then return it for full credit or charge, with measures like antiwardrobing tags, which increase the difficulty of returning objects. 
• Partner with identity verification services: With the rise of synthetic identity fraud, it is more important than ever to verify consumer identity.  Consumer data, government identification, and watch lists are all tools that can be used to validate your customer’s identity. 

Protect Against Fraud this Season with Integrity

Integrity, a division of Aristotle, is a leader in identity verification and anti-fraud protection.  We have a variety of solutions to spread holiday cheer to you and your consumers this season with customized validation services to meet your needs. Here are just a few products for you to consider integrating into your e-commerce platform: 

• Integrity IDV-Direct: A web-based platform to verify the identity of online visitors across our database of 3.4 billion citizens across 135 countries allows you to quickly and efficiently. The platform is available through a single API allowing for an “integrate once, use anywhere” approach and is combined with several external gateways to deliver a best-of-class verification solution that leverages global data.  
• Integrity IdentityRep: An partner developed system that integrates biometrics, social engagement, and anti-fraud identity networks into a single platform. Real time anti-fraud signals allow you to catch fraudulent users at onboarding by connecting a consumer’s real-life information, such as name, address, and date of birth, with their device and Internet interaction and behavior.
• Integrity Quiz: Integrate knowledge-based authentication, leveraging KYC-compliant personal information, into your verification system. Integrity Quiz utilizes voter data to create diverse questions and offers customizable time and velocity constraints. The system also screens against financial watch lists and politically exposed persons across multiple databases for compliance and integrity.

Spread Cheer this Holiday Season with Integrity 

The best present you can give your online business this holiday season is peace of mind.  Integrity can help with that by providing you with customizable verification, KYC compliance, and anti-fraud services.  

How can Integrity help you address online fraud this holiday season? Click the “FREE DEMO” button in the upper right corner and a representative will suggest the proper solution to meet your needs.