Online fraud marred Black Friday weekend

Cases of suspected online retail fraud coming from SA rose by 6.59% during the start of the 2020 holiday shopping season compared to the same period last year.

The findings are based on the online retail transactions TransUnion analysed for its e-commerce customers between November 26-30.

Heading into the holiday shopping season, the global TransUnion Financial Hardship Study conducted from November 1-3 also found that 41% of 1,100 South African consumers said they had been targeted by digital fraud related to Covid-19, a 64% increase from the same survey in the week of April 13.

“With the Covid-19 pandemic accelerating the move from offline to online transactions, detecting digital fraud attempts has become paramount for e-commerce providers,” said Keith Wardell, director of product at TransUnion Africa.

“To avoid cart abandonment with all of these new sales opportunities, it is equally if not more important to ensure consumers are able to make friction-right digital transactions.”

TransUnion has identified these trends on suspected fraudulent e-commerce transactions in SA during the start of the holiday shopping season and entire year from 2018 to 2020:

• 7.40% from November 26-30 2020; 18.55% so far in 2020.
• 6.94% from November 28-December 2 2019; 5.32% in all of 2019.
• 3.49% from November 22-26 2018; 8.69% in all of 2018.

The days with the highest percentage of suspected fraudulent transactions coming from SA during the start of the 2020 holiday shopping season were:

• Black Friday, November 27: 4.43%.
• Saturday November 28: 6.94%.
• Sunday November 29: 11.08%.
• Cyber Monday, November 30: 9.42%.

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