There has been a 6,59% rise in suspected online retail fraud coming from South Africa during the start of the 2020 holiday shopping season compared to the same period in 2019.
These findings are based on the online retail transactions TransUnion analysed for its e-commerce customers between November 26 and November 30.
Heading into the holiday shopping season, the global TransUnion Financial Hardship Study conducted from 1 November to 2 November found 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 the week of 13 April.
“With the Covid-19 pandemic accelerating the move from offline to online transactions, detecting digital fraud attempts has become paramount for e-commerce providers,” says 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.”
In addition to the above findings, TransUnion released the following trends around suspected fraudulent e-commerce transactions in South Africa during the start of the holiday shopping season and entire year from 2018 to 2020:
* 7,4% from 26-30 November; 18,55% so far in 2020.
* 6,94% from 28 November to 2 December 2019; 5,32% in all of 2019.
* 3,49% from 22-26 November 2018; 8,69% in all of 2018.
The days with the highest percent of suspected fraudulent transactions coming from South Africa during the start of the 2020 holiday shopping season were:
* Sunday 29 November – 11,08%
* Cyber Monday, 30 November – 9,42%
* Saturday 28 November – 6,94%
* Thursday 26 November – 6,63%
* Black Friday 27 November – 4,43%.