In a survey examining key challenges and opportunities in e-commerce fraud prevention, 85% of attendees at its flagship event, Ascend 2025, told Riskified their biggest challenge is optimizing customer experience while implementing means to thwart bad actors.
Projections have global e-commerce sales rising to almost $8 trillion by 2028, Riskified noted, even as fraudster sophistication continues to grow apace. As such, merchants could lose as much as $448 billion annually due to payment fraud, false declines, returns and refund abuse.
Ascend 2025 in North America brought together more than 130 e-commerce professionals, including merchants representing approximately $1 trillion in annual online transaction volume. In an example of how fraud is affecting the marketplace today, 47% of those polled estimate that up to 5% of legitimate customer orders are falsely declined. The 5% false decline rate equates to approximately $50 billion in lost revenue.
When considering vulnerability, 54% of survey respondents selected initial checkout and/or purchase flow as the area that offers the greatest opportunity for improvement in fraud prevention, but e-tailers have to balance reducing friction as well as risk at a critical point in the online shopping process.
“Fraud isn’t a back-office problem anymore,” said Jeff Otto, Riskified, chief marketing officer. “It’s a front-line business decision. This survey confirms that the most successful companies are those that treat fraud strategy as a key enabler for growth, conversion and customer trust.”
