17.5% of all global e-commerce transactions – and 3.6% of Kenyan transactions – between November 25-29 were potentially fraudulent. This is according to new findings around global e-commerce fraud trends released by TransUnion last week.
Globally, this is 3.7% higher than the same five-day period leading up to Cyber Monday last year. For transactions originating from Kenya, the percentage of suspected fraudulent transactions decreased by 16.5% when comparing those same periods. These findings are based on intelligence from billions of transactions contained in TransUnion’s fraud analytics solution suite, TruValidate.
The analysis also found the top two reasons potentially fraudulent e-commerce transactions globally were identified during this timeframe were the number of accounts per device (which triggers when a device accesses a certain number of accounts during the period), and evidence of previous fraud on the account or device.
“The holiday shopping season is a popular time for bad actors to engage in fraudulent activity, particularly in the e-commerce and retail industry,” said Samuel Tayengwa, head of product for TransUnion rest of Africa regions. “Online shopping is the new norm for most consumers and that trend has been further accelerated due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Consumers want to shop with online retailers that not only provide a seamless user experience, but also take consumer security and privacy seriously. It is imperative that those businesses equip themselves with the proper tools to detect fraud at the first warning sign without inhabiting the consumer journey.”
TransUnion monitors digital fraud attempts reported by businesses in varied industries such as gambling, gaming, financial services, healthcare, insurance, retail, and travel and leisure, among others. The conclusions are based on intelligence from billions of transactions and more than 40,000 websites and apps contained in its flagship identity proofing, risk-based authentication and fraud analytics solution suite – TransUnion TruValidate™.
In addition to the above findings, TransUnion released the following fraud analysis for Kenya regarding the percentage of suspected fraudulent e-commerce transactions during the start of the holiday shopping season and entire year from 2019 to 2021.
The report is available for download here.
