High risk of fraud

[EmmanNite]

Hi, everyone

I received my first order on my store at 5:51 last night, but it was flagged for a high-risk of fraud. 

This was the fraud analysis:

Order total was about £50 for two items

What do you recommend I do here? Just cancel straight away?

I have the email of the customer, should I contact them? If so, what should i say in the email?

Thanks

[Nick]

Hi @EmmanNite,

Nick here from Shopify. Great questions, always good to check and find the process for this! 

The first thing I will say, is that it is completely up to you, the store owner on whether or not you accept the order. Shopify doesn't get involved in the day to day business of any business or stores which use the platform. 

You have already started with the correct process by reaching out to the customer. One of the things to remember is that a fraudulent transaction can result in a chargeback. There are several ways you can investigate the order further to make your decision on whether or not you want to accept it:

• Verify the IP address
• Call the phone number on the order
• Search for the email address and or email the customer at the email address provided 
• Verify the Shipping and Billing addresses match and if they don't, ask the customer why that might be if you contact them
• Check if multiple orders use different billing addresses for the same shipping address

When reaching out to the customer, you can ask them if they made an order on your store, as well as what they ordered, for how much, the shipping addresses they provided, the last 4 digits of the credit card (CC) to verify they are the actual person who made the order. If after asking these questions, you feel comfortable it was this person, you can fulfil the order. If you are unsure in any way shape or form, you can cancel the order. Shopify has a great guide going through some of these steps in more detail which you can see here. 

Something else you can consider adding to your store for future orders to help prevent fraudulent orders is a fraud prevention app. There are several in the Shopify App Store including Shopify's free fraud prevention app, Fraud Filter. You can see the other fraud apps here. 

I hope this helps and please don't hesitate to ask any other questions about this if you have any. 

Thanks, Nick

[cybertonica]

Hello EmmanNite,

You’ve definitely taken the right first step by looking at the fraud analysis and being suspicious. You could try and contact the customer for a peace of mind and verify that they are real.

You could also cancel the order straight away as you mentioned, as you do not want to end up out of pocket. Considering the issues raised from the fraud analysis, depending on your risk appetite, you might feel more comfortable cancelling the order to prevent a chargeback in the future.

To monitor this type of fraud in the future, the first step you can take to verify identities and reduce chargebacks is to add an extra layer of fraud protection to your store. So when you get an order, you know it’s real.

Why not try our FREE 30 day trial of eComm360 Fraud Prevention on the Shopify app marketplace? The app provides visibility on your orders and allows you to understand the metadata and suspicious data from the order which we will flag. You can set your risk range customised depending on your appetite to deny riskier orders.

Feel free to reach out to hello@cybertonica.com, and we’ll be glad to offer any further assistance on how to protect your business against fraud and cyber risk threats. 

Kind Regards,

Maya from eComm360

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Combining real-time threat intelligence and order monitoring to prevent fraudulent orders with eComm360. 

https://apps.shopify.com/ecomm360-fraud-prevention