How to handle fraudulent transactions in my online store?

[Julia_Kahlig-Ga]

Hi!

For the last several months I've had several people reach out to me who are not my customers and have never visited my website, that they had charges on their credit cards from my Shopify store. 

I chatted with Shopify support and with my web hosting company and couldn't not identify any security issues. 

1. Has this happened to any other stores?

2. How should I respond to people whose information has been stolen and their credit card companies ask them to reach out to me to find out why?

3. How can I prevent this from happening in the future?

Thanks for any help!

-Julia

[Beacon-Jason]

Hi @Julia_Kahlig-Ga ,

From your description, it does sound like bad actors have used stolen CC data and are making fraudulent purchases on your site from unsuspecting people who never made a purchase on your site. With this said, it happens to many eCommerce sites and it's can be more or less common depending on the industry you are in.

If the dollar amount is relatively low, I would just eat the cost and quickly refund the customer who did not intentionally make the purchase to avoid running your brand image and potentially getting a chargeback filed against you by the original cardholder. Keep in mind that getting a chargeback will cost you more than the original amount lost, so carefully take this into account.

The best way to prevent this from happening is to monitor all your orders that come in for suspicious activities. Here are two articles that might help you.

https://medium.com/@jason_80572/five-things-you-can-look-at-to-prevent-fraud-orders-from-happening-t...

https://medium.com/@jason_80572/how-to-configure-your-shopify-settings-to-better-reduce-fraud-orders...

If you have a lot of orders that come in, then you need to look into downloading and paying for a fraud app. You can do this through several apps that are available on the Shopify app including our's https://apps.shopify.com/beacon where you have much more control and automate things. Many apps have different degrees of features and pricing so do your own research to see what fits your needs.  If you are looking for a free app, then consider checking out Shopify's "fraud filter app".

I hope this helps you just a tiny bit.

[Julia_Kahlig-Ga]

Thanks so much for your response! 

The only issue is I can't refund the purchases because I have no record of them. It's almost as if there wasn't a purchase on my site at all. I wouldn't know about the charges if people didn't reach out to me. Also, these aren't my customers so I have no record of their credit card information.