Orders tagged as high risk

[PW_Man]

Hello Fellow Sellers. I have been getting a lot of potentially high risk orders and I’ve cancelled all of them after trying to verify info and doing assessments on the orders. I am curious to know how you’ve been handling these types of orders. Should I let any of them through? I’ve lost a lot of potential sales and paid back fees because of these. Thanks in advance for the responses.

[giftsatbliss]

I have a bricks and mortar store and when these online orders come through as high risk (happens rarely for me) I always email the address given and check whether the delivery address is valid and that they know about the order. I never send out orders to a shipping address different to statement address. On the occasion that I did the order was fraudulent and I had to go through a complicated chargeback fraud system with the card issuer. As a small business I’d rather not lose my money.

[JoesIdeas]

When I ran a store we used to have support contact the customer. The verification process changed a few times, but usually just from making contact you can get a feel for if it’s a real person or not. If unsure, we would ask them to take a picture with their ID. Could be invasive to some people, so you could start lighter (explain your automated fraud system flagged the order, ask them about the details, like why they are placing the order from a different country, or whatever the details are).

I did an analysis and shared my experience here: How to Deal with Fraudulent Orders and Minimize Chargebacks on Shopify

If you’re letting 0 high risk orders through, you’re probably cancelling legit orders. You might consider starting small, like letting x% of high risk orders through, based on your criteria of them being the least risky, start there and increase it until you start getting chargebacks, then dial it back to find the sweet spot.

This depends on the order value of course. Like gambling, if you’re not comfortable risking the money (product) then just cancel it for peace of mind.

[Merchanto]

To handle potentially high-risk orders, consider setting clear criteria for what qualifies as a safe order based on your experience and any verification tools available. You might also establish a process for verifying customer information, such as confirming shipping addresses or using phone verification, before canceling orders. It could be beneficial to keep a record of high-risk orders and any trends you notice to inform your decisions moving forward. Lastly, consider balancing caution with a calculated risk for higher-value orders that seem legitimate, as not all may be fraudulent.

[sandro_vol]

Hey

I’d also be pretty cautious if an order is labelled as high-risk from Shopify. It is not always right but a lot.

Fraudulent orders often have some similar patterns and this is what the Shopify Risk level shows you. For example:

• Shipping/billing address mismatches
• High-value orders from new customers
• IP location different from shipping address
• Multiple failed payment attempts

While canceling suspicious orders means losing some potential sales, it’s much better than dealing with chargebacks later (which cost you fees, lost revenue, AND inventory).

Here’s what we usually recommend:

1. Check Shopify’s risk level
2. Look for the fraud patterns above
3. Try to verify with the customer (though fraudsters often don’t respond)

To make this easier and automate the process, we built FraudFalcon - it automatically cancels suspicious orders based on rules you set. That way you don’t need to manually check each order and can focus on growing your business instead.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any questions

[myra24]

Hi,

It is quite overwhelming when dealing with high-risk orders as we do not want to lose legitimate customers.

At first, I’m checking all orders manually which I found time-consuming. So, I’ve tried using a free fraud checking tool that automates all orders checking.

Every business has a different level of risk tolerance, so you can create your own fraud validation rules to meet your business needs. For me, I create fraud validation rules below to reject or flag suspicious orders for my review.

• Check if the IP matches the shipping or billing location.
• Look for patterns like multiple failed payment attempts or rush orders.
• Use email verification to see if it’s a disposable or risky domain.

You can also contact customers for further verification like verify their phone number by sending a SMS verification.

Hope it helps.

[Reuventr]

Hey, I’ve been dealing with the same problem myself. High-risk orders have been a real pain—either you cancel and lose a potential sale, or you take the risk and end up with a chargeback plus processing fees.

After going through this over and over, I started doing two things that helped a lot:

• Switching to manual capture so I could review orders before payments actually settle. That way, if something feels off, I can void the transaction without being charged a fee.

• For orders that seem suspicious but potentially legit, I started using a simple verification step:
  Ask the customer to confirm the last 4 digits of their card and their billing ZIP code.
  If the risk is higher or the order value is large, I ask for a quick document like a utility bill or ID. In some cases, merchants also use a $0–$1 authorization charge with a code in the statement descriptor, but that depends on the payment provider.

Because this kept coming up, I ended up building FraudGuard, a Shopify app that automates this whole process:

• It runs its own fraud analysis on top of Shopify’s signals

• Auto-captures safe orders, holds suspicious ones

• Sends the right verification request depending on the risk level

• Helps you recover good orders without exposing yourself to chargebacks

We’re giving early access to a early adopters now—if you’re interested: https://fraudguard.carrd.co/

— Reuven | Founder, FraudGuard (Shopify app)