Orders tagged as high risk

Shopify Discussion

Topic summary

Merchants are struggling to balance canceling high-risk orders versus losing legitimate sales and paying refund fees. The core challenge: Shopify’s fraud detection flags many orders, but not all are actually fraudulent.

Common verification approaches:

  • Email customers at their provided address to confirm delivery details
  • Never ship to addresses that differ from billing addresses
  • Request photo ID or ask customers to explain suspicious details (e.g., international IP addresses)
  • Use manual payment capture to review orders before funds settle
  • Verify last 4 card digits, billing ZIP, or send SMS verification codes

Key fraud patterns to watch:

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

Recommended strategy:
Several participants suggest allowing a small percentage of high-risk orders through based on least-risky criteria, then gradually increasing until chargebacks occur to find the optimal balance. Canceling 100% of flagged orders likely rejects legitimate customers.

Tools mentioned:
Multiple fraud prevention apps are suggested (FraudFalcon, FraudLabs Pro, FraudGuard) that automate order screening based on customizable rules, reducing manual review time while protecting against chargebacks.

Summarized with AI on October 27. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
5

Hey :waving_hand:

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 :blush: