E-commerce merchants in the U.S. and U.K. navigate a complex landscape of competing priorities, including increasingly sophisticated fraud, growing consumer demands for a frictionless experience, evolving regulatory requirements, and a variety of different types of consumer abuses. Merchant fraud control strategies have evolved over the years as online spending has increased and fraudsters have launched more sophisticated fraud attacks.

This report examines how e-commerce merchants are faring in their efforts to balance competing operational objectives of maximizing authorization approval rates while also minimizing fraud losses and false declines. It contains estimates of global e-commerce sales, fraud losses, false decline rates, and lost sales due to false declines. It provides insights into the tools merchants use in their fraud-fighting arsenal, the progress they are making in lowering their fraud losses, and improvements in increasing e-commerce authorization approval rates. This report is based on interviews with 200 e-commerce merchants in the U.S. and U.K. between July and September 2023.

Clients of Datos Insights’ Fraud & AML service can download this report.