Forter's report shows trends that accelerate digital transformation for merchants

The report provides merchants across industries with insight into trends seen within the USD 150 billion transactions that Forter processes annually. The Forter Special Report tracks trends and spikes in consumer behaviour, as well as innovative methods that fraudsters take to prey on consumers during the coronavirus pandemic.

• The travel industry has been extremely hard hit. Regional variations are appearing, in particular an increase in purchases of inbound international travel to China in the weeks before the country closed down inbound travel on 26 March. 
• The food and beverage industry has seen a dramatic increase in online purchases. New accounts now represent 15-25% of all customer volume, compared to 5-7% prior to the pandemic. 
• Forter sees a marked increase in social engineering fraud, associated with fake emails purporting to be from HR and corporate addresses. 
• With a shift to online shopping in Apparel and Accessories, there is an increase in gift card purchases. Gift card fraud rates have raised, as fraudsters have noticed a growing demand of the completely virtual merchandise that is easy to monetise.

Moreover, besides the Special Report, Forter has also issued its Eighth Fraud Attack Index, highlighting industry trends and innovative fraud vectors, showing the evolution of fraud, comparing H2 of 2019 to H2 of 2018. The report features the continued evolution of fraud attack vectors across all customer touchpoints, demonstrating the need to protect merchants’ digital offerings at all interactions in the customer journey, from account abuse to payment abuse to policy abuse.