TransUnion report: shipping fraud increased up to 800 per cent in 2021

According to the TransUnion’s 2022 Global Digital Fraud Trends report, shipping fraud is the fastest growing type of digital fraud, up by 800% in the last year. By comparing it to a two-year timeframe, from 2019 to 2021, this type of fraud was up by around 1,500%, given the increase in global ecommerce sales as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions.

Shipping fraud is defined as the type of fraud committed by a seller that receives payment for a good or service without shipping said good or service to the buyer or when a buyer deliberately gives a wrong shipping address to the merchant.

As consumer adoption of digital channels continued to accelerate since 2019, the global rate of all types of suspected digital fraud attempts increased by almost 10% from 2020 to 2021 and by 5.2% from 2019 to 2021. Apart from shipping fraud, other types of digital fraud include business identity theft and phishing attempts.