E-commerce fraud in Canada spikes 435% from Black Friday to Cyber Monday

TransUnion released new findings around online retail trends during the start of the 2020 global holiday shopping season. The research shows a 435.2% increase in suspected online retail fraud[1] coming from Canada during the start of the 2020 holiday shopping season compared to the same period in 2019.

The findings are based on the online transactions TransUnion analyzed for its customers utilizing identity and authentication products during the traditional start of the holiday shopping season, U.S. Thanksgiving (Nov. 26) to Cyber Monday (Nov. 30).

Heading into the holiday shopping season, the TransUnion Financial Hardship Study conducted from Oct. 28 to Nov. 5 found 32% of 1,100 Canadian consumers surveyed said they had been targeted by digital fraud related to COVID-19, a 14% increase from the same survey the week of April 13, 2020.

“With the COVID-19 pandemic accelerating the move from offline to online transactions, detecting digital fraud attempts has become paramount for e-commerce providers,” said Anne-Marie Kelly, vice-president of Market Development, Identity Management and Fraud Solutions at TransUnion. “In order to avoid cart abandonment with all of these new sales opportunities, it is equally if not more important to ensure consumers are able to make friction-right digital transactions.”

The percent of suspected fraudulent e-commerce transactions coming from Canada during the start of the holiday shopping season and entire year from 2018 to 2020.

• 11.58% from Nov. 26 to Nov. 30, 2020. 9.89% so far in 2020.
• 2.16% from Nov. 28 to Dec. 2, 2019. 6.41% all of 2019.
• 8.61% from Nov. 22 to Nov. 26, 2018. 8.13% all of 2018.

The days with the highest percent of suspected fraudulent transactions coming from Canada during the start of the 2020 holiday shopping season are:

• Cyber Monday, Nov. 30: 35.03%
• Sunday, Nov. 29: 6.04%
• U.S. Thanksgiving, Nov. 26: 2.84%
• Black Friday, Nov. 27: 2.14%
• Saturday, Nov. 28: 1.67%