Reducing fraud

To reduce fraudulent transactions and orders on your ShopWired website, consider some of these recommendations:

1. Only deliver to a customer’s card billing address

   • Use the platform checkout setting to prevent visitors from entering a separate delivery address for their order
   • Set the setting do you want to allow different delivery and billing addresses to be entered to no

2. Always require 3DS authentication

   • If you’re using ShopWired Payments, contact the ShopWired Payments support team to request that no exemptions are requested for your transactions and therefore all transactions are subject to a 3DS flow where the card supports it
   • If you’re not using ShopWired Payments, speak to your payment gateway about always requiring 3DS

3. Monitor orders for red flags

   • Monitor all your orders for common signs of fraudulent activity and refund/cancel orders that are highly likely to be fraudulent where the customer’s identity cannot be verified
   • Common signs of fraudulent activity include:
   • Orders with a high quantity of high-value items
   • Rapid succession of orders from the same location
   • Shipping addresses that differ significantly from billing addresses
   • Orders placed with multiple credit cards linked to a single shipping address
   • Attempts to rush orders without concern for additional shipping costs
   • Use of email addresses with long, random strings
   • Orders that significantly exceed the average value typically seen on your website
   • Multiple failed payment attempts before a successful transaction

4. Implement your own fraud scoring system

   • Develop your own custom fraud scoring system based on your business’s specific experiences and data
   • You can take into account factors like customer behaviour, transaction size, order frequency, and other possible red flags or fraud indicators
   • Use the order custom fields feature to indicate red flags on orders and record a fraud score for each order. Develop and refine your internal fraud scoring system over time

5. Verify your customers

   • If you suspect fraudulent activity on orders, consider verifying the identity of your customer before fulfilling an order
   • This can be done by making contact with the customer to ensure their bona fides and that they are the cardholder for the transaction

6. Speak to your payment gateway

   • Speak to your payment gateway about anti-fraud features they offer to request that card details entered by customers match the details held by the cardholder’s issuing bank and that all transactions are subject to a 3DS flow

7. Secure chargeback insurance

   • You can insure your business’s risk against chargebacks by obtaining chargeback insurance from a specialist e-commerce insurance platform

8. Block fraudulent cards on ShopWired Payments

   • If you’re using ShopWired Payments as your payment gateway, when you receive a payment from a card you know to be fraudulent, you can select the mark as fraudulent option on the transaction information page, or refund the transaction for a reason of fraud, and the card will be automatically blocked from making any further payments on your website

9. Block IP addresses from accessing your website

   • It is possible to block IP addresses from accessing your ShopWired website by editing your theme files
   • This should be done with caution or with assistance from theme support to avoid adversely affecting normal website traffic
   • Use the variable {{ global.visitor.ip }} to test if the visitor’s IP address is the same as an IP address you want to ban

10. Block visitors from specific countries from accessing your website

    • It is possible to block visitors from specific countries from accessing your ShopWired website by editing your theme files
    • This should be done with caution or with assistance from theme support to avoid adversely affecting normal website traffic
    • Use the variable {{ global.visitor.country_code }} to test if the visitor is from a country that you want to ban traffic from
    • The variable will return the Alpha-2 Code for the country the visitor is from

11. Utilise Radar for Fraud Teams on Stripe and ShopWired Payments

    • If you’re using Stripe or ShopWired Payments as your payment gateway, you can utilise the Radar for Fraud Teams functionality to configure additional rules to screen out fraudulent transactions before they are processed
    • Contact ShopWired Payments support at payments@shopwired.co.uk to use Radar for Fraud Teams