One in 25 International E-Commerce Orders Fraudulent

According to CyberSource's tenth annual Online Fraud Report, online retailers expect to lose a record four billion dollars to online scams this year. The actual percentage of sales lost has remained the same, 1.4 percent, for the third year in a row. The increase, from 2007's US$3.7 billion, is the result of increased e-commerce sales.

However, there rate of international fraud is up from previous years. According to the surveyed merchants, international orders were 3.6 times more likely to be fraudulent than domestic ones. In 2006, 2.7 percent of international orders were fraudulent; this year, it was 4 percent. The fraud rate for U.S. and Canada orders was only 1.1 percent.

CyberSource provides electronic payment and risk management services to Web sites, call centers, and point-of-sale environments. The company released the report on Wednesday.

Merchants can fight fraud by examining more orders by hand before they are accepted. However, while online sales continue to increase, retail staff has not. Consequently, only one in four sales are now reviewed manually, increasing the odds for fraud. According to the survey, 87 percent of merchants will not increase staff in 2009.