Payment Fraud StatisticsExamining the Staggering Financial Toll
Payment Fraud Statistics & Financial Impact: Revealing the Toll of Payment Schemes
The multi-billion dollar figures associated with fraud can feel abstract, but for an eCommerce merchant, the impact is painfully concrete. After all, a single fraudulent transaction represents a number of costs, including lost inventory, shipping expenses, chargeback fees, and the potential for long-term reputational damage.
In this chapter, let’s dig into the data to reveal how much payment fraud really costs… and what it means for your bottom line.
Payment Fraud
In this guide, we take a look at what payment fraud is, how it works, and how it impacts merchants. We’ll also share tips and best practices you can use to identify, detect, and prevent these tactics from harming your business.
Payment Fraud Stats: How Much of a Problem is Payment Fraud?
Payment fraud is an issue of staggering proportions. Just take a look at some of the payment fraud statistics I’ve compiled below:
in global eCommerce fraud losses were recorded in 2023
Source: Mastercard
Average amount a businesses loses in a single fraud attack
Average percentage of revenue businesses lose to payment fraud per year
Percentage of businesses that say they were victims of payment fraud attacks in 2024
Percentage of businesses that say BEC scams are the #1 attack avenue for payment fraud
A 2023 report from Juniper Research projects that “merchant losses from online payment fraud will exceed $362 billion globally between 2023 to 2028, with losses of $91 billion alone in 2028.”
Given that credit card fraud accounted for roughly 38% of all fraud cases in 2024, eCommerce merchants are particularly vulnerable to these rising fraud risks. Worryingly, card-not-present (CNP) purchases, which account for the lion’s share of online transactions, make up 70% of all credit card fraud losses.
But there are other payment fraud tactics that merchants need to worry about, too. According to the 2025 AFP Payments Fraud and Control Survey Report, wires, checks, and ACH payments remain dominant channels for fraud.
Common avenues of attack, like BEC scams, vendor impersonation, and CEO scams, also tend to ensnare businesses more than merchants. There’s a good reason for that: while fraudsters can steal hundreds or thousands of dollars from a cardholder, defrauding even a single merchant can result in illicit windfalls worth millions of dollars. That’s not to say there’s no impact on consumers, though.
The Broader Economic Impact of Payment Fraud
The financial toll of payment fraud extends far beyond individual merchant losses, creating ripple effects throughout the entire economy.
When fraud rates increase, merchants respond by implementing more stringent verification measures and raising prices to offset losses. These costs get passed on to consumers in the form of higher retail prices and reduced shopping convenience.
Financial institutions collectively spend billions annually on fraud prevention infrastructure, customer reimbursements, and investigation resources. These expenses mean higher banking fees, reduced interest rates on deposits, and stricter lending requirements. The cumulative effect creates a "fraud tax" on legitimate commerce, where honest consumers and businesses subsidize the cost of criminal activity through increased operational expenses and reduced economic efficiency.
The long-term implications threaten to undermine consumer confidence in digital commerce itself. As fraud schemes get more sophisticated — particularly with the advent of AI-powered attacks and deepfake technology — consumers are going to get more and more hesitant to adopt new payment methods or shop with unfamiliar merchants. The result: stifled innovation and competition in the marketplace.
Small businesses suffer disproportionately, as they lack the resources to implement enterprise-level fraud prevention systems, forcing them to either accept higher fraud losses or impose restrictive payment policies that drive customers to larger competitors. This creates a consolidation effect that puts established corporations with sophisticated fraud infrastructure at an advantage, but creates barriers to entry for emerging businesses. That will ultimately reduce market competition and consumer choice over time.
