Upon the onset of the pandemic, consumers increasingly shifted to online and hybrid shopping experiences. Now, in the ‘new normal,’ this change in shopping behavior is here to stay. In response, fraudsters have become more creative in their attacks. These bad actors are abandoning simple fraud attacks in favor of scripted attacks that imitate authentic user behavior.   

To learn more about how to fend off creative fraud attacks without compromising the customer experience, PaymentsJournal sat down with Jonathan McGrandle, Director of Market Delivery at NuData Security, Dave Senci, VP of Product Development at NuData Security, and Tim Sloane, VP of Payments Innovation at Mercator Advisory Group. 

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The pandemic-driven growth of e-commerce 

Online shopping skyrocketed during the pandemic and is now reaching maturity. According to NuData, e-commerce purchases among major retailers grew by 51% year-over-year from H1 2020. Meanwhile, account opening decreased by 15%. While that decrease may seem contradictory, it makes sense.  

Pandemic-triggered lockdowns and closures took off in the first half of 2020, which is when consumers began flocking to e-commerce websites to fulfill their shopping needs. As they were pushed online, they created accounts across the e-commerce merchants with whom they shop.  

Now it has come to a point where online shoppers have reached a peak. In other words, they are not creating as many new accounts because they already have existing accounts across their preferred merchants. As a result, the decline in new account creations—despite the continued rise in e-commerce activity—is unsurprising. “Actual online activity has really taken off, almost to the point where we’ve reached this peak of online consumer maturity. People are online, they’re registered, and now they’re really starting to take advantage of that,” explained McGrandle.  

Consumers are similarly adopting hybrid shopping experiences such as