Topic starter
12/07/2026 12:22 pm
TL;DR: European merchants lose 2.8% of revenue to fraud and 3% of orders, while only 16% screen users during browsing or account creation, creating an early blind spot that helps synthetic identities and fake accounts progress unchecked, according to Sift’s analysis. The practical lesson is that fraud control now depends on earlier identity and behavioural signals, not just checkout-time review.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Sift: “E-Commerce Fraud in Europe: Key Trends and Mitigation Strategies for 2025”.
By the numbers:
- 2.8% of revenue is lost to fraud across Europe.
- Fraud accounts for 3% of all orders across Europe.
- Only 16% of EU merchants currently screen users during the browsing or account-creation stages.
Key questions
Q: What should merchants do first when fraud is hiding in early customer journeys?
A: Start by moving fraud scoring into browsing and account-creation stages, not just checkout.
Q: Why is real-time payment fraud harder to stop than card fraud?
A: Real-time payment fraud is harder to stop because settlement is immediate and usually irreversible.
Q: What breaks when merchants screen users only at checkout?
A: Checkout-only screening misses the point where trust was first established.
Practitioner guidance
- Expand screening to pre-checkout journeys Add device fingerprinting, behavioural tracking, and consortium signals during browsing and account creation so suspicious users are scored before checkout or payout.
- Harden real-time payout decisions Use payee verification, recipient matching, and anomaly scoring inside the short decision window for instant payments and withdrawals.
- Rely on step-up authentication for high-risk logins Reserve additional authentication for risky sessions, account changes, and payout events where identity confidence is low or velocity is abnormal.
Bottom line: European e-commerce fraud is shifting earlier in the customer journey, which makes checkout-only controls too late for several of the most common abuse patterns.
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12/07/2026 12:34 pm
Journey-stage trust is now the decisive fraud governance problem: European merchants are not dealing with a single checkout failure, but with a sequence of weak trust decisions that fraudsters can exploit upstream. When onboarding, browsing, and payout controls are separated, attackers only need one thin point of validation to move from identity fabrication to financial abuse. Practitioners should treat the full customer journey as the control surface, not just payment confirmation.
A few things that frame the scale:
- Nearly 60% of companies reported that fraud losses were still increasing in 2025.
A question worth separating out:
Q: How should finance and identity teams share accountability for payment fraud?
A: Finance teams should own payment rules, approval logic, and exception handling, while identity and access teams help ensure those rules are tied to verified people, vendors, and roles. The key is a shared operating model where vendor changes, approver access, and transaction monitoring are correlated. Without that split ownership, fraud gaps fall between teams.
👉 Read our full editorial: European e-commerce fraud is shifting to real-time payment abuse