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11/07/2026 8:43 pm
TL;DR: Food and delivery platforms are seeing account takeover, fake account creation, refund abuse, and chargeback pressure intensify as transactions move in seconds, with Sift citing 20% takeover attempts on food delivery accounts and 99.6% of incidents tied to card-not-present fraud. Speed without stronger identity checks is now a direct fraud-control problem, not just a customer-experience trade-off.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Sift: Food & Delivery Fraud: Benchmarking Risk and Tracking Trends
By the numbers:
- around 20% of food delivery accounts experience takeover attempts, compared to an average of 2.5% across other industries.
- The food and delivery sector’s Q2 payment fraud rate stands at 3.1% in FIBR, with fraudulent chargebacks at 0.048%.
- Credit card fraud currently accounts for 99.6% of fraud incidents in the food & delivery space according to FIBR.
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should food delivery platforms reduce account takeover without breaking checkout speed?
A: Use layered controls that score the session before and during checkout, then step up only when risk rises.
Q: Why do stolen credentials create so much fraud in food delivery apps?
A: Because a logged-in customer account often contains more than a payment token.
Q: What do security teams get wrong about refund and promotion abuse?
A: They often treat it as a customer-service problem rather than a governed fraud pattern.
Practitioner guidance
- Harden account takeover controls at login and checkout Use risk-based authentication, device intelligence, and step-up verification when login patterns, geolocation, or session behaviour deviate from the customer baseline.
- Unify promo abuse and refund abuse detection Route promotion claims, refund requests, and repeated new-account activity through one fraud decision layer so the same actor cannot exploit separate teams or workflows.
- Correlate payment fraud with identity signals Link chargeback trends to account takeover, credential stuffing, delivery detail changes, and device reputation so payment losses reveal the upstream access pattern.
What's in the full article
Sift's full article covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- Benchmark views across payment fraud, account takeover, and chargeback rates by industry and region.
- The practical fraud-prevention measures Sift associates with high-speed ordering and promotion-heavy workflows.
- How the Fraud Industry Benchmarking Resource can be used to compare your own loss patterns against sector data.
👉 Read Sift's analysis of food delivery fraud benchmarks and account takeover risk →
Food delivery fraud and account takeover: what teams need to act on?
Explore further
11/07/2026 9:10 pm
Identity assurance has become a fraud-control layer in consumer commerce. Food delivery platforms are not only defending payments, they are defending the trust boundary around customer accounts. When access to an account unlocks stored value, promos, and delivery instructions, IAM and fraud controls converge. Practitioners should treat account trust as a business-critical control, not a back-office authentication setting.
A question worth separating out:
Q: How do organisations know if fraud controls are actually working?
A: Look for reduced takeover attempts, lower repeat refund rates, fewer promo-abuse clusters, and stable acceptance rates for legitimate customers. A good programme does not just block more traffic. It improves decision quality by stopping concentrated abuse while keeping normal ordering and reordering smooth.
👉 Read our full editorial: Food delivery fraud is accelerating as account takeover scales
