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11/07/2026 8:42 pm
TL;DR: E-commerce marketplace payment fraud fell to 1.6% in Q1 2025, according to Sift, while account takeover remained 3.2% overall and marketplace ATO sat at 3.8%, showing fraud is shifting across payment, identity, and abuse vectors rather than simply declining. That means fraud teams need identity-centric decisioning, not card-only controls, to keep pace.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Sift: Economic Shifts are Reshaping Marketplaces and Fraudsters Are Paying Attention
By the numbers:
- payment fraud in e-commerce marketplaces dropped to 1.6% in Q1 2025, down from a 4-quarter high.
- the overall ATO rate sits at 3.2%, and in marketplaces those rates sit at 3.8% and 9.2% respectively.
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should marketplace teams reduce account takeover without overblocking legitimate users?
A: Focus on risk-based authentication around high-impact actions, not every login.
Q: Why do marketplaces need identity controls beyond payment fraud filters?
A: Because the attacker’s real asset is often the account, not the card.
Q: What do fraud teams get wrong about falling fraud rates?
A: They often treat a lower number as a general improvement when it may reflect fraud migration, tighter review, or reduced visibility.
Practitioner guidance
- Correlate login with account-change risk Use identity signals, device reputation, and step-up authentication when users change payout destinations, add payment instruments, or modify recovery details.
- Segment controls by payment method Apply different verification, velocity, and dispute controls to cards, points, financing, and crypto based on reversibility and cash-out speed.
- Expand detection beyond payment fraud Add monitoring for scam listings, refund abuse, promotion abuse, and job scam behaviour across marketplace workflows.
What's in the full article
Sift's full article covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- Benchmark context for payment fraud, ATO, and chargeback trends across multiple industries.
- Channel-by-channel discussion of points, financing, and crypto as fraud targets.
- Economic examples linking inflation, unemployment, and secondhand-market growth to fraud behaviour.
- Practitioner guidance on monitoring fraud migration across marketplace workflows.
👉 Read Sift's analysis of marketplace fraud, ATO, and economic pressure →
Marketplace fraud and ATO: what risk teams need to watch now?
Explore further
11/07/2026 9:09 pm
Identity-rich marketplaces now behave like access platforms as much as commerce systems. The article shows that the account, not the card, is the primary control surface because listings, payment methods, and loyalty balances are all attached to identity state. That shifts fraud governance toward access governance, where step-up controls, account-change monitoring, and session risk matter as much as payment blocking. For practitioners, the relevant question is whether identity signals are driving fraud decisions in real time.
A question worth separating out:
Q: Who is accountable when marketplace identity abuse leads to losses?
A: Accountability usually sits across fraud, identity, payments, and platform operations because the failure is cross-functional. If identity verification, authentication, dispute handling, and review queues are separate, the organisation needs a shared control owner and a common escalation path for abuse.
👉 Read our full editorial: Marketplace fraud is shifting beyond cards as economic pressure builds
