Notifications
Clear all
Topic starter
11/07/2026 8:46 pm
TL;DR: Holiday e-commerce sales are projected to grow 10.3% to 12.8% year over year and reach almost $284 billion, while 9% of online retail orders may use BNPL this season, according to Prove Identity and Deloitte. The security gap is not demand, but identity verification that still assumes shoppers behave like stable, low-risk account holders.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Prove Identity: 3 Trends Driving Increased Holiday Shopping Fraud and How Retailers Can Stay a Step Ahead
By the numbers:
- Deloitte anticipates 10.3% to 12.8% growth in e-commerce sales for the 2023-2024 holiday shopping season and projects overall shopping period retail sales to reach almost $284 billion.
- 54% of the top 1000 retailers offer at least one BNPL option to their customer base.
- 42% of respondents indicated their intention to start their 2023-2024 holiday shopping in late summer.
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should retailers verify customers for BNPL without damaging conversion?
A: Retailers should use step-up identity checks that are proportionate to risk, not blanket friction.
Q: Why does earlier holiday shopping create more fraud risk?
A: Earlier shopping extends the time fraudsters can blend into normal demand.
Q: What do retailers get wrong about personalization and fraud prevention?
A: Many teams assume personalization is only a customer experience feature.
Practitioner guidance
- Strengthen BNPL identity proofing Require verified name, address, contact details, and possession signals before approving deferred payment.
- Retune fraud thresholds for the full season Extend detection rules across the early holiday period, not just Black Friday and peak shopping dates.
- Bind personalization to verified identity Treat recommendations, targeted offers, and account-level promotions as identity-dependent actions.
What's in the full article
Prove Identity's full blog covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- The article's specific examples of phone-centric identity validation and possession checks used in BNPL onboarding
- The retailer and consumer survey figures that support the case for earlier holiday shopping and personalised experiences
- The detailed explanation of how pre-fill and consent-driven identity collection are positioned to reduce friction
- The company's discussion of its partnership reference and the surrounding onboarding context
👉 Read Prove Identity's analysis of holiday shopping fraud trends and retail identity controls →
Holiday shopping fraud is rising, but are identity controls keeping up?
Explore further
11/07/2026 9:12 pm
Holiday retail fraud is fundamentally an identity verification problem, not just a payment problem. The article shows how BNPL, earlier shopping cycles, and personalization all depend on trusting the shopper at the edge of the transaction. Once that trust is weak, the fraud path moves through onboarding, checkout, and fulfilment with very little resistance. Practitioners should treat customer identity assurance as part of fraud prevention, not a separate customer experience concern.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 79% of organisations have experienced secrets leaks, with 77% of these incidents resulting in tangible damage, according to Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
- Only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts, which shows how often identity control breaks down before teams can respond.
A question worth separating out:
Q: Who is accountable when holiday shopping fraud increases?
A: Accountability sits across fraud, IAM, and customer experience teams because the failure usually happens in shared onboarding and checkout flows. Fraud teams need detection and dispute controls, while IAM teams need stronger identity proofing and binding. When holiday fraud rises, the organisation must treat identity assurance as a shared control objective, not a siloed task.
👉 Read our full editorial: Holiday shopping fraud is rising as e-commerce scales up
