E-commerce Fraud Rate Steady

Mountain View, Calif. — Online retailers are expected to sustain a full year 2007 loss-to-fraud rate of 1.4% of sales, or about $3.6 billion, according to the annual fraud survey by CyberSource.

The rate is level, but the dollar amount has increased 20%, keeping pace with online sales.

Merchants told the company they are manually reviewing 27% of all orders, up from 23% the year prior, with three of four orders reviewed proving legitimate — up from two of three being acceptable in the prior year.

CyberSource estimates up to 38% more orders were reviewed in 2007 than in 2006, costing an extra $100 million.