When retail historians compile the definitive chronicle of this era, they will recall something remarkable: as merchants across the nation responded to the COVID-19 outbreak by shifting more operations online, two years’ worth of e-Commerce growth got crammed into two weeks.
Unfortunately, the rate of e-Commerce fraud also grew at a rapid pace.
How to explain that paradox? I would point to a couple of reasons. First, as social distancing measures meant to slow the contagion’s growth were put into place, new vulnerabilities were also introduced into the system. Second, as the economy shut down, the widespread financial strain left tens of millions of unemployed people suddenly stuck at home and vulnerable to fraudulent work-from-home schemes that were on the rise even before the pandemic.
