Juniper Research Warns Friendly Fraud Will Accelerate Investment In E-Commerce Fraud Prevention

This surge is fuelled by rising friendly fraud, where legitimate transactions are being fraudulently disputed.

Shane O’Sullivan, research analyst at Juniper Research, explained: “The fastest-growing form of e-commerce fraud is not criminals breaking in, it is bad actors blending in. A significant proportion of consumers file disputes without first contacting merchants, and many disputes stem from misunderstanding or misuse of promotions and chargeback systems; increasing losses.”

Persistent fraud to erode margins, leading to heavy investment in prevention tech

The research found that friendly fraud is heavily impacting merchant margins, with chargebacks in particular increasingly triggering higher processing fees.

The report highlights that businesses will accelerate investment in prevention systems, particularly in North America, which is disproportionately impacted by friendly fraud.

As such, by 2030, over 70% of global e-commerce fraud prevention spend will be from North America.

Fraud prevention specialists must position systems as essential margin-protection infrastructure; enabling merchants to contain fraud costs before they scale alongside transaction volumes.

“Vendors are building AI-driven, fraud prevention platforms; moving fraud prevention to a proactive footing. Simultaneously, regulators are expanding digital identity frameworks and tightening compliance. Together, this creates a competitive ecosystem where innovation and accuracy are key differentiators. As abuse becomes increasingly driven by specific accounts and identities, prevention vendors must shift away from securing individual transactions and pivot towards persistent identity signals,” O’Sullivan concluded.

The new market research suite offers the most comprehensive assessment of the e-commerce Fraud Prevention market to date; providing analysis and forecasts of over 30,000 datapoints across 61 countries over five years. It includes a ‘Competitor Leaderboard’ and an examination of current and future market opportunities.

An extract from the new report, E-commerce Fraud Prevention Market 2025-2030, is available as a free download.