A framework for understanding and measuring e-commerce losses – KEY FACTS

• Global online fraud hits €40bn, with non-delivery claims driving losses
• Retailers lose 3.6% of e-commerce revenue across intentional and accidental risks
• 3.1% of all orders become chargebacks, obscuring broader e-commerce losses

Global e-commerce fraud hits €40bn, and non-delivery claims drive retailer losses

Global e-commerce payment fraud is expected to exceed €40 billion in 2023, a 16% jump in just one year.

But for retailers, the biggest day-to-day loss driver isn’t sophisticated cybercrime, it’s non-delivery claims, where customers say items never arrived and retailers often lack evidence to dispute it.

These claims create a large, persistent drain on profitability, blurring the line between genuine delivery failure and opportunistic abuse.

Retailers lose 3.6% of e-commerce revenue to fraud

The latest global survey data suggests retailers lose 3.6% of their e-commerce revenue to payment fraud.

While theft is a major part of this picture, e-commerce losses split across two broad types: intentional losses (fraud, abuse, deception) and unintentional losses (errors, process failures, fulfilment mistakes).

Each behaves differently and needs its own prevention strategy, yet both erode already-thin e-commerce margins.

3.1% of all e-commerce orders become chargebacks…but they hide bigger losses

Around 3.1% of all e-commerce orders end up as chargebacks. the most visible and measurable loss category for many retailers.

Some even treat chargebacks as their sole metric for e-commerce loss. But this captures only a fraction of the loss landscape.

It can mask delivery fraud, wrong-item claims, customer appeasements, missing returns and fulfilment errors. What gets measured dominates the conversation…and chargebacks distort the picture.

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