Black Friday is no more the same as it was years ago. Street crowds and shopping mall throngs are converting into web traffic. Sales may predominantly take place through e-commerce platforms, but an increase in market competition is giving rise to cyber security threats and supply chain issues. Similarly, retailers are experiencing more failed deliveries, false chargebacks, and additional address correction charges.
Criminals perceive Black Friday as their golden chance to de-track shipments for either earning extra bucks or making illicit purchases. While the online shopping trend will see an increase of 33% in 2022 from 2021, retailers need to enhance their customer identification mechanisms. Hence, with robust address verification solutions in place, they can ensure accurate deliveries while worrying less about additional correction charges.
Challenges Retailers Face During Black Friday Sales
With new technologies such as online address verification, swift order placing, and digital payments, customers are reaping numerous benefits. From user-friendly onboarding to the ease of making a purchase by staying at their home, Balck Friday shopping has never been easier. Similarly, retailers will not have to deploy staff serving long buyers queues at checkout and handle finances. However, with all these developments comes greater risks of scams.
False location and incomplete details are becoming the prime reasons for failed deliveries. As a result, retailers either pay additional charges for correction or settle false chargeback claims. Inefficient verification of address due to manual data handling further increases financial instability and reputation damage. More challenges that retailers face during Balck Friday festivities include the following:
Failed Deliveries
Retailers are facing various challenges in meeting customers’ demands without compromising security alike. With huge predictions such as the one from GlobalData’s prediction, buyers are expected to spend £9.2 billion during Black Friday in 2022, online stores need to enhance their fraud prevention mechanisms. Scammers use inaccurate location details to bypass address verification. As a result, shipping services either deliver the package to the wrong person.
In the majority of the cases, shipping services return parcels to retailers as they could not find the entered location. Failed deliveries almost cost $200,000 a year with huge additional correction charges. They also expose courier companies to extra burnout of resources.
Returned Shipments
Similar to failed deliveries, retailers experience another challenge in improving sales during Black Friday, which is returned shipments. When fraudsters enter wrong information and online stores are unable to identify discrepancies, the inaccurate data reaches shipping companies. Due to the huge flow of parcels, they spend less time verifying an address and rolling out deliveries.
Retailers using manual methods to validate address face more cases of returned shipments. Furthermore, they bring reputational damage and financial instability along.
Cybersecurity Threats and Identity Theft
Address verification is one of the most crucial components of customer verification. This is why fraudsters use wrong location details to trick retailers, commit identity theft, and avail additional chargebacks. With minor tampering within documents, they make their synthetic profiles look legitimate. Data breaches and manipulating data in global databases are other tactics that provide fraudsters with a freeway to perform illicit purchases.
Black Friday is home to various fraud risks and cybersecurity threats are one of them. Moreover, inefficient address verification systems further pave the way for criminals to indulge in shopping scams.
Address Verification Systems – the Road to Accurate Retail Deliveries
The growth of e-commerce has left customers and retailers open to increasing threat of cybercrimes. Failed deliveries, additional correction charges, and other such backdrops are compromising the worth of online stores. Therefore, retailers require efficient IDV solutions to verify address accurately and counter these challenges.
AI-powered address verification checks enable online stores to locate clients by using geo-tagging tools. This ultimately reduces data discrepancies and clears the way for more accurate deliveries through Black Friday. Further benefits of using AI-powered IDV algorithms for address verify include:
- Analyze geolocation to evaluate information accuracy
- Cross-checking across global registers for an additional layer of security against fraud
- Mitigates failed deliveries by employing automated data extraction and authentication
- Enhances brand reputation with more security measures
- Frictionless customer onboarding, swift order placing, and seamless transactions
In a Nutshell
Retailers can upgrade their customer onboarding and order shipping mechanism by integrating online address verification solutions. They offer a seamless and user-friendly experience where there is no need left for manual data entry or validation. The use of AI-powered geo-tagging algorithms to verify address further eliminate discrepancies. Hence, retailers can ensure accurate deliveries, mitigate reputational damage, and prevent financial repercussions throughout Black Friday.