It's every business's nightmare: you've shipped out a product, and then someone calls to say that the order was fraudulent. How can you prevent this from happening in the first place? By identifying and preventing fraudulent orders before they happen, you can save your business time, money, and headaches.
In this help article, we'll discuss some tips for how to do just that.
Common indicators of a fraudulent order
First, let's take a look at some of the most common indicators that an order may be fraudulent:
The billing and shipping address don't match
The order is for an unusually large quantity of items
There are multiple orders being placed with the same credit card
Multiple purchases of the same item
Purchases from the same customer, but different shipping addresses
If you see any of these indicators, it's important to take a closer look at the order before shipping it out. You can do this by contacting the customer directly to verify their information.
You can also make use of third-party tools to verify the customer's information. For example, you can use a service like MaxMind to validate the customer's IP address, email address, and phone number.
Once you've identified some indicators that an order may be fraudulent, you can take steps to prevent it from happening. This can be as easy as requiring a Signature on Delivery for orders over a certain amount, or only shipping to the billing address.
Of course, not every order that matches these indicators will be fraudulent. But by taking these precautions, you can help to prevent many fraudulent orders from happening in the first place.
By following these tips, you can help to keep your business safe from fraudulent orders. Remember, if an order feels suspicious, it's always better to err on the side of caution.
Manually fulfilling orders
Autofulfilling orders might be convenient, but it's not always the best option when it comes to preventing fraud. That's because when you fulfill orders automatically, you're essentially trusting that the information the customer has provided is accurate.
Note that once you request fulfillment for an order, cancellation is not always possible. For this reason, we recommend manually reviewing and fulfilling orders.
While Shopify gives you the option to automatically fulfill orders, we recommend that you take a few moments to review the order first. This way, you can catch any potential red flags before fulfilling the order.
If you've enabled the auto-fulfill option on your Shopify store, you can disable it with a few simple steps:
1. Click on "Settings" on the left menu of your Shopify admin.
2. Select checkout
3. Scroll down to the section where it says "Order Processing". Under "after an order has been paid", make sure that it's set to "Don't fulfill any of the order's line items automatically".
And that's it - you've successfully disabled the auto-fulfill option on your Shopify store! We hope this article helped you learn more about how to identify and prevent fraudulent orders.
Have any questions? Feel free to reach out to our support team - we're always happy to help!