As Africans Gear Up For Black Friday, Global E-Payments Fraud Is Up By 208 Per Cent

Kaspersky, a global cybersecurity firm, has revealed in a report that online payments fraud has exploded ahead of Black Friday. The total number of financial phishing attempts targeting e-payments grew from 627,560 in September to 1,935, 905 in October, a growth of 208 per cent in one month. 

What is E-Payment Fraud? 

According to BigCommerce, payment fraud can be described as illegal or false transactions. E-payments fraud deprives the victim of funds, personal property, interest and sensitive information via the internet. 

It can include fraudulent /unauthorized transactions, lost or stolen merchandise and false requests for a refund, return and bounced checks. E-Payments have become even more popular across the globe due to the shift to online shopping during the COVID-19 pandemic.

What are the findings of the Kaspersky report?

Kaspersky detected 40m phishing attacks from January to October 2021 on e-commerce platforms across the world. Phishing is emails and websites that require personal information like credit cards, bank accounts and login details. 

There was a rise in the number of spam letters detected by Kaspersky’s security products. It detected 221,745 emails with the words Black Friday in them between October 27 to November 19. The most popular e-commerce sites for these attacks were Amazon followed by eBay, Alibaba and Mercado Libre.  

Payment fraud is detrimental for both the customers and the e-commerce store. It can be prevented by partnering with verified payments processors, encrypting transactions and emails containing confidential information, regularly running checks with anti-virus software and requiring customers to log in before making a purchase. 

Black Friday in Africa

Black Friday refers to the Friday after the American holiday of Thanksgiving. It is a day with special deals and big discounts on various products and usually marked the beginning of the festival shopping season. It has been adopted across the globe. 

Pan-African e-commerce giant, Jumia has been running a Black Friday Shopping spree for 9 years now. This year, it started on 5th November and will climax on 26th November, which is the date for this year’s Black Friday. 

Jumia will partner with brands like Adidas, Umidigi, HP, Unilever, Diageo etc to bring discounts of up to 75 per cent in the 11 African markets that it operates in. According to the Jumia Index 2021, categories like groceries and everyday essentials have been some of the most ordered on the platform since the COVID19 pandemic began. They will compete with popular categories like home and living, beauty, fashion, food delivery and electronics. 

South Africa’s Takealot will also be running Black Friday offers of its own. Dubbed Blue Dot Countdown deals, it will last 5 days starting at midnight on 26th November through Cyber Monday and ending on Takealot Tuesdays (30th November). It will offer up to 50 per cent off on thousands of deals.