New research from global tech strategist Juniper Research finds that the annual value of fraudulent eCommerce transactions will rise from $56 billion in 2025 to $131 billion by 2030. The forecast represents a 133 % increase over five years, driven by rising instances of “friendly fraud,” where legitimate transactions are disputed fraudulently.
According to the study, which is part of the E-commerce Fraud Prevention Market 2025–2030 report, growth in fraudulent activity will outpace merchants’ existing fraud prevention measures unless investment in advanced tools increases significantly. Juniper Research’s analysis includes data and forecasts across 61 countries and over 30,000 datapoints, providing a comprehensive view of how fraudulent transactions are expected to escalate through the end of the decade.
The research identifies friendly fraud as a key growth factor in the overall increase, with chargebacks and policy abuse becoming more common. In friendly fraud scenarios, buyers may file disputes over valid purchases, use promotions improperly, or exploit chargeback processes, leading to increased costs for merchants and payment processors.
The prediction coincides with 2025 fraud-focused reports, which illustrated that among the most common fraud types, friendly fraud contributed to 61% of chargeback disputes, while account takeovers (impacting 32% of merchants), and phishing attacks (affecting 42% of merchants) continued to pose significant operational and financial risks, highlighting the urgent need for advanced prevention strategies and AI-enabled monitoring solutions.
The report notes that merchant investment in e-commerce fraud prevention technologies will need to accelerate, particularly in markets such as North America, which is expected to account for a majority of spending (70%) on fraud prevention solutions by 2030. Vendors with proactive systems that can detect identity abuse and policy misuse early in the transaction lifecycle are positioned to be more effective as fraud patterns evolve.
Juniper Research says the projected increase in fraudulent transactions underscores the need for more robust fraud prevention infrastructure across the e-commerce ecosystem, including integration of real‑time data, advanced identity signals, and automated detection capabilities.
