The Annual E-commerce Fraud Calendar

Fraud has a season, or rather several. Attackers follow the money, and the money follows the shopping calendar. Return abuse spikes after gift-giving windows. Card testing loves the noise of a big sale. Chargebacks arrive weeks after the transaction, so a busy November becomes a painful January.

If you only think about fraud when it happens, you are always a step behind. This calendar walks the year month by month so you can prepare before each spike instead of reacting after it. Adjust for your own catalog and markets, but the shape of the year is remarkably consistent across stores.

January: The chargeback hangover

The holiday rush is over, and now the disputes arrive. Card-testing victims and "friendly fraud" filers (real customers claiming they never authorized a purchase) both surface 30-60 days after the transaction. January is also peak return season for gifts.

Prep: Tag every high-value December order so you can respond to disputes fast with evidence. Review your return policy for gift items. Reconcile any suspicious orders you held from BFCM.

February: Quiet, with a spike

Generally calm, with a short bump around Valentine's Day for gifts, flowers, and last-minute digital purchases. Rushed, high-emotion buying is fertile ground for both fraud and impulsive returns.

Prep: Watch express-shipping orders placed close to the holiday, a common fraud tell. This is a good low-pressure month to review and tune the rules you set in a panic during BFCM.

March: Baseline

A low-noise month for most stores. Use the quiet to do the unglamorous work that pays off later.

Prep: Audit your fraud rules. Check that velocity thresholds still match your normal volume. Review disposable-email and country blocklists. Run a small test order through checkout to confirm friction is working.

April: Baseline, watch for tax-season scams

Steady, though stores selling gift cards or digital goods may see a bump tied to tax-refund fraud, where stolen refunds are laundered into resellable goods.

Prep: If you sell gift cards or easily resold digital items, tighten velocity limits on those specific products.

May: Ramp begins

Mother's Day and graduation season lift gifting volume. Higher order counts mean more cover for fraudulent orders to blend in.

Prep: Confirm your manual-review process can handle a modest volume increase without slowing legitimate customers.

June: Mid-year sales

Many stores run mid-year promotions, and discount abuse follows. Expect code sharing, stacking attempts, and account cycling to reuse first-order discounts.

Prep: Set single-use limits on promo codes. Watch for the same address or device claiming multiple "new customer" discounts.

July: Prime-adjacent noise

Major marketplace sale events pull attention (and fraud automation) across the whole industry. Even if you are not on the marketplace, bot infrastructure is warmed up and looking for soft targets.

Prep: Ensure bot friction (reCAPTCHA, checkout verification) is active. Review IP and velocity rules.

August: Back-to-school

Rising volume in apparel, electronics, and supplies. High-resale electronics are prime bot targets.

Prep: For popular, easily resold items, add velocity caps and consider a manual-review hold on unusually large orders.

September: The calm before

Volume settles briefly. This is your last clean runway before the fourth-quarter storm. Do not waste it.

Prep: This is the single most important prep month of the year. Fully audit and configure your fraud rules now, because you will not want to touch settings mid-BFCM. Set velocity thresholds, geography rules, disposable-email blocks, and spike alerts. Write or refresh your incident runbook.

October: Pre-BFCM staging

Early holiday shopping begins and attackers stage. Card testing often ramps in October as fraudsters validate stolen cards ahead of the big spending window.

Prep: Watch closely for card-testing patterns (floods of small declines). Confirm your blocking rules trigger correctly. Brief your team on the incident runbook.

November: BFCM, the main event

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the highest-risk days of the year. Enormous legitimate volume gives fraud perfect camouflage, and the pressure to fulfill fast tempts you to skip review. Card testing, bot orders, and discount abuse all peak.

Prep: Rules should already be set from September. During the event:

• Monitor decline rates hourly for card-testing spikes.
• Do not disable fraud rules to "reduce friction," even under pressure to convert.
• Hold, do not rush-fulfill, borderline high-value orders.
• Keep the runbook open so anyone can respond to a spike.

Automated protection matters most here, because manual review cannot scale to BFCM volume. A fraud filter that blocks abusive IPs, disposable emails, and impossible velocities before they become orders lets your team focus on shipping to real customers. If you have not set this up, Shieldy — Fraud Filter is built exactly for this window.

December: Sustained peak, then returns begin

The rush continues through mid-month, with express-shipping fraud rising as the shipping deadline nears (fraudsters do not care about cost when the card is not theirs). Late December, returns and "item not received" claims start.

Prep: Scrutinize last-minute express orders to unfamiliar addresses. Begin tagging December orders now for the January dispute wave. Keep fraud rules on through the returns period.

A year-at-a-glance checklist

• Q1 (Jan-Mar): Handle the chargeback and return wave, then audit and tune rules in the quiet.
• Q2 (Apr-Jun): Baseline months. Watch gift cards, digital goods, and discount abuse around promos.
• Q3 (Jul-Sep): Rising volume through back-to-school. September is your critical prep month.
• Q4 (Oct-Dec): Card testing stages in October, BFCM peaks in November, express fraud and returns close out December.

The pattern repeats every year, which is exactly why it is beatable. Prepare in September, hold your rules through the fourth quarter, and clean up the disputes in January. If you want the fourth-quarter blocking to run automatically while you focus on real orders, set up Shieldy before the October ramp begins.