TransUnion released new findings around online retail trends during the start of the 2020 global holiday shopping season. The research shows a 1% decrease in suspected online retail fraud worldwide during the start of the 2020 holiday shopping season compared to the same period in 2019, a 59% increase from the same period in 2018 and a 14% increase from all of 2020 so far. The findings are based on the same-store sales analysis of TransUnion’s e-commerce customers during the traditional start of the global holiday shopping season, Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday.

These findings mirror the recent conclusions in TransUnion’s 2020 Consumer Holiday Shopping Report that found 50% of U.S. consumers are concerned with being victimized by fraudsters this holiday season. The concern is relatively uniform across generations, though TransUnion found Gen X are the most worried about being victimized at 53%. Heading into the holiday shopping season, the TransUnion Financial Hardship Study conducted from Oct. 28 to Nov. 5, 2020 found 37% of 9,515 consumers surveyed globally said they had been targeted by digital fraud related to COVID-19, a 28% increase from the same survey the week of April 13, 2020.