They’re canceling honesty now.
A new report reveals a staggeringly high number of Gen Zers openly admitting to engaging in credit card fraud — with nearly half of them committing the financial crime, according to new data from anti-fraud company Sift.
The research found that 42% of those aged 26 and younger admitted to filing a fraud claim — or other type of dispute — despite having not only received their purchase, but being satisfied with it as well.
This is known as first-party fraud, or friendly fraud — it often results in the customer successfully receiving a chargeback to their account.
“We’re seeing a trend of younger generations increasingly taking advantage of consumer-friendly chargeback protections,” said Rebecca Alter, Trust and Safety Architect at Sift.
“This should serve as a wake-up call for businesses to implement a proactive fraud strategy and end-to-end dispute management process in order to preserve profitability.”
Compared to these politically-correct perps, only 22% of millennials copped to committing first-person fraud, along with a paltry 10% of those supposedly nihilistic Gen Xers, and only 5% of goody two-shoes Baby Boomers.
On the other side of the scam, merchants are anticipating that chargeback as a whole will cost $100B by the end of December, as the average cost of these disputes shot up 16% in 2022. As a whole, 44% of Americans are inputting disputes — real or not.
Sift cites that consumers dealing with backbreaking inflation is a major contributing factor towards the so-called “fraud economy.”
“We’re seeing this play out with people taking advantage of the dispute process and their consumer protections,” the report mentioned, noting that one in four initiated a dispute over an item they received and were content with.
This was especially prominent with “card not present” online purchases.
“These consumers likely knew their credit card company would cover the cost if they filed a dispute, making the business liable for the card-not-present dispute losses,” the company noted.
Clothing and accessories were the most manipulated sector of purchases, followed by subscriptions for digital goods at 19%, 14% for groceries, 13% for electronics, and food deliveries with a 12% rate.
“Failing to prevent fraudulent transactions costs a business more than just profits. Businesses often face fallout from consumers who were victims of fraud on their site, losing both their business and lifetime value,” Alter warned.
