Emerging Risks In E-Commerce And Payments: Trends To Watch In 2025

Forbes

21-03-2025

Rochelle Blease is the president of G2 Risk Solutions, a global risk management firm.
As e-commerce continues to evolve, so do risks facing the ecosystem. The year ahead promises significant challenges for all stakeholders—some known, some emerging and some we have yet to uncover.
The weaponization of generative AI (GenAI), increasingly complex fraud schemes and evolving regulatory frameworks are reshaping the e-commerce and payments risk landscape. These developments have far-reaching implications for banks, payment providers and online marketplaces, demanding proactive and agile approaches to risk management.
As we monitor billions of pages of e-commerce websites worldwide, here are some of the top trends they are tracking as the year unfolds.
All industries are grappling with the transformative impact of GenAI. One of the critical challenges for e-commerce and payments is the use of GenAI to perpetrate fraud. Cybercriminals are leveraging it to build highly realistic fraudulent websites, making them harder to detect. Additionally, GenAI is being deployed to mass-produce synthetic consumer identities, enabling bad actors to apply for illicit merchant accounts at scale. The losses from AI-powered fraud are estimated to reach upwards of $10 trillion globally in 2025. These developments undermine traditional verification practices and amplify risks across the payment ecosystem.
Compounding the GenAI issue is the rise of deepfake services, where our risk analysts have seen a marked proliferation. They fuel fraudulent and offensive content creation that erodes trust in online transactions. As these capabilities expand, e-commerce stakeholders must strengthen merchant verification and monitoring to counteract these emerging threats.
Specific product categories, such as nutraceuticals, remain high-risk areas for payments providers. Tainted supplements—often containing undeclared pharmaceuticals or banned substances—not only pose consumer health risks but also expose payment providers to financial and reputational harm.
New categories of concern have elicited warnings of consumer harm and are gaining regulatory attention. For example, the FDA has recently issued warnings for supplements tainted with yellow oleander, a toxic substance that can have a significant impact on the heart. Marketplaces and payment providers must enhance due diligence processes to monitor closely and quickly shut down services for violative sites when warranted.
The growing industry of fake reviews presents reputational and compliance challenges. Despite regulatory crackdowns in the U.S. and U.K., the sale of fake reviews has become a viable industry, exposing payments providers to fines. Illustrating the scope of the problem, Amazon proactively blocked more than 250 million suspected fake reviews from its site in 2023 alone. As illegal sales proliferate online, financial stakeholders must prevent fraudulent review merchants from entering the payments ecosystem.
Another alarming trend is the rise of transaction laundering as a service. Transaction laundering occurs when a bad actor obtains payment processing for an innocuous 'front' website and then uses that site to process payments for illegal goods or services. Criminals have begun outsourcing transaction laundering to third parties, who create intricate networks of shell companies, straw signers and thousands of sophisticated 'front' websites to disguise illegal transactions.
Cyber threats, fraud schemes and emerging payment technologies drive continuous updates to card network rules and regulatory mandates. Ongoing updates to compliance requirements aim to enhance consumer protections, strengthen data security and reduce financial crime, but they also come with operational complexities. Organizations must navigate these changes while ensuring seamless customer experiences and maintaining trust. Those who fail to stay ahead of regulatory updates risk potential penalties, reputational damage and increased vulnerability to fraud.
Proactively integrating compliance into fraud prevention and risk management strategies rather than reacting to rule changes after the fact is the path of least resistance for financial institutions, payment providers and e-commerce platforms. Leveraging advanced analytics, automation and human intelligence can help the e-commerce industry stay ahead of regulatory shifts while mitigating fraud. As compliance expectations grow, those who invest in scalable, technology-driven solutions will be better positioned to navigate regulatory complexities, reduce risk exposure and foster consumer confidence.
Addressing e-commerce and payments landscape challenges requires a strategic mindset that sees risk management as a catalyst for innovation rather than a reactive burden. By adopting holistic approaches that integrate advanced technologies and human expertise, financial and technology leaders can help protect the e-commerce ecosystem while more safely enabling growth. In 2025, success will hinge on proactive adaptation to an ever-evolving risk landscape—one defined by both unprecedented opportunities and heightened threats.
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