Holiday scams hit record highs as fraud goes mainstream

By November 2026, the case for a seasonal scam surge rested on more than anecdote: multiple reports showed fraud volumes had already been climbing sharply into the holiday window. Biometric Update, citing BioCatch, said impersonation scams in the United States “more than doubled” over the prior year, while phishing attempts rose 50 percent and digital banking sessions involving remote-access tools increased 45 percent, evidence that consumer-facing fraud was scaling rapidly ahead of peak shopping events rather than appearing as a one-off Black Friday anomaly.

Separate reporting tied that broader escalation directly to major shopping dates, showing why November stood out as a flashpoint. Intelligent Living noted that “over the 2024 Black Friday to Cyber Monday weekend, suspected fraudulent transactions rose 200% globally,” and that on Cyber Monday 2024 Visa blocked nearly 85 percent more suspected fraud than on the same day a year earlier; meanwhile, Biometric Update pointed to industrialized scam supply, including a Malwarebytes-tracked xrep operation active since March 2026 and a $500 turnkey fake-brand scam package discovered in May.

The holiday window is exploitable not only because shopping volume rises, but because consumer behavior shifts: people are rushed, distracted, and more willing to trust what appears in front of them. Mastercard says 72% of consumers shop on unfamiliar websites during the holiday season, yet only 41% say they are more cautious online, while Norton’s guest said there was a 50% increase in fake websites and scam links surfaced through AI apps because people are not verifying whether sources are safe or real.

That vulnerability extends into seasonal commerce, where payment friction, delivery anxiety, and returns create openings for social engineering. Google-commissioned Ipsos research found that online information informed 93% of reported post-holiday in-store shopping occasions, while Returnless data said European return volumes are 44.5% higher during December through February; against that backdrop, Adyen found every retailer surveyed had been affected by payment performance issues, including 36% losing sales because of failed or slow transactions and 31% citing in-store queues, while 12% would switch to a competitor immediately after a payment issue. The study also said refund fraud was cited by 55% of affected merchants as one of the three biggest fraud increases, and 33% of consumers received scam messages while 14% were targeted by refund, prize, or loyalty scams.

The measurable scale of scam activity is already broad before the holiday rush, then becomes unmistakably large once shopping intensifies. N2K Networks found that “according to all this 91% of American consumers have encountered at least one digital scam or cyber attack attempt,” while “17% of Americans have lost money to a scam… you Nearly 20% of people have lost money to a scam in the United States,” including “10% permanently 7% temporarily in some cases they were able to recover their money,” evidence that victimization is not anecdotal but firmly in the double digits.

Seasonal retail fraud also shows up in infrastructure and transaction data: PR Newswire’s Norton Holiday Report 2026 said “1 in 6 Americans Fell Victim to Online Shopping Scams,” while Akamai “said in their report that their detections of online scams have doubled between July 2025 and June 2026,” reaching “6.4 million online scams between April and June 2026,” versus “3.2 million” a year earlier, and even surpassing phishing in its dataset. At the payment layer, AOL.com reported that “Federal Reserve Financial Services’ fraud survey published in April found that debit card fraud was the type of payment fraud most reported by financial institutions, with 75% of institutions reporting attempts,” and “They estimated it resulted in 40% of their total payment fraud losses, which is up 4% year over year.”