Your big seasonal promo just went live – traffic’s surging, carts are filling up, and suddenly, approvals start dropping. That’s the moment you realize your fraud system wasn’t built to move at the speed of seasonal e-commerce spikes.
Online sales spikes due to seasonal surges are significant for revenue, but they also test the effectiveness of your fraud strategy under pressure as approval accuracy becomes more challenging during holidays, sales, and promotions.
With the proper infrastructure in place, those high-volume moments don’t have to derail your team. They can become a real opportunity to boost approvals, protect revenue, and deliver a seamless customer experience exactly when it matters most.
What’s Slowing Down Your Seasonal Spikes & How to Spot It
Seasonal volume surges expose every crack in your workflows. Rigid controls tend to overcorrect, flagging unfamiliar behavior as a risk and turning away good customers in the process. While fraud prevention during peak seasons is challenging, it’s important to hone in on it as false declines erode trust the fastest when customers are eager to buy and are short on patience.
While that impatient customer is navigating your tests, fraud attempts are targeting your weakest outdated logic – hoping to sneak through when systems are straining under pressure. Review queues grow, alerts pile up, and e-commerce fraud teams are forced to triage instead of optimize.
And now, with the rise of AI shopping agents (and the potential fraud concerns associated with them), there’s added complexity behind every decision.
Before you know it, revenue’s slipping, your team’s overwhelmed, and the customer experience is at an all-time low — right when it matters most. But seasonal summit stress isn’t inevitable. You’ve got options.
Strategic Fraud Preparation for Peak Periods
To stay ahead and handle seasonal traffic, fraud teams need tools that scale, adapt, and improve with every transaction. That means preparation, not panic, with systems built for flexibility.
- Review Historical Data: Previous patterns in volume, fraud attempts, and approval performance hold the clue to help forecast where pressure points will emerge. Establishing baselines gives your team early signals when something deviates from the norm so you can act fast, instead of scrambling to catch up.
- Anticipate Instead of React: AI models for fraud detection that are powered by behavioral data don’t wait for fraud to happen – they learn from it. These systems spot subtle risk signals, even when the volume is high and fraud tactics are evolving. The payoff is higher approval rates, fewer false positives, and less pressure on your team.
- Build Flexible Policy Logic: Fraud tactics change, and your response should, too. With dynamic policies and adaptable thresholds, you can fine-tune your fraud controls based on user behavior, transaction type, or campaign timing. This flexibility means good customers move through smoothly while suspicious patterns are flagged for review or blocked outright.
How a Flexible Fraud “Ready System” Performs
Optimizing fraud strategy with proactive planning helps your team stay focused and your systems stay sharp, even when things get hectic. You’ll know your system is ready for seasonal spikes and policy abuse when it experiences:
- Higher Approval Rates: Leading to more sales and fewer abandoned carts
- Fewer False Declines: Providing smoother experiences that keeps customers coming back
- Better Fraud Detection: Stopping more fraud before it causes downstream damage
- Stronger Operational Efficiency: Removing labor-intensive manual reviews creates more room to focus on other revenue-driving initiatives
A prepared system doesn’t scramble – it runs smoothly and quietly in the background. That’s what keeps the customer experience fast and friction-free, even when volume surges.
Get Ahead Before the Next Online Sales Spike
Your team shouldn’t need to scramble to keep up. When your system is ready, it doesn’t falter. It holds steady, adapts quickly, and clears a path for real customers to move through without friction. That’s what turns seasonal spikes into positive momentum — not more rules or more manual work — just smarter tools and better signals doing their job in the background to create glitch-free seasonal sales.
Forter helps teams stay prepared, enabling you to approve more trusted customers, stop more fraud, improve revenue protection, and deliver an experience that holds up under pressure.
