Online merchants reject 6% of all orders, still lose $2.6 bln to online fraud

High fraud rates continue to plague electronic commerce Web sites, with criminals expected to steal $2.6 bln from online merchants in 2004, according to CyberSource Corp. That's an increase of $700 mln, but if you consider the e-commerce growth rates, fraud level stayed essentially the same - about 2% of sales. Nearly 6% of all orders are now rejected, the survey found, up from about 4.5% in 2003.