Here’s the uncomfortable truth: holiday scams have graduated from nuisance to material business risk. The National Anti-Scam Centre reports Australians lost nearly $260 million to scams in the first nine months of 2025, with a pronounced spike around shopping events. McAfee’s late‑November research found local victims of seasonal scams losing an average of $445 each. For brands, the losses don’t stop at refunds and chargebacks; they cascade into eroded conversion, inflated customer acquisition costs (CAC) and long‑tail reputational damage.

1) The new cost-of-fraud equation

Use a simple model. If a mid‑market retailer processes $100 million in holiday GMV, and fraud plus scam‑related chargebacks touch 0.5%, that’s $500,000 in direct losses before operational overhead and CAC drag. Darktrace flagged a 620% surge in Black Friday phishing attempts year‑on‑year in one of its seasonal analyses, signalling not just higher incident volume but heightened consumer scepticism. When customers hesitate to click legitimate promotions or delivery updates, conversion suffers—especially for first‑time buyers with limited brand familiarity.

Translate that into unit economics: even a 20–40 basis point decline in email campaign CTR or SMS engagement during peak weeks can erase the margin gains from seasonal uplifts. The business problem is not only stopping the bad transactions; it’s preserving the integrity of the entire demand funnel while fraudsters impersonate your brand at meaningful scale.

2) AI has shifted attacker economics

Generative AI has lowered the cost and raised the quality of deception. Fraudsters can spin up convincing phishing kits, deepfake images, and brand‑consistent copy in minutes. Voice‑cloned customer service calls and polished fake parcel notifications now land with the credibility that used to take weeks of manual effort. Cybersecurity practitioners, including former US federal agents like Eric O’Neill, have warned of fake delivery texts and brand impersonation as high‑yield holiday tactics. The result: more consumers fall for more believable bait, and more legitimate buyer interactions sit under a cloud of doubt.

Australia’s AI discourse (from the government’s 2024 consultation response to sector governance at agencies like the ATO) has focused on responsible use and controls. Yet the commercialisation gap identified in mid‑2025 ecosystem reports also signals an opportunity: home‑grown AI safety and fraud‑defence tooling tailored to Australian payment rails and consumer behaviour. Expect procurement leaders to prioritise vendors who blend generative detection, behavioural analytics and Australian regulatory alignment.

3) Trust as a growth lever: the competitive playbook

Early adopters can convert scam mitigation into market share. Three moves stand out:

• Authenticate every consumer touchpoint. Enforce DMARC with alignment and deploy BIMI to display verified logos in inboxes—shrinking the attack surface of lookalike email. Pair with strict SMS link governance and consistent sender IDs to reduce spoofing risk.
• Defend your search real estate. With Google commanding roughly 94% of Australian search, brand impersonation via paid ads and SEO poisoning is a material risk. Lock down brand terms, monitor for typosquats and coordinate takedowns quickly—a joint marketing–security mandate.
• Make safer journeys convert better. Offer secure alternatives to risky links (in‑app messaging, account centres) and build clear refund/returns flows that reduce urgency‑driven mistakes. Done well, these measures lift trust and conversion, not just reduce loss.

Global warnings from major platforms and law enforcement around brand impersonation underscore the point: clear, consistent, authenticated communications are now part of the value proposition, not an afterthought.

4) Implementation reality: people, process, technology

Scam defence cannot be a siloed cybersecurity sprint. Treat it as a cross‑functional operating rhythm:

• People: Stand up a seasonal “trust desk” that integrates security, marketing, payments, and customer care. Empower frontline teams with up‑to‑date scam playbooks and pre‑approved customer messaging.
• Process: Run weekly threat reviews during peak weeks, aligning on emerging lures (fake deliveries, gift cards, crypto, refund scams). Pre‑stage FAQs, social responses and email templates to cut response time.
• Technology: Layer risk‑based authentication, device intelligence, and behavioural signals at checkout and account login. Apply adaptive friction—step‑up verification only when risk thresholds are met—to preserve conversion.

For payments, combine real‑time monitoring with confirmation prompts for bank transfers and PayID use, and tighten refund workflows (e.g., issuing credits back to original payment methods). On the martech side, integrate brand‑protection monitoring into campaign QA, and require DKIM/DMARC pass on all outbound mail to unlock full send privileges.

5) Technical deep dive: controls that drive results

Several controls consistently deliver ROI during the holidays:

• Email security: DMARC enforcement with alignment, BIMI for visual trust, and sandboxing links in customer‑facing messages. Audit third‑party senders to avoid accidental authentication gaps.
• Web and domain hygiene: Continuous monitoring for homograph domains and lookalike sites; rapid takedown pipelines; HTTP Strict Transport Security and certificate pinning for apps to deter man‑in‑the‑middle attempts.
• Account and payment defence: Device fingerprinting, impossible‑travel checks, and bot management to counter credential‑stuffing; 3‑D Secure 2 on card payments with risk‑based step‑up to reduce chargebacks without killing conversion.
• Customer comms safety: Default to in‑app or logged‑in channels for sensitive actions; embed clear anti‑phishing guidance in order confirmations and delivery updates without inducing fear that tanks CTR.

Critically, instrument for measurement: track cost of fraud as a percentage of GMV, false‑positive rate in fraud decisioning, and trust‑adjusted conversion (conversion net of security friction). These metrics let CFOs and CMOs evaluate the trade‑offs with rigour.

6) Market context and regulation

Australia’s National Anti‑Scam Centre is centralising intelligence and public guidance, while the ACCC continues to spotlight rising online shopping scams. The government’s AI Ethics Principles remain a useful compass for responsible deployment of customer‑facing automation and detection models. Large agencies like the ATO have articulated governance approaches for general‑purpose AI—boards should expect similar oversight structures for commercial AI used in fraud detection and customer engagement.

For boards, the governance question is simple: are scam risks explicitly mapped into risk registers, with defined risk appetite, KPIs, and incident disclosure protocols? If not, the organisation is exposed—commercially and, increasingly, reputationally.

7) The 12–18 month roadmap

Forward‑leaning firms will act on three horizons:

• Now (peak season): Enforce DMARC, tighten refund/payment flows, deploy adaptive MFA, stand up the trust desk, and publish official communication channels prominently.
• Next (0–6 months): Integrate brand protection into ad‑ops; adopt behavioural analytics for account and payment risk; expand takedown partnerships; run tabletop exercises for deepfake/impersonation incidents.
• Later (6–18 months): Consolidate a trust tech stack (fraud, identity, comms authentication) with unified metrics; co‑develop AI‑driven detection tuned to Australian scam patterns; operationalise board‑level AI and fraud governance.

The payoff is tangible. If a $100 million GMV retailer trims scam‑linked losses from 0.5% to 0.25% and recovers even 10 bps of conversion lost to consumer scepticism, the impact can exceed $350,000 in season—often eclipsing the annual cost of core controls.

Scams will keep evolving; so must the response. Treat trust as infrastructure, not a campaign. In a market where shoppers are primed to doubt, the brands that prove authenticity fastest will win the click—and the customer—for the long term.