The Data Point: 54% of B2B Retailers Turning Away Legit Customers Due to Fraud Fears

What you don’t know can cost you coming and going. Businesses failing to authenticate identity in B2B transactions are prime fraud targets on the one hand, while on the other, an obscured view of fraud attacks finds more B2B businesses declining good customers due to fraud fears.

We explored this growing problem in “The New B2B Authentication Standard: The Shift Toward Automated Digital Identity Verification,” a PYMNTS and TreviPay collaboration, surveying 150 executives at companies generating $10 million to $1 billion in revenues to find where companies are in their B2B identity verification journeys, seeking to balance this equation.

Per the study, “PYMNTS’ research finds that 54% of retailers and 44% of both manufacturers and marketplaces failed to accept new customers due to concerns about fraud. Another concern: Onboarding processes for new customers have caused some legitimate businesses to be falsely flagged as fraudulent, unjustly halting some business opportunities.”

See it now: The New B2B Authentication Standard: The Shift Toward Automated Digital Identity Verification

chart, sales lost to fraudVerifying the authenticity of a business prospect is a critical step in B2B selling, and a surprising number of companies are using antiquated systems and even manual review to onboard new clients — or not — with the “or not” group disconcertingly large and in need of upgrades.

As the study states, “Much of this can be attributed to false positives — inaccurate fraud warnings that can negatively impact legitimate business opportunities,” adding “companies that rely on reactive and manual solutions to verify digital identities and stem fraud lose above average shares of annual sales at 4.5%, with 2% caused by failed sales to legitimate businesses.”

Meanwhile, we found that firms using “proactive and automated solutions reduce their share of lost sales to 2.3%, with 1.1% due to halted legitimate sales.”

Given our findings that 98% of B2B retailers, manufacturers and marketplaces have been victims of fraud or lost business opportunities with legitimate firms from fear of it, modernizing B2B identity verification strategies to securely expand businesses is a key to success in 2022.

Get your copy: The New B2B Authentication Standard: The Shift Toward Automated Digital Identity Verification

Download TreviPay New B2B Authentication Standard report