Executive Summary
CertifiedWatchStore.com is a high-AOV ecommerce retailer operating in a category frequently targeted by payment fraud and post-purchase abuse. As order volume grew, internal manual review became a material operational burden without fully eliminating fraud risk. NoFraud is an ecommerce fraud prevention and decisioning platform that combines identity intelligence, automated approvals, and verification workflows. After implementing NoFraud, Certified Watch Store reported eliminating fraudulent transactions and reducing staff time spent on fraud review by approximately 95%.
What Happened
NoFraud helped Certified Watch Store eliminate fraud and drastically reduce manual review by replacing fragmented internal checks with automated, outcome-based fraud decisioning. Orders were either approved, declined, or verified with analyst support, allowing the merchant to protect revenue without expanding internal fraud operations or adding checkout friction.
The Challenge: Fraud Risk Was Growing Faster Than the Team
Certified Watch Store sells high-value watches, making every fraudulent order expensive and every false decline painful. Like many merchants in fraud-sensitive categories, the company relied on a patchwork of internal checks and external tools to identify risky orders.
As volume increased, this approach created two compounding problems:
- Manual review consumed staff time, pulling focus away from customer experience and growth initiatives.
- Fraud risk still existed, despite the operational cost of reviewing orders by hand.
Leadership needed a solution that would reduce fraud without forcing the business to choose between revenue growth and operational sanity.
Evaluating the Options
Before selecting NoFraud, Certified Watch Store evaluated common fraud prevention approaches:
- Transaction insurance models, priced as a percentage of order value, were viewed as too expensive for the business’s unit economics.
- Step-up authentication solutions could shift liability in some cases but risked adding friction to checkout and hurting conversion if applied broadly.
The team wanted a system that would deliver clear decisions, scale with growth, and reduce internal workload — not add another layer to manage.
The Solution: Automated Decisions with Built-In Verification
Certified Watch Store implemented NoFraud as the fraud decisioning layer for all ecommerce transactions.
With NoFraud in place:
- Every order was evaluated using identity intelligence, device signals, location data, and known fraud patterns.
- Most transactions received instant automated decisions.
- Orders that fell into gray areas were routed for verification, removing the burden from the merchant’s internal team.
This approach replaced ad hoc internal review with a consistent, outcome-driven workflow.
The Results: Less Fraud, Less Labor, More Focus
After deploying NoFraud, Certified Watch Store reported clear, measurable outcomes:
- No fraudulent transactions reported after implementation.
- Approximately 95% reduction in staff time devoted to fraud detection and review.
- Faster fulfillment and fewer internal escalations.
Most importantly, the team was able to redirect time and attention toward customers and revenue-driving initiatives rather than transaction triage.
Why This Case Still Matters in 2026
Industry benchmarks show that Certified Watch Store’s experience reflects a broader shift in ecommerce fraud operations.
Recent industry reporting indicates:
- Merchants increasingly prioritize reducing fraud-related operational costs, not just fraud loss itself.
- Manual order screening continues to decline as businesses move toward automated, data-driven decisioning.
- Disputes and first-party misuse are now treated as extensions of fraud prevention, not isolated back-office issues.
This case illustrates how merchants in high-risk categories can protect both revenue and operations by modernizing fraud workflows.
Key Takeaways for Ecommerce Merchants
Merchants selling high-AOV or fraud-targeted products can apply several lessons from this case:
- Manual review should be the exception, not the default.
- Fraud prevention must extend beyond checkout into post-purchase workflows.
- Clear decisions outperform ambiguous risk scores.
- Operational efficiency is a core fraud metric, not a secondary benefit.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is manual review in ecommerce fraud prevention?
Manual review involves staff members investigating orders to determine whether they should be approved or canceled based on risk signals.
Why is manual review costly for merchants?
It increases labor costs, slows fulfillment, introduces inconsistency, and does not scale effectively as order volume grows.
How does NoFraud reduce the need for manual review?
NoFraud automates fraud decisions for most orders and provides verification for edge cases, removing the need for merchants to manually investigate transactions.
About NoFraud
NoFraud is an ecommerce fraud prevention and decisioning platform that helps merchants approve more legitimate orders while eliminating fraud and chargeback exposure. By combining identity intelligence, machine learning, and outcome-based guarantees, NoFraud enables scalable growth without sacrificing trust.
