Ahead of the year's biggest shopping season, Croatian police have joined forces with 15 other countries in a campaign called eComm 2020, designed to reduce scams in online shopping which has become the linchpin of modern trade, encouraged additionally by the coronavirus pandemic.

This trend offers many possibilities as well as challenges for companies. Higher sales and turnover means higher revenues as well as more frequent shopping fraud, the Police Directorate warns.

This year’s campaign, conducted by Europol and the Austrian Criminal Police Office, focuses on online merchants, helping them better recognise fraud on their platforms and enhancing their ability to protect their business and clients from attacks.

Bernhard Schafrath, a detective in the Austrian criminal police, said that in the 21st century online businesses had to take measures to protect themselves against threats such as fraud, identity theft and parcel mules. The awareness-raising campaign launched today is based on the experience gained in a large number of investigations into different types of fraud, and its purpose is to help merchants better identify and deal with safety deficiencies on their platforms, Schafrath said.

The eComm 2020 campaign was launched as part of priorities of the European multidisciplinary platform against criminal threats (EMPACT) that refer to the prevention of card fraud.

It builds on the work of a working group for e-commerce, a public-private partnership established in 2014 with key stakeholders, including the Merchant Risk Council, a network of 535 online merchants from around the world.

Apart from Croatia, participating in this year’s campaign are Austria, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Malta, North Macedonia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain and the USA.