Omnichannel fraud strategy: What retail teams miss between stores and digital
Guest: Gary Novello
Today I’m continuing my conversation with Gary Novello, and this part of the discussion stays focused on something I think retail teams need to get much better at, which is omnichannel fraud strategy. Because if you work in retail fraud prevention long enough, you start to see the same problem show up again and again. Companies treat online and offline fraud like separate issues, separate teams, and sometimes almost separate businesses.
They are not.
They have different signals, different operational realities, and different speed of loss. But they still connect. The customer moves across channels. The fraud risk moves across channels. The business impact definitely moves across channels. And if your fraud strategy leadership is not looking at the full picture, you are going to miss things that matter.
That is where this conversation gets useful.
Because Gary has experience that spans both sides of retail risk. He understands store and online fraud, the operational differences between them, and the ways those differences can create blind spots when teams are not aligned. This is not just about Macy’s fraud strategy. It is about what omnichannel fraud really looks like when you stop pretending the channels operate in isolation.
Here is what that means in practice:
- Omnichannel fraud strategy works best when teams connect online and offline fraud patterns instead of separating them too neatly
- Retail fraud prevention gets stronger when store and online risks are evaluated as one business problem
- Cross-channel fraud risk increases when information stays trapped in silos
- Fraud operations in retail need strategy, communication, and shared context, not just separate workflows
What you’ll hear in this episode:
- How Gary thinks about omnichannel fraud strategy across retail environments
- Why online and offline fraud create different challenges but still require shared thinking
- What cross-channel fraud risk looks like when store and ecommerce teams are not aligned
- Why fraud strategy leadership matters in retail more than a lot of companies realize
- How retail fraud prevention improves when teams learn across channels instead of competing across them
You should listen to this episode if you:
- Work in retail fraud prevention and need a stronger omnichannel fraud strategy
- Manage store and online fraud and want a more connected framework
- Care about retail loss prevention, ecommerce and in-store fraud, or department store fraud prevention
- Want better alignment across merchant fraud operations and retail risk management
- Are trying to understand how fraud prevention in retail changes when customer journeys span multiple channels
If you liked this episode, be sure to subscribe and review the podcast on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts. It really helps with getting the word out.
Episode notes & key takeaways
In this episode, I continue my conversation with Gary and dig further into what happens when fraud teams have to think beyond one channel. Because an omnichannel fraud strategy is not just about covering more ground. It is about understanding how fraud shifts when customers, transactions, and abuse patterns move between digital and physical environments.
Why omnichannel fraud strategy requires a broader view
Let’s break this down.
A lot of companies still organize fraud around channel ownership. One team handles ecommerce. Another handles stores. Another handles some version of investigations or operations. That can make sense structurally. But the fraud itself does not care about the org chart.
That is the problem.
Criminals move toward the easiest path. Sometimes that is online. Sometimes it is in-store. Sometimes it is both. And if your omnichannel fraud strategy only looks at each area independently, you are probably going to miss how one weakness feeds another. That is where a lot of preventable loss lives.
This is exactly why retail fraud prevention has to become more connected.
- Omnichannel fraud strategy helps teams see the full customer and fraud journey
- Online and offline fraud often expose related weaknesses in policy, process, and communication
- Cross-channel fraud risk grows when fraud teams do not share context quickly enough
- Fraud prevention in retail works better when the strategy reflects how people actually shop and abuse systems
Why online and offline fraud are different, but not separate
Here’s what’s actually happening.
Store and online fraud do behave differently. The speed is different. The visibility is different. The proof points are different. Ecommerce and in-store fraud create different kinds of evidence and different kinds of operational pressure. But that does not mean they should be discussed as if they have nothing to do with each other.
Because they do.
A customer may research online and buy in-store. A bad actor may exploit digital accounts and monetize through physical locations. A refund or return issue may start in one channel and finish in another. This is where things get interesting, because the business feels the impact as one set of losses even when internal teams categorize them differently.
And that matters.
- Ecommerce and in-store fraud require different controls, but they still influence the same business outcomes
- Store and online fraud often connect through shared identities, payment methods, or customer accounts
- Retail loss prevention improves when digital and store teams compare notes instead of working in parallel
- Retail fraud trends are easier to understand when teams stop treating each channel like a separate universe
Why cross-channel fraud risk gets missed so often
This is one of those issues that sounds obvious once you say it out loud, but it gets overlooked all the time.
Cross-channel fraud risk usually gets missed because companies are measuring fraud in the way they are organized, not in the way criminals operate. One dashboard for ecommerce. One report for stores. One workflow for customer service. One escalation path for investigations. And then everyone is surprised when the patterns are fragmented.
That usually does not end well.
Because fraud thrives in handoff gaps. Inconsistency. Partial visibility. Delayed communication. And once teams are only seeing a slice of the picture, it becomes much harder to understand root cause or stop repeated abuse across the broader operation.
- Cross-channel fraud risk tends to hide in handoffs between teams and systems
- Fraud operations in retail need stronger shared visibility across channels
- Merchant fraud operations become more effective when data and context travel together
- Retail risk management is harder when every team is solving only its own piece of the problem
Why fraud strategy leadership matters so much in retail
I really like this part of the conversation because it gets into leadership, not just controls.
Fraud strategy leadership matters because omnichannel problems do not usually get solved by one team acting alone. Someone has to connect the dots. Someone has to translate what is happening across channels into a shared business priority. Someone has to make sure retail fraud prevention is not just reactive, but coordinated.
Right.
And that is where a lot of companies struggle. Not because the teams are not smart. Because alignment takes work. It takes communication. It takes influence. It takes the ability to explain why online and offline fraud should not be competing for attention when they are both exposing the same business to risk.
- Fraud strategy leadership is what turns channel-specific activity into a real omnichannel fraud strategy
- Macy’s fraud strategy is useful here because it reflects retail complexity, not just theory
- Fraud prevention in retail gets stronger when leadership pushes for connection, not just coverage
- Retail fraud prevention depends on coordinated ownership across multiple parts of the business
What retail teams should take from this
So what should retail fraud teams do with this?
Start by asking whether your strategy reflects your customer journey or just your org chart. Then look at how information moves between store and digital teams. Then look at where cross-channel abuse could be hiding because no one owns the full picture. That is usually where the most useful answers are.
Honestly, that is the biggest takeaway for me.
Omnichannel fraud strategy is not about making every channel look the same. It is about making sure the business understands how the risks connect. And if you can do that well, your team is going to make better decisions, catch more patterns earlier, and build a much stronger retail fraud prevention program overall.
The big takeaway from this episode is pretty straightforward. Omnichannel fraud strategy only works when retail teams treat online and offline fraud as connected parts of the same risk environment. That is the part that holds up, and that is exactly why this conversation with Gary is so useful.
