False declines are eating into your global growth strategy 

Global ecommerce is surging. Consumer demand is high, and the infrastructure for cross-border selling has never been stronger. But while logistics networks improve and cross-border tools mature, another infrastructure failure is holding back growth: the inability to reliably recognize legitimate customers across regions. 

In the pursuit of security, platforms have tightened controls, especially in high-risk or unfamiliar markets. But without the breadth of global identity data to back up those decisions, those controls often misfire. Customers are blocked, not because they’re fraudulent, but because they don’t fit nicely into outdated or localized risk models. 

According to conservative calculations based on Elephant’s research, this mismatch has already cost ecommerce businesses at least $47 billion in lost revenue. Not due to fraudulent activity, but because genuine users are being filtered out before they can even complete a transaction.

When the system can't see you, it says no

Digital behavior is shaped by geography. In some markets, alternative payment methods are the norm. In others, using a VPN is standard practice. A shopper might switch email addresses mid-journey or change shipping destinations for practical reasons. To a narrow, rules-based system, these actions appear suspicious.  But to the consumer, they’re just routine. 

That tension, between local behavior and global rigidity, is where trust breaks down. And without the ability to interpret identity signals across borders, platforms retreat to caution. 

Elephant’s survey across five global markets–Brazil, Germany, Mexico, France, and the UK–found that nearly 60% of consumers have experienced a blocked transaction in the last six months.  Of that set of customers, 69% never tried again and went to a competitor or a local alternative. That loss is not only measurable, it’s also preventable.

Recognition gaps don't just hurt conversion

When good users are declined, the damage goes far beyond cart abandonment. Internal teams adjust KPIs downward. Expansion into promising regions slows. Product teams layer on new steps, creating UX friction. Risk teams demand more data, but often have no clean way to get it. 

This becomes a self-defeating cycle: poor identity context leads to stricter policies, which drive away legitimate customers, reducing the data that could improve decision-making. The result? Growth plans become containment plans.

A better approach: Connect, don't just detect

Fixing this doesn’t mean easing up on fraud controls, it means building systems that can tell the difference between a threat and an unfamiliar customer. Elephant does this by looking beyond isolated data points. With over 5 billion identities spanning 150+ countries, our platform interprets how identity elements interact over time. Rather than flagging what’s unusual, it identifies what’s credible, based on patterns, linkages, and global signal consistency. 

Where other systems might see a prepaid card, a temporary email, and a second-tier device and stop there, Elephant’s trust scores evaluate whether those elements show coherence. Are they part of a known, stable identity across other platforms or signals? Do they behave in ways consistent with legitimate users in that region?  It removes the guesswork and recognizes patterns at a global scale.

You're not losing to fraud, you're losing to invisibility

Most teams don’t realize how much revenue they’re declining until they stop doing it. The $47 billion revenue gap isn’t theoretical, it’s baked into approval logic, regional policies, and identity systems that haven’t kept up with the way that global consumers actually behave. 

The ecommerce platforms winning market share today are the ones that interpret signals with context, not suspicion. They recognize loyalty in the disguise of adaptation. They use trust as an accelerator, not a gatekeeper. It starts with better visibility–the kind that only a globally-connected identity system can provide. 

To understand the real cost of broken identity systems and what global consumers do when platforms fail to recognize them, read our full report, Identity crisis: The invisible barrier to global ecommerce growth.