Retail Fraud Taxonomy

The NRF Retail Fraud Taxonomy is a knowledge base of retail fraud and abuse techniques derived from real-world observations, aimed at enhancing the industry’s ability to define, understand, prepare for,  mitigate and detect fraud. The Taxonomy captures fraud behaviors, mitigations and detection methods contributed by a wide range of fraud professionals. By standardizing how retail fraud techniques, behaviors, mitigations, and detection strategies are described and understood, it serves as an effective tool for education, communication, security assessments, team exercises and resource prioritization.  

Today’s fraud actors operate across both physical and digital environments. These groups quickly adapt tactics, share knowledge online, use automation and anonymity tools, and often specialize in different stages of fraud operations. This knowledge base enables organizations to better understand how fraudsters operate, how attacks progress through various stages of execution, and where defensive controls can most effectively disrupt fraudulent activity. The Taxonomy also helps organizations communicate more consistently, improve coordination across teams, share intelligence at scale, and strengthen fraud detection and disruption efforts across the broader retail ecosystem.

Version 1.0, released in November 2024, established the foundation of the Taxonomy, introducing a common framework for understanding retail fraud through schemes, tactics, techniques, mitigations and detection sources, with an initial focus on gift card fraud and account takeover. Version 2.0, released in July 2026, builds upon that foundation by introducing new fraud schemes, techniques, mitigations, detection sources and classification methods. These additions provide broader coverage of the evolving retail fraud landscape, enabling organizations to more effectively identify, assess, prevent and detect fraud across channels. An interactive version is available here, courtesy of the Target Corporation.

The NRF Retail Fraud Taxonomy is a collaborative initiative led and sponsored by the National Retail Federation, through its Center for Digital Risk & Innovation (CDRI), in partnership with the Retail & Hospitality Information Sharing and Analysis Center (RH-ISAC), the Target Corporation and other retail industry members. The Chertoff Group serves as the technical advisor and project manager. 

NRF and its partners plan to continue updating the Taxonomy while developing new tools to support its use and adoption. If you are interested in participating in these activities, please reach out to NRF at cdri@nrf.com.