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24 Sep 2020 – Articles

IT-fraud: New collaboration will protect customers from fake webshops

More and more Danes are shopping online. As a result, the number of fake webshops attempting to trick customers is increasing. For this reason, Danske Bank will start blocking card payments on fake webshops in collaboration with e-mærket – the Danish virtual label guaranteeing secure, transparent online shopping.

Shopping online on Danish and foreign webshops is fast, easy and convenient, but not all webshops are real. Often, the fake webshops lure with offers too good to resist, but the buyer may end up with a fake product or never receives the product, or end up giving away sensitive information.

A new collaboration between Danske Bank and e-mærket will now put a stop to this increasing trend.

IT-fraud in Denmark

  • 14 pct. of all Danish consumers have come across a fake webshop
  • In October 2019 e-mærket reported 150,000 internet domains that were connected to fake webshops to the State Prosecutor for Serious Economic and International Crime in Denmark


Blocking payments on cards
“Thousands of fake webshops are run by foreign criminals far away from Denmark, which makes it complicated for police investigation,” says Toke Mølgaard, Head of Communications at e-mærket.

“The purpose of this new collaboration between Danske Bank and e-mærket is to block card payments that are initiated on fake webshops, until they are closed down by the authorities”, Toke Mølgaard explains, who has reported 150,000 fake webshops to the State Prosecutor for Serious Economic and International Crime. These cases will also be passed on to Europol.

Danske Bank has a great focus on protecting customers from fake webshops and in 2019 alone, more than 350,000 card payments were blocked. With the new collaboration, Danske Bank will be able to intensify its efforts going forward.

“For several years we have worked intensively to identify these fake webshops and stop as many card payments as possible. Today we prevent most of the payments, but we continuously improve to protect our customers from the fraudsters. This is why I am extremely pleased with this new collaboration with e-mærket, which will certainly help us decrease the number of fraud cases in Denmark,” says Ketil Clorius, Global Head of Fraud Management in Danske Bank.


Fraud has become a global challenge and the fraudsters become better and better at finding ways to trick the customer. We are in an arms race against these fraudsters, which means that we, Danske Bank and customers, constantly have to keep up and pay extra attention when shopping online.

Ketil Clorius

Global Head of Fraud Management, Danske Bank



Sales of counterfeit products on the rise
According to the European Union Intellectual Property Office, Danish consumers lose 8,6 billion DKK a year on counterfeit products, often coming from China and being sold online. This is also a reason why Danske Bank is looking forward to enhancing the preventive setup in order to protect customers from counterfeit products.

“Fraud online comes in many shapes and no matter what you do to prevent fraud, there is always a risk of becoming a victim of the fraudsters. Fraud has become a global challenge and the fraudsters become better and better at finding ways to trick the customer. We are in an arms race against these fraudsters, which requires the individual to constantly pay attention when shopping online,” emphasises Ketil Clorius.

From loose idea to collaboration
The collaboration started with a networking group under the State Police’s centre for IT-related crimes, where e-mærket and Danske Bank met on a frequent basis together with Danish companies and organisations to discuss crime prevention counter measures.

“The idea for the collaboration came years back, when we were introduced to some good people at Danske Bank, who worked with fighting payment fraud. We quickly found out that together we would be able to put the brakes on the increasing number of digital fraud,” says Toke Mølgaard.

What to remember when shopping online

  • Choose shops that have the e-mærket certificate
  • Be sure to verify that that the webshop also has a physical address, e-mail contact info and a phone number. If none of these can be found, it is most likely a fake webshop.
  • Pay attention to the language and the prices on the site. Grammatical mistakes, odd language and unusal prices are usually a sign of a fake webshop.
  • If the offer on the webshop is too good to be true – it usually is!

Read more on e-mærket's website