What is a fraud score?

A fraud score is a number or risk category your payment processor or fraud tool assigns to a transaction to estimate how likely it is to be fraudulent. A model usually produces it at checkout, and some tools reassess the risk after payment as new signals arrive.

It’s a composite output that you don’t calculate yourself.

How a fraud score is calculated

A fraud score combines several categories of signal, including transaction details and past behavior. Stripe says the scoring happens in real time, "often within milliseconds of a transaction."

Stripe lists eight categories of signals that can contribute to a fraud score:

• Transaction details: the amount, currency, item type, timing, and frequency.
• Payment information: card metadata, the issuing country, and billing details.
• Customer history: whether this buyer has bought here before, and how that went.
• Account and identity signals: email quality, account age, and how complete the profile is.
• Device data: whether the device has been seen before, and how it behaved.
• Network and location signals: the internet protocol (IP) data that infers location.
• Behavioral patterns: odd checkout behavior or repeated credential attempts.
• Speed indicators: several login or payment tries in a short window.

Merchants tend to assume one bad signal kills an order.

A failed address verification (AVS) check is one input, not a verdict. So is a phone the model has never seen. Plenty of real buyers order from a new device, so that signal can’t decide an order alone.

What a fraud score is used for

A fraud score helps decide whether to allow, block, or review a transaction. Your rules decide how to use it. A review flag does not always hold the payment: Stripe usually processes it first unless you capture payments later.

Stripe describes these as common approaches. Low scores can pass automatically, scores above a configured block threshold can be blocked, and mid-range scores can be sent to human reviewers. Your other rules still matter.

Stripe provides 0-to-99 risk scores on supported Radar plans when a score is available. The documented defaults are 65 or above for elevated risk and 75 or above for high risk.

Those two cutoffs are Radar’s own defaults rather than an industry standard.

Stripe says teams adjust their thresholds as they watch fraud rates and false declines. Lower your block threshold and you can block more fraud, but also more good customers. Some payments that previously reached review will be blocked instead. Raise it and more payments can pass that block rule, though review rules may still catch them.

Why fraud scoring matters for merchants

Fraud scoring can help stop a stolen-card charge at checkout, before you ship goods or face a dispute. Fraud-screening fees can still apply, even when the payment is blocked.

Checkout is one place to score risk. Some tools also reassess completed payments and recommend refunds when new fraud signals appear.

Scoring still won’t prevent every dispute. Friendly fraud can come from a cardholder who really made the purchase, and an unfamiliar statement entry can prompt a dispute over a genuine order.

A low score says the transaction looked legitimate at checkout. It was, in both of those cases.

That leaves the transaction you scored, approved, and then lost to a dispute anyway. An alert network catches those disputes after checkout, when a refund can still settle things before the card network records a chargeback.

We built our alerts for exactly that gap.

Run your own scored-but-disputed count through our ROI calculator to see what that gap is costing you.

FAQ

Is a fraud score the same as a credit score?

No, they measure different things for different parties. A credit score rates a person’s odds of repaying a loan, and a fraud score rates one transaction.

Can a merchant see the exact fraud score for a transaction?

Usually yes, though the format varies by tool. Some expose the exact number per payment, and others show only a risk band like low, elevated, or high.

Does a high fraud score mean a transaction is declined?

Not automatically. Your block and review rules decide what happens, and other rules can override score-based decisions. A review flag also does not necessarily mean the payment is on hold.