An order looks slightly off, and you have to decide whether to ship it. A short verification routine lets you confirm the buyer is real before the parcel leaves, without cancelling good orders out of caution. This guide covers what to check in the order, how to contact the customer, and how to give yourself time to do both.
Start with the fraud analysis on the order
Open the order from Orders and look at the Order risk section. Shopify shows a risk level, a recommended next step and the indicators behind it. Shopify's guidance is to act on the overall recommendation and not on a single indicator, and it notes that an IP address or location by itself isn't a fraud recommendation. For background on the levels, see Shopify order risk levels.
- Low: Shopify's recommendation is that you can fulfill the order
- Medium: Confirm with the customer before fulfilling
- High: Consider cancelling the order
Check the details the customer gave you
Shopify's fraud prevention guidance lists a few checks you can run yourself in a couple of minutes. None of them proves fraud alone, but together they tell you whether to contact the customer.
- IP address: Is it in a different general area than the customer claims, or does it belong to a web hosting company or a proxy service
- Email address: Search it to see whether it appears in reported fraud attempts or links to a real social profile
- Addresses: Compare billing and shipping. A large distance can be a warning sign, although gifts often ship to a different address
Contact the customer
If a check fails, Shopify advises contacting the customer to confirm the order is authentic. Use the contact details from checkout, not details supplied later by someone asking you to change the order.
- Phone: Call the number on the order. Shopify notes that fraudulent customers often use invalid phone numbers
- Simple questions: Ask about the order and listen for whether the person knows their own details
- Email: On some orders Shopify shows a Contact customer action. It opens an email dialog and does not send anything until you review it
Give yourself time to verify
Verification is harder when the payment is already captured and your team is packing. Shopify lets you set payment capture to manual on the Payments settings page, so you can review the fraud analysis before you accept the payment. Shopify also notes this adds a step to fulfillment, so weigh it against your order volume.
- ✅ Hold fulfillment until the customer has confirmed
- ✅ Ship with tracking and delivery confirmation once you approve
- ❌ Do not ship to a new address requested after checkout without verifying it
When the customer does not confirm
If you cannot reach the buyer and the signals still point to fraud, cancelling is usually the safer choice. Shopify notes that cancelling or voiding an order can reduce chargeback risk, but it does not stop the cardholder's bank from filing one. More warning signs are covered in fraudulent order red flags.
Doing this at scale
RiskClarity reviews each paid order, explains the risk in plain English with the fraud signals behind it, and recommends allow, verify or hold. You decide with one click, and every decision is logged in an audit log you can export for chargeback disputes. See RiskClarity.