Commonly known across the world as Chinese New Year, the 2026 Spring Festival ushers in the year of the Horse and with it, an unbridled surge in shopping and economic activity. But as consumer spending rises, so do the methods of those looking to exploit the holiday rush. How can ecommerce businesses protect themselves and their customers during this high-stakes period?

This year’s festival is defined by new trends. Consumers are shifting their focus from extravagance to sincerity. Gifting is more about personal value than impressive packaging, and if 2025 trends continue, travel is increasingly about unique cultural experiences. Young consumers are driving a digital-first approach, purchasing “cyber” New Year goods like custom digital red packet covers and embracing cross-border ecommerce to find the perfect gift. This surge in diverse, high-volume transactions creates a complex and challenging environment for fraud prevention.

The high stakes of the travel sector

High volume of orders provides ideal cover for fraudsters, who aim to blend in with legitimate customers. The holiday season sparks a massive surge in travel as millions of people journey to reunite with family or explore new destinations. Routers reports that China expects record-breaking passenger trips, surpassing even last year’s highs, including a surge in travel to smaller cities for Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH, 非遗) experiences rather than crowded tourist spots.

This collective movement drives a massive increase in bookings through Online Travel Agencies (OTAs)—an industry already locked in a high-stakes battle with sophisticated fraud networks. These are not mere scams but industrialized financial crimes designed to exploit the seasonal spike in digital transactions.

Travel fraud takes flight

The Chinese online travel industry faces a dual challenge: intense market competition and a battle against a “black industry chain” of professional fraudsters. These criminals exploit the system with advanced schemes, including:

  • Mileage Theft: Fraudsters use stolen frequent flyer miles to issue tickets, which they sell for cash. The airline often cancels tickets before the flight, leaving the traveler stranded and the airline to deal with the fallout.
  • Fake OTAs: Fraudsters create convincing but fake travel websites to lure customers with deals that are too good to be true, stealing their money and personal information (as reported by The Wall Street Journal).
  • Pay-Fraud: A “triangulation” scheme where fraudsters sell discounted tickets to genuine travelers but pay the airline using stolen funds or funds from a separate victim (e.g., an investment scam victim, or a pig butchering 杀猪盘 victim ). This uses international air tickets to launder money across borders, bypassing bank risk controls.

These schemes thrive during peak seasons. Riskified’s research shows that high-volume months are prone to higher fraudulent activity. Last-minute international flights, with their high average order value, are particularly attractive targets for criminals. In fact, a fraudster is 80 percent more likely to buy a last-minute ticket than a good customer. This is likely because fraudsters know decisioning takes place under time pressure as airlines merchants want to fill upcoming flights. Last-minute bookings, in this case, also decrease the chance of chargeback submission before the flight date, increasing the chance the ticket will be valid at departure.

The context gap in fraud detection

And while travel offers one of the clearest illustrations of seasonal fraud risk, the underlying issue extends far beyond airlines and OTAs. The real challenge lies in how merchants interpret what they see. Without the nuanced understanding of the context behind every transaction, merchants might alienate legitimate customers.

Understanding context becomes pivotal in fraud detection because it allows merchants to differentiate between fraudulent activity and genuine customer behavior, especially during high-activity periods. Context bridges the gap between static fraud detection systems and the dynamic, ever-evolving patterns of consumer behavior.

For example, a customer in China using a proxy to book travel tickets abroad might seem suspicious to a legacy system. Traditionally, these systems are programmed to trigger red flags if a transaction exceeds a specific monetary threshold or if a proxy or VPN is detected, as these are often hallmarks of illicit activity.

However, in the case of the Spring Festival, this could be a perfectly legitimate purchase by a consumer securing high-value international arrangements. Without understanding this specific seasonal context, merchants risk declining good customers and losing significant revenue.

It is mission-critical for merchants to deploy systems capable of surgically distinguishing between sophisticated attacks and legitimate consumer behavior.

The double-edged sword of AI

Adding another layer to this challenge is the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence. Chinese tech firms are in a race to debut their latest AI models, with companies spending billions to launch new systems just before the Chinese New Year. This innovation promises incredible benefits for businesses and consumers.

However, this same technology can be weaponized by fraudsters. AI can be used to create highly convincing phishing scams, generate fake identities, and automate attacks at a scale never seen before. As businesses adopt AI to improve customer experience and efficiency, they must ask a critical question: Is our fraud prevention ready for AI-driven attacks?

Winning the race with intelligent fraud prevention

In this environment, static rules and manual reviews are no longer sufficient. Winning against modern fraud requires a solution that is as dynamic and intelligent as the fraudsters it is designed to stop. This is where a sophisticated, AI-powered approach becomes essential.

Riskified’s machine learning models are trained on a global network of merchants, giving an unparalleled insight into transaction patterns, understanding the nuances of a last-minute flight booking and the subtle markers of a sophisticated “Pay-Fraud” scheme.

By analyzing the entire customer journey and linking identities across transactions, Riskified empowers merchants to approve more good orders, reduce fraud, and protect their customers.

As the Spring Festival ushers in a new wave of commerce and innovation, a proactive, intelligent fraud-prevention strategy is key to ensuring a prosperous and secure holiday for everyone.

Speak with one of our fraud experts to learn how to protect revenue with AI-powered solutions that accurately distinguish real customers from fraudsters during this busy season.