Kogan protects profits while keeping customers happy with Riskified
Meet Kogan
Founded in Melbourne in 2006 by Ruslan Kogan, Kogan.com has grown into one of Australia’s leading ecommerce businesses. Today, the company serves more than 3.5 million customers across Australia and New Zealand through brands including Kogan.com, Dick Smith, Mighty Ape, Matt Blatt, and Brosa, alongside services covering mobile, internet, energy, insurance, money, and travel. Its mission: make in-demand products and services more accessible and affordable.
Director of Finance & Investor Relations, Kogan.com
We wanted a partner that could truly stand behind performance, not just flag risky transactions.”
The Challenge
Operating at Kogan’s transaction volumes means fraud isn’t a peripheral concern; it’s a constant operational pressure. Being an online-only retailer means every transaction is card-not-present, which carries more inherent fraud risk. As a company dedicated to offering its customers the best value, it was imperative to Kogan that fraud and policy abuse be reduced so that those savings could be passed on to the customer.
Behind the scenes, retailers face a barrage of attacks from fraudsters who use stolen credit card details to attempt to shop online. Unbeknownst to most customers, who are not directly affected by this, the retailer is spending millions of dollars to manage losses and block those transactions. However, those measures often mean legitimate customers are blocked at checkout due to false-positive fraud signals. Kogan wanted to reduce the cost of monitoring fraud as well as ensure real customers were not prevented from shopping.
Beyond fraud, Kogan faced a broader policy abuse problem. Serial policy abusers, subscription chargebacks, and unprofitable customers were eroding margins in ways that weren’t always visible or easily quantified. Manual chargeback management added operational burden without improving outcomes.
Through it all, one constraint was non-negotiable: protecting approval rates and the experience of legitimate customers.
Director of Finance & Investor Relations, Kogan.com
Riskified has felt like a genuine partner rather than a software vendor. Their team is responsive, proactive, and highly engaged, with regular business reviews and reporting that help us continuously optimize performance.”
The solution
Kogan selected Riskified after an extensive market evaluation. Its chargeback guarantee model, alongside its reputation and technology, distinguished it from other solutions considered.
Kogan partnered with Riskified as its accountable fraud and abuse prevention partner: a partner with the tools, data, and guarantee model to go beyond risk flagging and drive measurable business outcomes.
- Stronger identity resolution: Kogan activated Riskified’s Identity Engine and improved beacon coverage, including closing the Android data gaps that had reduced detection accuracy. With richer device intelligence and cross-session behavioral signals, Riskified could identify fraudulent actors faster and with greater precision. Riskified connects behavior across devices, sessions, and accounts to stop threats without adding friction for legitimate customers.
- Profitability visibility: Using Identity Engine and Identity Explore, Kogan gained the ability to surface repeat abusers, detect promo misuse, and quantify customer-level profitability. Rather than absorbing the cost of serial policy abuse, Kogan could identify, measure, and act on it, refining policies to reduce revenue leakage at the source.
- Chargeback management at scale: Riskified’s Chargeback Guarantee model, combined with automated decisioning and dispute management capabilities, removed the manual overhead from Kogan’s chargeback process. Dispute outcomes improved, win rates increased, and chargeback rates dropped below AusPayNet thresholds.
- Approval rate optimization: Riskified’s machine learning models, continuously retrained on Kogan-specific transaction data, enabled the team to refine decision thresholds for high-value and higher-risk categories, including large orders and first-time customers. With chargeback protection in place for those segments, Kogan could extend approval coverage with confidence.
$1.5M saved annually
through identification and management of unprofitable customers and serial policy abusers
98%+ approval rates
consistently maintained across high-value and higher-risk transaction categories
Significantly reduced operational burden
with fewer manual reviews freeing internal teams to focus on higher-value work
More legitimate orders
approved that may previously have been declined out of caution, improving revenue capture and customer experience
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