Amazon and Walmart Turn Fraud Prevention Into a Retail Product

The next retail battleground may be the few seconds between receiving a suspicious notification and clicking it.

Amazon on Wednesday (Sept. 2) introduced a feature in Alexa for Shopping that lets U.S. customers ask whether a message, email, phone call or text actually came from the company. The launch puts fraud detection inside the same conversational tool consumers use to research products, compare prices and manage purchases.

The move opens another front in Amazon’s competition with Walmart. Both retailers are investing in systems designed to prevent fraudulent payments, account takeovers and scams. Amazon’s latest tool focuses on helping customers decide whether to trust a communication before they click a link, disclose account information or send money. Walmart is connecting fraud signals across transactions, returns and customer contacts.

Amazon said 360,000 customers contact its customer service operation each year to ask whether a communication is genuine. With the new feature, a shopper can describe a suspicious message to Alexa for Shopping, including who sent it, when it arrived and what it said.

After all, every suspicious shipping message, fake refund notice or fraudulent customer service call creates another moment when the consumer has to ask whether interacting with the retailer is safe. That friction increasingly matters as commerce expands across apps, marketplaces, messaging channels, voice assistants and eventually autonomous shopping agents. The more interfaces through which a retailer can interact with a customer, the more interfaces criminals can imitate.

Read more: Amazon and Walmart Test Whether Drones Can Make Rural Delivery Pay 

Fraud Moves Before Checkout in 21st Century Agentic Retail

Retail fraud has traditionally been organized around transactions. Merchants scored payments, monitored accounts, reviewed chargebacks and investigated suspicious returns after consumers entered the commerce funnel. Impersonation scams break that model because the attack often starts somewhere else.

Amazon’s new system compares the reported message’s details with Amazon’s record of billions of communications, examining the sender, content, timing and formatting. It then provides one of three responses: the communication came from Amazon, it did not match Amazon’s records or the system could not verify it.

Amazon also automatically sends each inquiry to its customer protection and enforcement team. That creates a feedback loop in which a shopper seeking help can provide intelligence about a new scam campaign. The company can use those reports to identify tactics and pursue the people or organizations behind them.

The feature joins two other verification channels. Consumers worldwide can forward suspicious communications to verify@amazon.com without having an Amazon account. They can also submit details through the company’s online verification form. Amazon said its broader enforcement efforts prevented millions of suspected scam calls from reaching consumers in 2025.

Walmart’s own public approach covers more points in the transaction. A current senior fraud leadership listingdescribes an enterprise strategy spanning identity, transaction decisions, returns abuse and post-transaction contacts. The retailer wants to use transaction data, fraud signals and analytical models to spot threats earlier and improve decisions over time.

Another Walmart Global Tech listing says the company is applying machine learning to behavioral, transactional and operational data.

See more: Walmart and Amazon Rewrite the Price War

Every Scam Report Can Now Become Fraud Intelligence

Together, the listings show Walmart trying to link fraud intelligence that retailers have traditionally managed in separate systems.

Walmart also maintains a consumer fraud alert center covering gift card, prepaid card, cryptocurrency and money-transfer scams. It asks customers who receive fraudulent product recall texts to send screenshots to OnlineAbuse@walmart.com, according to its recall information page.

The commercial stakes extend beyond reimbursement costs. The Federal Trade Commission said consumers reported more than $660 million in business impersonation scam losses in 2023, and the agency cautioned that reported cases represent only a fraction of the damage.

For retailers, the competitive advantage may come from reducing the moment of uncertainty before money or information changes hands. Amazon is turning verification into a customer-facing service. Walmart is strengthening the machinery behind transaction decisions. Both approaches point toward the same outcome: Trust is becoming part of the retail product itself.

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