As the lights go up and spending surges, criminals get busy. The festive shopping and party season is one of the most active periods for card theft, card loss, and attempted payment fraud. Corporate cards are used more often, staff are travelling or entertaining, and everyone is slightly distracted. Sadly, this is exactly the environment fraudsters wait for. 

They do not stop for public holidays either. Fraud attacks on cards and accounts continue on Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve, and every bank holiday in between. The only real defence is constant vigilance, from individuals and from the businesses that fund their spend. 

Everyday actions that can reduce festive fraud 

There are a few simple, practical steps we recommend to anyone using payment cards over the festive period: 

  1. Use an RFID card protector. Keep your cards in an RFID blocking sleeve in your purse, wallet, or with your phone if that’s where you keep your cards toreduce the risk of contactless skimming in crowded shops and venues. 
  2. Protect your phone with a strong PIN. Set at least an 8 digit PIN on your mobile devices, and never store the PIN with the device itself (for example, in the case or on a note in the same bag). If a thief gets both, they effectively own your digital wallet and banking apps. 
  3. Monitor accounts regularly. Log in to your banking and card apps frequently through the season and review recent transactions. The earlier you spot an unfamiliar payment, the easier it is to stop further fraud and recover funds. 

For individuals this is about personal safety. For businesses, the risk multiplies. Finance leaders already tell us that limited visibility over expenses raises the risk of fraud and non compliance, especially where many employees spend on company money.  

Where we see businesses exposed at Christmas 

In many organisations, December means: 

  • More T&E spend on food, drink, taxis, and hotels 
  • One off online purchases for gifts, events, or last minute supplies 
  • Shared corporate cards being passed around teams 
  • Petty cash still in use at sites and stores 

This creates a perfect storm. Physical cards are more likely to be misplaced at parties or in transit. Shared cards make it hard to know who actually spent what. Paper receipts are lost. Fraudulent or out of policy spend may only surface at month end, when it is too late to challenge. 

Our own research shows that finance teams already struggle to track and control decentralised spend, and that this lack of visibility directly increases perceived fraud risk. When volumes spike at year end, that risk goes up again. 

How Soldo helps organisations reduce fraud 

We designed our platform to give finance teams real time visibility and proactive control over company spending. Instead of relying on shared credit cards or cash, businesses can issue controllable company cards to employees and teams, with clear limits and rules that apply before money is spent.  

In practice, that means you can: 

  • Ringfence budgets for teams, projects, or locations, so spend stays inside the right pot and cannot silently drift.  
  • Set granular card rules based on category, merchant, country, time, or amount, so a lost card cannot be used freely in bars, ATMs, or high risk channels.  
  • Switch from petty cash to traceable cards, removing anonymous cash spend and giving you a full digital trail for every festive purchase.  
  • See spend in real time, so finance can spot unusual transactions on public holidays and act immediately, rather than discovering problems weeks later.  

Because every transaction is captured instantly and enriched with receipts and VAT data, it becomes much harder for fraudulent or inflated claims to slip through. Finance leaders in our studies highlight improved policy compliance and reduced expense fraud risk when spend is controlled at source in this way. 

A safer festive season for your people and your P&L 

The festive period should be busy for your business, not for fraudsters. By combining good personal habits (RFID protection, strong PINs, and frequent account checks) with smarter spend management and card controls, you protect both your people and your P&L. 

We see the most resilient organisations treating year end as a time to tighten control, not relax it: replacing shared cards and cash, embedding rules into every payment, and using real time data to keep watch even when the office is closed. That way, criminals may be active over the holidays, but your money is not an easy target.