Checkout Protection for WooCommerce

Description

If you run a WooCommerce store, you’ve probably already seen it: a burst of orders in a few minutes, most of them failing, all using different stolen card numbers against the same product. That’s card testing — fraudsters using your checkout to find out which stolen cards still work, one failed charge at a time. Every attempt costs you a payment gateway decline fee, clutters your orders list with junk, and — if enough of them pile up — puts your Stripe or PayPal account at risk of a fraud review or suspension. Fake orders and bot-driven checkout abuse create the same mess without a single real customer behind them.

Checkout Protection – Card Testing & Fake Order Protection for WooCommerce sits in front of your checkout — both the classic shortcode checkout and the Cart & Checkout blocks (Store API) — and scores every attempt in real time, before payment is ever attempted. Attempts that look like card testing, bots, or fraud are blocked or logged, depending on how you configure it.

Who it’s for

Store owners who have noticed (or want to get ahead of) a spike in failed payments, suspicious orders from mismatched billing details, or repeated checkout attempts from the same visitor. It’s built for stores that want real protection without sending customer data to a third-party fraud API.

Key features

• Rate Limiting – throttles repeated checkout attempts from the same visitor within a rolling time window, so a script hammering your checkout gets cut off automatically.
• Risk Analyzer – combines every enabled protection module into a single risk score and blocks checkout once your configured threshold is reached, instead of relying on one single rule.
• Blacklist – instantly blocks checkout attempts from specific IP addresses or email addresses you’ve already identified as abusive.
• Whitelist – lets trusted repeat customers, staff, or test orders skip every check, including rate limiting, so your own protection never gets in your own way.
• Disposable Email Blocker – flags or blocks checkouts made with throwaway/temporary email domains, a common signal of bot and fraud traffic.
• Country Blocker – adds risk to (or blocks) checkouts from billing countries you choose, for stores that only ship to, or only trust orders from, a specific region.
• Monitor Mode – turn on a global log but don’t block” switch so you can see exactly what your current settings would have blocked before you start enforcing them.
• Security Event Logging – every risk analysis is written to a dedicated table in your own database, viewable right on the plugin’s dashboard, so you always know what was blocked and why.
• Dashboard – a single settings screen (backed by the WordPress REST API) showing suspicious checkouts blocked in the last 7 days and all time, alongside every module’s configuration.

Automatically block repeat card-testing attacks, flag high-velocity fraud, and get instant email alerts the moment a risky checkout is stopped — see plans and pricing.

How it works

1. A checkout attempt comes in — through the classic checkout form or the Cart & Checkout blocks.
2. Checkout Protection gathers the IP address, billing email, and billing country for that attempt.
3. Each enabled module (blacklist, disposable email, country, rate limiting) contributes a risk score if it finds something suspicious.
4. If the attempt matches your whitelist, every other check is skipped and the order proceeds.
5. If the combined score meets or exceeds your risk threshold, the checkout is blocked with a clear message — unless Monitor Mode is on, in which case it’s logged but allowed through.
6. The result is written to the local security log, and the dashboard’s blocked-checkout counters update accordingly.

Privacy

Checkout Protection does not call any third-party or external fraud-detection API. Every check, every score, and every log entry is computed and stored entirely in your own WordPress database. Nothing about your customers or their orders is sent anywhere else, which also makes the plugin straightforward to cover in your store’s own GDPR/privacy documentation.

Compatibility

• Classic (shortcode) checkout.
• Cart & Checkout Blocks (the WooCommerce Store API) — protection runs before payment is attempted, so a blocked attempt never reaches your payment gateway.
• WooCommerce’s High-Performance Order Storage (HPOS) / custom order tables.

Checkout Protection requires WooCommerce to be installed and active. The plugin will activate without WooCommerce present, but protection stays inactive until WooCommerce is installed and active.