Fewer chargebacks
Stolen cards get tested on small, unguarded checkouts first. Every dispute costs you the sale, the fee, the goods and a strike against your processor account.
Field manual · Geo-blocking for builders
Build the wall.
It's not your responsibility to serve the whole world.
If a country sends you zero customers and a steady stream of scams, card testing, fake sign-ups and bot traffic, you're allowed to close the door. Pick the countries, pick your stack, and this page writes the rules for you.
01
The damage report
Fraud is a volume business. You're the volume.
Scams are industrialised now: call centres with shift managers, compounds with quotas, botnets rented by the hour. None of it is personal. You're just reachable.
Most small sites don't get "hacked." They get ground down: chargebacks, fake trials, SMS bills, refund scams, and an inbox full of people who want something for nothing.
02
Why build it
Every brick is one less problem.
Blocking a region you don't sell to costs you nothing. The fraud, abuse and noise coming out of it costs you money, time and sleep.
No SMS pumping
Bots hammer your "send code" button with premium-rate numbers that pay the fraudster per text. You pay the carrier. Geo-permissions shut it off.
Real sign-ups
Fake trials, referral farming, coupon abuse, throwaway accounts that exist to spam your other users. Fewer of them means cleaner data and cheaper infra.
Smaller bills
Scrapers, credential stuffers and vulnerability scanners eat bandwidth, compute, API quota and rate limits that you pay for. Blocked at the edge, they cost nothing.
A quieter inbox
"Bug bounty" begging, fake invoices, impersonation, SEO spam, partnership scams. Close the contact form to regions you don't serve and watch it go quiet.
Honest analytics
Junk traffic skews conversion rates, ad optimisation and A/B tests. Remove it and your numbers start describing actual customers again.
Sanctions hygiene
If you take payments, sanctions rules already restrict who you can do business with. A geo-block is a cheap, visible first line (not legal advice).
Your sanity
Every request stopped at the wall is one you never read, refund, investigate or lose sleep over. That's the real return on investment.
03
Pick your countries
Draw the line on the map.
Start from a preset, click countries on the map, or search. Every guide below rewrites its rules, screenshots and config for exactly what you pick. Your selection lives in the URL, so you can share it with your team.
Wall type
Presetstap to add / remove
Click to toggle a countryred = blocked
04
Where to build it
The earlier the wall, the cheaper the request.
A request blocked at your CDN never touches your servers, your logs or your bill. Block the whole site at the edge if you can, then add narrower walls where money moves: checkout, sign-up, SMS. Pick a layer, then your provider.
05
Before you pour concrete
A wall, not a fortress.
Geo-blocking is a filter, not magic. It removes the cheap, high-volume, opportunistic stuff, which is most of it. Here's what it won't do and what to watch for.