I’ve spent years analyzing payment disputes, and the most common mistake I see, on both the consumer and merchant side, is confusing a chargeback with a refund. They sound similar. They both result in money going back to the buyer. But how they work, who controls them, and what they cost are completely different. Getting this wrong can cost merchants thousands of dollars in unnecessary...
I’ve audited chargeback data for e-commerce teams who assumed their dispute rates were a logistics problem. In most cases, over half the chargebacks came from verified customers who received their orders. That’s friendly fraud, and it costs merchants more than stolen card fraud in most verticals.
This post covers what friendly fraud is, how it differs from chargeback fraud, what...
I’ve spent the last decade analyzing payment data for high-volume merchants. Last month, I watched a subscription company lose $180,000 in a single week because they didn’t understand decline code 51. That’s not revenue they could recover later. That’s money that walked out the door because their team treated every declined payment the same way.
Here’s what...
I’ve spent years working with payment operations teams, and one pattern always emerges: by the time a chargeback hits your merchant account, you’ve already lost. Not just the transaction amount, but also the product, shipping costs, and a $25–$100 chargeback fee. The damage compounds when you factor in dispute ratios that can trigger monitoring programs like the Visa...
TL;DR: 3D Secure (3DS) authentication adds an extra verification layer between you, your bank, and the merchant during online payments. The latest version (3DS2) uses risk-based analysis to verify transactions invisibly in 95% of cases, only prompting you when fraud risk is detected. It’s mandatory in Europe under PSD2 and increasingly adopted in the US to combat card-not-present...
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