I read an interesting article by Amanda Mull about “friendly fraud” and increased credit card chargebacks:
According to Juniper Research, American consumers filed 158 million transaction disputes in 2025, an increase of 29% from 2021, significantly outpacing general growth in card transactions. Worldwide, thanks to a pandemic-induced wave of greater card usage in countries that had long stuck to cash for everyday spending, the spike has been even sharper, with 46% more disputes in the same period. The volume of disputes has become so cumbersome that more retailers are farming out the whole process of investigating and defending against fraud claims to third-party vendors that specialize in helping them hold on to more of consumers’ money.
Naturally, TikTok is involved as younger people have taken to the platform to give tutorials on how to commit friendly fraud in the way of chargebacks for smaller purchases that they claim are small enough not to enact disputes against the disputes by vendors. But chargebacks come at a literal cost and repeat offenders could see themselves banned as well.
Transactions aren’t what they used to be but this isn’t the way to go in a credit-fuelled world.