Friendly Fraud Is Up for More Than 83% of Enterprise Merchants, Chargebacks911 Says

Friendly fraud is no longer a nuisance merchants can tuck into the “cost of doing business” column and forget about. In Chargebacks911’s new 2026 Chargeback Field Report, more than 83% of enterprise merchants said it has increased over the past three years, which is exactly the sort of trend that changes pricing, fraud tooling, dispute operations, and the appetite for high-risk exposure.

1. Nearly three-quarters of merchants, or 74.4%, now call friendly fraud a moderate or significant concern. Among respondents who said first-party fraud changed over the past three years, 73.7% reported an increase, and that figure rises to 83.4% among enterprise merchants.
2. The report aligns with LexisNexis’ Cybercrime Report, which says first-party fraud has surpassed scams as the leading form of fraud globally. Chargebacks911 founder and CEO Monica Eaton said friendly fraud has moved from “a back-office inconvenience” to a material business risk affecting pricing, customer policies, staffing decisions and the economics of digital commerce.
3. Chargeback costs are being pushed through to consumers. More than 61% of respondents said chargebacks have increased over the past three years, while 38% said chargeback costs have influenced the prices of their goods or services, up from 32.5% in the previous report. The report breaks those costs into lost merchandise, lost transaction revenue, chargeback fees, fraud-prevention expenses and the labor involved in investigating and responding to disputes.
4. Refund abuse is adding another layer of pressure. Merchants estimate that abusive requests account for 27.1% of all returns, and 62% describe refund abuse as a moderate or significant concern. Eaton said refund abuse exploits the customer-friendly processes merchants build to prevent disputes, which is the sort of operational irony payments people get paid to deal with.
5. The 2026 report also tracks AI adoption, BNPL (buy now, pay later), internal fraud and Visa’s Acquirer Monitoring Program (VAMP). More than one-quarter of merchants, or 26.7%, already use AI-based fraud-prevention tools, and another 37% plan to adopt them. On the card-network side, one in five merchants says changes associated with VAMP have affected them.