Monica Eaton, the CEO of Chargebacks911 and a globally recognized leader in the payments space, was asked to share her chargeback expertise in a feature for New York Weekly.
New York Weekly is a news and media agency that publishes up-to-the-minute news about education, entertainment, politics, business, science, and technology.
Chargeback abuse is a common problem in the digital market. So much so, in fact, that many merchants now describe these cases of “friendly fraud” as their leading challenge in terms of fraud and risk management.
“Friendly fraud happens when you as a consumer make a purchase, where nobody saw you in person — over the phone or online — and you received the merchandise or the service, and then you got a refund from your bank,” Monica explains in the piece. She goes on to explain that shoppers “believe it’s a faster resolution, and they don’t actually have an understanding that contacting their bank to get a refund is not the same as contacting the merchant for a refund, and there’s actually a whole series of consequences.”
Monica further explains that all parties involved — banks, merchants and consumers — need to be more transparent in order to resolve this problem.
“They [banks] should ask you several questions, ‘Did you contact the merchant, did you receive the merchandise?'” she says. “The problem is that with the growth of e-commerce and so many consumers buying online, there isn’t all the time to do the due diligence.”
