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2026 outlook: 7 ways accelerating transaction disputes will redefine payments

Wednesday, January 21, 2026 — 17:33:10 (UTC)

2026 Outlook: 7 Ways Accelerating Transaction Disputes Will Redefine Payments

TAMPA, Fla., Jan. 21, 2026 — As economic uncertainty continues to shape consumer behavior, chargebacks are becoming the norm, rather than the exception, in eCommerce. Today, disputes are so common that processing disputes has become a core business function. Disputes are also transforming all stakeholders of the payments industry, thereby redefining how issuers, acquirers and merchants manage risk and customer relations.

Based on a comprehensive analysis of data across merchants, banks, and payment processors, Chargebacks911, a global leader in dispute resolution and chargeback prevention, has identified the most important trends and predictions that will determine how all actors will respond to this explosion in the number of disputes in eCommerce.

“Disputes are no longer just something businesses react to after the fact,” said Monica Eaton, CEO of Chargebacks911. “They are becoming a defining constraint on growth. As we look ahead to 2026, the organizations that understand where this is going—and prepare for it now—will be in a far stronger position than those waiting for the system to correct itself.”

According to Eaton, the following trends will impact the entire payments ecosystem in 2026.

1. Disputes Will Continue to Outgrow eCommerce—By Volume and Economic Impact Chargebacks911’s data indicates that disputes and fraud will continue to grow faster than transactions, both in count and in volume. While payment volumes continue to rise globally, the economic value retained per transaction is shrinking once dispute risk, fees, processing costs, and downstream effects are factored in.

Industry benchmarks from LexisNexis consistently place the true cost of chargeback fraud and misuse at more than four times the original transaction amount. Chargebacks911 modeling shows that this gap will widen further as low-ticket commerce (micro-payments) and recurring billing from subscriptions continue to expand.

“This is a devaluation cycle,” Eaton said. “More transactions are happening, but each one is worth less after dispute costs are applied. This gap between gross value and net value of a transaction is widening fast.”

2. Frictionless Disputes Will Become Faster and More Common The dispute process itself is becoming increasingly frictionless, driven by digital banking tools and competition for consumer wallet share. Chargebacks911 predicts this will result in:

Faster dispute initiation Higher dispute rates A disproportionate rise in low-ticket disputes As banks make it easier for consumers to create disputes, merchants will face more write-offs and shorter response windows. In regions such as the UK and EU, fixed dispute fees that exceed the transaction value will further incentivize immediate refunds, increasing losses while distorting dispute reporting.

“The dispute experience is becoming a competitive advantage for banks,” Eaton said. “But the side effects—more disputes, more write-offs, and more value leakage—are being pushed downstream, even onto consumers themselves.”

3. Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) and Low-Ticket Commerce Will Drive Uneconomical Disputes Chargebacks911 expects continued growth in BNPL usage, particularly for everyday, low-value purchases. Combined with subscriptions, digital services, and microtransactions, this trend will dramatically expand the dispute surface area.

Internal estimates suggest that “friendly fraud” will account for the majority of disputes in low-ticket, recurring transactions, and with economic uncertainty threatening many consumers, this will impact high-value and bespoke goods, as well. Whether it be high-ticket or low-cost transactions, the operational cost to process each dispute remains largely unchanged.

“The math simply doesn’t work,” Eaton said. “A five-dollar dispute often costs the same to process as a five-hundred-dollar dispute. As a result, banks are increasingly choosing to write off disputed transactions rather than pursue reimbursement. That may save time in the short term, but it inadvertently rewards bad behavior, creates dangerous consumer expectations, and ultimately fuels the chargeback flywheel effect.”

4. Fraud and Dispute Technology Will Consolidate, and Transparency Will Expose Redundancy As economic pressure intensifies, Chargebacks911 predicts a shift toward fewer fraud and dispute tools and that the scope of these tools will expand. There will be a consolidation of the fraud and dispute tools industry.

Today, a single transaction may be scored multiple times. Emerging card networks, new payment methods, and an expanding set of network-led solutions from established card brands are introducing more data, more rules, and more resolution paths tied to a single transaction. As a result, a single purchase may generate multiple data streams across issuers, networks, wallets, and alternative payment methods—each with its own tools, alerts, and workflows. At the same time, major card networks continue to roll out new dispute-related solutions, often conflicting with each other rather than complementing each other. The result is a fragmented environment where transaction intelligence is distributed across disconnected systems, making it difficult for merchants and financial institutions to maintain a complete, consistent view of risk and outcomes.

In many cases, a single transaction is scored multiple times, often using overlapping data sets gathered by different fraud and dispute tools. This duplication adds cost and complexity without delivering additional insight. Even worse, no tool provides good results in isolation in such a fragmented world and all the tools in concert provide even worse results than each individual tool in isolation.

Over the next several years, Chargebacks911 expects:

Consolidation of fraud and dispute platforms that address the entire ecosystem, rather than an individual stakeholder Greater transparency into scoring and decision logic The emergence of reconciliation services focused on aligning fraud and dispute data “Redundancy has been tolerated because growth masked the cost,” Eaton said. “That tolerance is disappearing as growth is paradoxically turning into lower net transaction value.”

5. Real-Time Disputes and Accountability Will Redefine Performance Chargebacks911 analysis shows that faster access to dispute alerts and proactive engagement materially improves outcomes. Merchants responding within 24 hours consistently achieve higher win rates and lower downstream dispute volumes.

Increased velocity can only be achieved with automation. Full automation, however, will not work either. The best results will be achieved with hybrid models that combine automation with human expertise, particularly for high-value cases.

“Automation without accountability leaves money on the table,” Eaton said. “The systems that win in 2026 will be fast, transparent, and explainable.”

6. Chargeback Compliance Thresholds Will Be Calibrated to Reflect Evolving Conditions As many as seven in ten chargebacks stem from invalid disputes—whether intentional or accidental. This is a persistent reality that should never have existed. Worse, even when a merchant successfully contests a chargeback and proves no wrongdoing, the record does not disappear. The damage is permanent.

Chargebacks were originally designed to accelerate card adoption over cash by providing consumers with confidence, security, and a safety net – not a function of compliance. That purpose has long since eclipsed and has reached an inflection point. More than 80% of U.S. cardholders engaged in at least one disputed transaction last year alone, which excludes disputes initiated independently by banks through their own fraud-monitoring systems.

Today, chargebacks are growing at four times the rate of eCommerce. Online transactions are 55 times more likely to result in a chargeback, yet even with advances in fraud detection technology and a decline in identity theft incidents, chargeback ratios continue to rise. Despite these alarming dynamics, merchant chargeback thresholds have steadily tightened over time, with little regard for business model or channel mix. Whether a merchant operates entirely online or across multiple channels is irrelevant – breaching these thresholds promises fines, fees, and potential closure.

The continued compounding of chargeback-related costs across the payments ecosystem is not only unsustainable - it is counterproductive. Market forces will inevitably drive a course correction.

The flywheel behind this growth is straightforward. For every invalid chargeback, often driven by first-party or “friendly” fraud that is mistakenly rewarded by gaps in the current system, there is a 50% likelihood of repeat behavior. In effect, each invalid chargeback generates 1.5 future disputes. This compounding effect guarantees continued acceleration, demanding not just more resources, but fundamental change.

7. Fifty Percent Growth in Merchant Dispute Response Activity and a Doubling of Card-Network “Value-Added Services” The surge in dispute volumes is no longer a back-office inconvenience - it is a structural shift that the payments industry can no longer ignore. To keep pace while preserving a frictionless customer experience, merchants and networks will be forced to rethink how disputes are managed, opening the door to an entirely new class of value-added services. Today, only three in ten merchants actively respond to chargebacks, whether they are at fault or not. By 2026, that number will double-not because merchants suddenly want to fight disputes, but because inaction will no longer be economically viable. This shift will drive outsized demand for dispute intelligence, automation, workflow tools, and deep integrations across the payments stack. “Disputes are becoming a profit-and-loss decision, not a customer service decision,” Eaton said. “The merchants that invest in intelligence and automation now will define the next generation of payments infrastructure.” These value-added services unlock new business models free from the glass ceiling and margin compression that plague traditional interchange-based revenues. As competition intensifies across the payments ecosystem, dispute management is emerging as a rare growth engine—one that injects much-needed oxygen into an industry otherwise constrained by mature, stagnant fee structures. What This Means for the Payments Ecosystem As regulatory frameworks and network rules lag behind behavioral and technological change, Chargebacks911 expects dispute responsibility to shift increasingly to merchants, processors, and financial institutions, leaving consumers largely absolved of accountability. “Disputes are inevitable,” Eaton said. “But unmanaged disputes are not. The organizations that treat dispute resilience as a growth metric—not just a cost center—will be the ones that succeed in 2026 and beyond.”

For more information on Chargebacks911, visit www.chargebacks911.com.

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About Chargebacks911 Chargebacks911® is the global leader in chargeback prevention and remediation technology. As a platform provider to merchants and financial institutions, Chargebacks911 is the first global company fully dedicated to providing an end-to-end platform specifically designed to counter post-transactional fraud and chargeback misuse. Today, Chargebacks911 safeguards more than 2.4 billion transactions per year on behalf of clients in 87 countries around the world, supporting over 2.5 million merchants. For details on Chargebacks911’s comprehensive dispute management solutions, visit chargebacks911.com.

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Source: Company press release.

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