A surge in chargebacks is squeezing UK merchants as rising card use, tighter scheme rules, and growing friendly fraud drive up post-transaction losses. For many businesses, the challenge now extends beyond payments acceptance to protecting revenue after checkout through stronger dispute prevention and management.
Against this backdrop, Chargebacks911 recently partnered with UK payments broker acceptcards to offer merchants chargeback prevention and dispute management support.
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In this interview, Monica Eaton, the founder and CEO of Chargebacks911, explains what is behind the spike, where merchants are going wrong, and why a more proactive, AI-led approach is becoming essential.
EPI: What’s driving the UK chargeback spike on the ground? Is it economic pressure, confusion, or are consumers simply weaponising disputes?
Monica Eaton: It is a combination of all three, and each factor is reinforcing the others. Economic pressure has made consumers far more aggressive about recovering money, while the dispute process itself can unintentionally incentivise misuse. Banks are often conditioned to prioritise the cardholder experience, and merchants frequently lack visibility into why disputes are occurring in the first place.
What we are seeing increasingly is first-party misuse, where consumers dispute transactions they knowingly authorised. Friendly fraud now accounts for 45% of all chargebacks globally. In the UK, where card payments represent 64% of all transactions, the exposure for merchants is significant. Businesses that cannot monitor disputes in real time often struggle to distinguish between genuine customer confusion and deliberate misuse, which means they lose revenue unnecessarily.
EPI: Which unintentional ‘own goal’ do you see merchants commit most often that triggers these disputes? What is their biggest post-transaction blind spot?
Monica Eaton: The biggest own goal is treating the sale as the finish line. Most merchants invest heavily in checkout optimisation, but very little in what happens after the transaction. Unclear billing descriptors, poor fulfilment communication, and limited refund pathways create confusion that often results in avoidable chargebacks.
Another major blind spot is failing to use dispute data effectively. Every chargeback contains operational insight, whether that is a fulfilment issue, customer service breakdown, or recurring billing problem. Many merchants simply do not have the infrastructure to analyse those patterns themselves. Through the Unified Dispute Management System (UDMS) and ResolveLab, which use AI and machine learning to analyse dispute activity in real time, merchants can identify root causes earlier, improve operational visibility, and reduce disputes before they escalate.
EPI: If you could get merchants to fix just one thing to cut chargebacks, what would it be?
Monica Eaton: Invest in post-transaction visibility. Merchants need to understand what happens to payments after the checkout journey is complete. The businesses with the lowest dispute rates are typically the ones continuously measuring performance and responding quickly to emerging risks.
Many organisations still cannot track dispute trends by product line, geography, or payment method. That lack of visibility makes proactive management almost impossible. Using AI-enabled tools such as UDMS and ResolveLab, merchants can identify risks earlier, improve decision-making, and act before disputes reach card scheme monitoring thresholds. Moving from a reactive approach to a proactive one is the single most important shift merchants can make.
EPI: What’s the biggest representment misconception causing merchants to lose disputes?
Monica Eaton: The biggest misconception is that representment is simply about submitting proof that a product was delivered or a service was provided. In reality, dispute resolution is highly procedural. Each card scheme has its own requirements, timelines, and evidence standards, and even technically valid responses can fail if they are submitted incorrectly or too late.
Many merchants also underestimate the importance of evidence quality and structure. Winning disputes is not only about having the facts on your side, but presenting them in the format the schemes are designed to assess. ResolveLab helps automate much of that process, reducing manual guesswork and improving consistency across dispute submissions.
EPI: Do you think the current chargeback system is fundamentally broken, or is it just being abused?
Monica Eaton: The system was originally designed to protect consumers from genuinely fraudulent transactions, and that remains important. The challenge is that modern digital commerce has evolved much faster than the infrastructure surrounding disputes.
When 45% of chargebacks now stem from friendly fraud, it is clear the system is being used beyond its original purpose. I would not describe it as broken, but it is increasingly misaligned with the realities of modern payments. Merchants often lack the tools, visibility, and resources needed to defend legitimate transactions effectively. That is why a more proactive, technology-led approach to post-transaction management has become essential.
EPI: What exactly does autonomous dispute management take off a merchant’s daily to-do list?
Monica Eaton: Most merchants underestimate how operationally intensive dispute management really is. Every chargeback requires evidence gathering, formatting, submission within scheme deadlines, and outcome tracking. At scale, that becomes extremely resource-heavy for internal teams.
ResolveLab automates much of that workflow using AI and machine learning, helping merchants manage evidence collection, response generation, submission, and tracking more efficiently. The result is reduced manual workload, faster response times, improved dispute win rates, and greater visibility into overall post-transaction performance across both UK and US markets.
EPI: Looking at the Chargeback Field Report, what is the most surprising thing in there that merchants just won’t want to believe?
Monica Eaton: The statistic that surprises most merchants is that 72% reported an average 18% increase in friendly fraud over a three-year period. Many businesses still assume chargebacks are primarily caused by external fraud or operational mistakes, rather than deliberate first-party misuse.
Another major issue is that merchants are losing disputes they should be winning. In many cases, the underlying transaction is valid, but the dispute response fails because of procedural errors, missing evidence, or missed deadlines. That creates a substantial revenue recovery gap that many organisations still underestimate.
EPI: What immediate gains can merchants expect from the acceptcards partnership?
Monica Eaton: One of the biggest benefits is access. Many UK merchants have historically lacked access to enterprise-level chargeback prevention and dispute management capabilities, either because the tools were too complex or because they did not realise these solutions existed.
Through this partnership, merchants can benefit from proactive prevention strategies, automated representment through ResolveLab, and improved visibility into dispute activity through the Unified Dispute Management System (UDMS). AI and machine learning help merchants identify trends earlier, reduce unnecessary losses, and improve operational efficiency. Combined with acceptcards’ expertise in payment infrastructure, the partnership is designed to deliver measurable improvements quickly.
EPI: How is the partnership structured: will acceptcards merchants face an upfront implementation fee?
Monica Eaton: The specific commercial structure is best discussed directly with the acceptcards team, as each merchant’s payment environment and dispute profile will differ. However, the partnership has been designed to make advanced dispute management and prevention capabilities accessible to a wider range of UK businesses, regardless of size or transaction volume.
The focus is on helping merchants remove the operational and financial barriers that have historically made post-transaction risk management difficult to implement effectively.
EPI: Does this partnership fully automate dispute management, or is manual intervention still required?
Monica Eaton: The level of automation is significant, and for many dispute scenarios the process can be managed autonomously through ResolveLab and the Unified Dispute Management System (UDMS). AI and machine learning support evidence gathering, response logic, submission workflows, and tracking.
That said, human oversight still plays an important role in more complex or high-value cases. The system is designed to identify situations where manual review adds value, allowing merchant teams to focus their attention where it matters most. The result is a significant reduction in manual workload, improved dispute outcomes, and better operational visibility without removing merchant control.
