A recent industry data roundup puts real numbers behind something most high-risk merchants already feel: chargebacks are getting more expensive, more frequent, and harder to win. According to Chargebacks911’s 2026 Chargeback Field Report and the data it compiles, 74% of merchants reported an increase in friendly fraud chargebacks in 2024, and every dollar lost to fraud is now expected to cost US merchants $4.61, a 37% jump from 2020. The report’s own conclusion is worth sitting with: most merchants are still under-using the defense tools already available to them.
How Bad Is the Chargeback Problem Right Now?
The average cardholder filed 5.1 chargebacks in 2025, each valued at $84. Once you factor in the “fraud multiplier” that industry researchers use to estimate total impact, that adds up to roughly $170.89 billion in losses across the industry. This isn’t a niche problem affecting a handful of unlucky merchants. It’s a cost baked into card-not-present processing at this point.
Why Does This Hit High-Risk and eCommerce Businesses Hardest?
Card-not-present chargeback rates run between 0.6% and 1%, compared to roughly 0.5% for card-present transactions, according to data cited in the report. eCommerce merchants in the US and Europe spend an average of 10% of their revenue managing payment fraud. That gap is exactly why underwriters weight your chargeback ratio so heavily during high-risk account review, and why it stays a factor for as long as the account is open.
Why Merchants Are Losing More Than They Realize
Here’s the number that should change how you think about disputing chargebacks after the fact: merchants win an average of 44.6% of the chargebacks they represent, but their net recovery rate is only 10.7% once second-cycle disputes and undetected friendly fraud are factored in. Fighting chargebacks one at a time, after they’ve already happened, is a losing structure even when you win individual cases. Merchants also estimate friendly fraud makes up 43.8% of their chargebacks on average, and the report notes the real rate tends to run higher — most businesses are underestimating the size of the problem they’re budgeting for.
What Are Other Merchants Actually Doing About It?
Per the report, 34% of merchants use Ethoca Alerts or Verifi CDRN, 33% use 3-D Secure, 24% use RDR, and 24% use Ethoca Consumer Clarity or Verifi Order Insight. These are the same category of dispute-prevention tools we help high-risk merchants get access to as part of a payment stack, not something bolted on after problems start. Worth noting too: 69% of merchants who fight chargebacks rely entirely on in-house staff rather than bringing in outside help, despite the recovery numbers above.
The Real Takeaway for High-Risk Merchants
The report’s own conclusion is that the ideal chargeback number is zero, and that zero isn’t fully achievable. The practical goal is staying under the threshold that keeps your account in good standing, not eliminating disputes entirely. That’s a prevention problem, not a fighting-after-the-fact problem, which is exactly where the numbers above point. If you want your payment stack set up with dispute-prevention tools built in from the start, contact DirectPayNet and we’ll walk through what fits your business.
