'It's not really, like, fraud': Friendly fraud is booming — here's who's left holding the bag

As consumer scams and confusing credit card charges increase, people are using the age-old method of chargebacks to get their money back, Bloomberg reports.

A chargeback is what happens when a customer disputes a transaction with their bank for reasons such as fraudulent charges or billing errors, and the bank reverses the transaction, giving the customer their money back.

To qualify for a chargeback you must provide information for your reasoning and in some cases, evidence of the fraudulent charge. Once your bank has reviewed your request they will decide whether to approve it and reverse the transaction.

Chargebacks are a useful tool if you have a suspicious transaction on your bank statement. That being said, some people are taking advantage of chargebacks in a sneaky way, in an attempt to get free money, even when it’s not necessarily owed to them.

The friendly fraud boom

Bloomberg reported that Juniper Research found that American Consumers filed 158 million transaction disputes in 2025, an increase of 29% from 2021. They spoke to Michael Greenwood, a senior research analyst at Juniper, who focuses on digital payments, who explained that while some of these disputes can be attributed to actual cases of fraud, there are also plenty attributed to shoppers (especially younger shoppers) engaging in their own kind of “friendly fraud.”

One form of this “friendly fraud” is shoppers who simply do not realize what they are being charged is correct. Because online shopping can bounce you through different platforms, vendors and processors, the merchant named on your bank statement might seem totally random and leave you wondering where a transaction actually came from.

However, some people are taking chargebacks to a whole other level by making the fine print work for them. For instance, if your reason for disputing a transaction is that a product or service isn’t delivered as described, this is highly subjective — but it can lead to a refund.

On the other hand, for instance, let’s say you ordered a pizza for delivery and you wished it had a couple more pieces of pepperoni on it, so you requested a chargeback. Unless the restaurant promised you an exact number of pepperoni and you counted them to find there wasn’t enough, chances are the transaction is yours to pay for.

Some people are simply requesting chargebacks even though they received a product or service fair and square, just in an attempt to get a refund.

Jim Mortensen, a strategic adviser in the fraud and anti-money-laundering practice at the research firm Datos Insights told Bloomberg “There’s people that feel like, oh, this is just sticking it to the man, so to speak. It’s not really, like, fraud.”

But, friendly fraud is still fraud. And it could get you, and businesses, into trouble.

The impacts of chargeback fraud

Fraudulent chargeback requests (or, friendly fraud) are a form of first-party fraud, which software company Socure describes as “the use of one’s own identity to open an account and/or commit a dishonest act for personal or financial gain.”

While it’s unlikely that you will get charged for this offense — besides having to pay for the transaction you were aiming to dispute — you do put yourself at risk of being flagged in fraud monitoring systems, having transactions declined and restrictions placed on your bank account.