The COVID-19 pandemic has completely disrupted usual business practices and consumer behaviors, leading to a tremendous increase in chargebacks—and if you’re a business owner, it’s likely you’ve experienced this firsthand. While the travel and hospitality industry has been hit particularly hard due to increased travel cancellations, it’s certainly not the only industry that’s experiencing an increase in chargebacks: other factors such as inventory issues, shipping delays, and a spike of ‘friendly-fraud’ chargebacks filed by cash-strapped customers have affected merchants everywhere.
In this article, we’ll dive into several key factors that are contributing to the chargeback explosion during COVID-19, and share some practical steps that merchants can take to reduce negative outcomes. Plus, we’ll discuss some unique and timely circumstances in which cardholders actually do not have the grounds to dispute transactions.
fpsblog