E-commerce can sometimes feel like the Wild West. The unfortunate reality is that fraud costs the e-commerce industry billions of pounds/dollars a year worldwide.

Online businesses for fraudsters offer an opportunity to use stolen card details, which attracts them as there’s little to no interaction with the business offering the goods; or the actual owner of the credit / debit card.

However, be aware that some fraud is actually from real guests.

A customer purchases something online and then requests a chargeback. This is known as ‘friendly fraud’ (though it isn’t very friendly!) and is a case of customers abusing the chargeback process. This is popular for online purchases as banks have the ability to reverse payments for many reasons, and this process is in the guests interest.

This is where criminals use stolen credit cards to purchase goods and services online. For Togglers, this means a gift card could be purchased using a stolen credit card, sold on or used. Then the owner of the credit/debit card realises and a chargeback is issued.

In both the cases, the end result for Togglers (you) is the issuance of a chargeback which will appear in your payment gateway account.

The chargeback request will have come from the payment card issuer, along with possible fees - check your payment gateway provider for further details on this.

Disputes on chargebacks create extra work as these are requests that need to be dealt with, and could mount up in fees.

Find out more chargebacks and refunds here.