New Chargeback Data Reveals Surprising Insights & Trends

Midigator^®, the leading provider of dispute management services, today released “The Year in Chargebacks” report. The third-annual publication provides unprecedented insights into why disputes happen, how to effectively prevent and fight chargebacks, and what can be expected in the future.

Data-driven decisions are an essential part of a successful chargeback management strategy. However, key insights are often difficult to determine and challenging to understand. Midigator’s goal for “The Year in Chargebacks” is to provide valuable, relevant data that can serve as a benchmark to evaluate individual efforts. 

The takeaways of the 2021 report highlight the dynamic, evolving nature of payment disputes:

• Ongoing, technology-assisted chargeback management efforts continue to prove effective. The study’s chargeback-to-transaction ratio decreased 25.1% between 2019 and 2020. In total, the ratio has dropped 48.4% since 2017.
• International risk fluctuates by region and year. Of the 47 countries in the study, 31 (or 66%) experienced an increase in their chargeback-to-transaction ratio between 2019 and 2020.
• There’s significant value in fighting chargebacks. Merchants in 22 industries experienced an average return on investment of 595%, with revenue recovery reaching millions of dollars and labor savings amounting to thousands of hours.
• The COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted businesses in many ways, but the effect on chargeback management was minimal.

“Data analysis has always been the foundation of Midigator’s chargeback management philosophy,” said Corey Baggett, CEO of Midigator, “and this report shows why. Success derived from assumptions and guesses is only temporary. But data-driven decisions solve problems at their source, yielding sustainable results that improve over time.”