Mega event chargebacks put merchants’ dispute systems under pressure

Mega event chargebacks can emerge weeks after a tournament or sales surge ends, leaving merchants exposed if they lack a defined dispute process, according to Dimitri Akhrin, president of BAMS. Writing on Finextra, Akhrin said major sports events, seasonal travel peaks and Black Friday-style shopping periods can create fraud and dispute costs for both consumers and merchants.

Akhrin linked the risk to the period around the recently concluded FIFA World Cup, which he said ended with Spain’s victory. He cited earlier warnings reported by Payments Dive that chargebacks were likely to follow the tournament, as fraudsters used the event to target fans buying tickets, merchandise and related services.

A chargeback is a card payment dispute that can result in a transaction being reversed in the customer’s favour. Akhrin said the operational problem for merchants is timing: disputes may arrive after the commercial peak has passed, when teams have shifted attention away from the event itself.

Why do mega event chargebacks rise after tournaments?

Akhrin said fraud around major events follows a recurring pattern. Criminals build convincing fake sites, including imitation ticketing pages and counterfeit merchandise shops, to collect card details from fans under pressure to secure access before an event begins.

He said the highest-risk period often starts from roughly two months to six weeks before the event, then intensifies as the date approaches. During that window, merchants may be focused on demand, orders, stock and marketing, while fraud controls receive less attention.

Akhrin also pointed to “friendly fraud”, where a customer disputes a legitimate transaction because they do not recognise the payment or have forgotten making it. He cited Chargebacks911 data showing 83.4% of enterprise merchants had experienced an increase in friendly fraud.

Artificial intelligence has raised the quality and scale of scams, Akhrin said, by making fake websites, phishing messages and fraudulent QR codes cheaper and easier to produce. He also cited Reuters reporting that Meta users had been exposed to 15 billion “higher risk” scam advertisements.

Where merchants lose dispute cases

Akhrin identified weak documentation as a common failure. He said merchants need records such as delivery proof, support communications, order confirmation numbers, evidence that sale terms were accepted and, in some cases, the customer’s IP address.

Response time is another pressure point. Akhrin said card networks usually allow merchants about three to six weeks to answer a dispute before it is settled in the customer’s favour. If notices are missed or internal teams do not know who owns the response, a potentially defendable case may be lost.

He also warned that poor coordination between customer service and finance can create duplicate losses, such as when a refund is issued while a chargeback case is also lost. Seasonal staff can add risk if they are less familiar with fraud-screening procedures during high-volume periods.

Akhrin said merchants can also overcorrect by tightening screening rules so much that legitimate transactions are declined. He argued that dispute controls need to reduce suspicious activity without blocking genuine customers.

What a dispute-ready payments operation includes

Akhrin said merchants should prepare before event-driven demand arrives. His suggested measures include an evidence checklist for each order, standard response templates for common dispute categories, clear ownership of the dispute process and automated alerts when cases arrive.

He also recommended reviewing prior chargeback and fraud data for patterns by transaction size, time, card type and region. Akhrin said merchants should treat recovered revenue and avoided disputes as operational metrics, tune authorisation rules with care, make refund policies easy to find and plan staffing ahead of known high-risk periods.

This story draws on original reporting from Finextra Research.