Chargebacks Aren’t the Problem They’re the Signal
Written from the floor at Affiliate Summit West — where payments, growth, and risk intersect in real time.
What the Payments Ecosystem Gets Wrong (and Right) in 2026
Day 1 of Affiliate Summit West always brings the same energy: new offers, new partners, new volume projections. But beneath the optimism, the payments ecosystem is still grappling with a familiar tension — growth versus control.
Chargebacks sit right at that intersection.
Too often, chargeback management companies are treated as a downstream necessity — something to “turn on” once volume grows or problems surface. In reality, chargebacks are not the problem. They’re the signal that something upstream deserves attention.
Chargebacks Reflect the Health of the Entire Payments Stack
Every chargeback tells a story. Sometimes it’s fraud. Sometimes it’s fulfillment. Sometimes it’s marketing misalignment, unclear billing descriptors, or aggressive subscription logic. What matters is that chargebacks rarely exist in isolation.
They reflect decisions made across:
- Marketing and traffic sources
- Offer structure and trial mechanics
- Fulfillment and delivery timelines
- Customer support accessibility
- Processor and network configurations
When merchants view chargebacks as a “disputes issue” instead of a payments health issue, they miss the opportunity to course-correct early.
Prevention Has Become More Important Than Defense
The industry used to focus heavily on representment — fighting chargebacks after they happened. While that still matters, the most effective programs today are prevention-first.
Tools like:
- Network alerts
- RDR (Rapid Dispute Resolution)
- Real-time refunds
- Smarter BIN-level enrollment strategies
…aren’t just cost centers. They’re risk controls that protect MID longevity, keep ratios stable, and preserve scale.
The merchants doing this well aren’t asking “How many disputes can we win?”
They’re asking “How many disputes can we avoid entirely?”
Why Payments Teams and Chargeback Teams Can’t Operate in Silos
One of the biggest gaps we still see in 2026 is fragmentation.
Payments teams optimize for approvals.
Marketing teams optimize for conversion.
Chargeback teams clean up the aftermath.
When those teams don’t share data — or worse, don’t speak regularly — chargebacks become a lagging indicator instead of a leading one.
The strongest programs today integrate:
- Gateway data
- CRM activity
- Network dispute signals
- Customer behavior insights
Chargeback management works best when it’s embedded into the payments strategy, not bolted on after the fact.
What Merchants Should Be Asking Their Chargeback Partners
As conversations kick off at ASW this week, merchants should be asking better questions, like:
- How do you help us prevent disputes, not just fight them?
- How do your tools integrate with our CRM, gateway, and processors?
- How do you adapt strategies as traffic sources or offers change?
- How do you help us understand why disputes are happening?
The answers to those questions matter far more than win rates alone.
The Takeaway
At Dispute.com, we see this play out every day across different processors, verticals, and traffic models. The merchants that scale cleanly aren’t the ones chasing chargebacks after the fact — they’re the ones using dispute data as early feedback to improve their payments stack, customer experience, and risk controls upstream.