What is Friendly Fraud?

Friendly fraud is the industry's name for a chargeback raised against a transaction the cardholder genuinely authorised. The word fraud is doing a lot of work in it: some cases are deliberate, many are a person looking at a statement line they do not recognise and calling their bank in good faith. Gambling is unusually exposed to the honest version. The name on a statement is the merchant of record, which is frequently not the brand on the website and sometimes not even in the same country. A deposit made on a Tuesday evening under a familiar logo can appear a week later as an unfamiliar company, and the cardholder concludes their card has been used without permission. The consequences are not symmetrical. For the operator a chargeback means the money is pulled back, a fee is charged, and the ratio of disputes to transactions rises — and card schemes act on that ratio, so a run of them can cost an operator its ability to accept cards at all. For the player the account is normally frozen immediately, any balance is held, and the operator will usually close it and may report the case; in most terms, raising a chargeback rather than asking for a refund is itself a breach. The practical advice is dull and it prevents nearly all of it. Find the payment descriptor before you deposit — it is usually documented in the cashier — and keep a note of it. If a line looks wrong, contact the operator before the bank: an operator can refund a payment in a day, while a chargeback takes weeks and closes the account on the way through.