Chargebacks were built to protect customers. Businesses need protecting too.

I’ve spent ten years fighting chargebacks. In that time I’ve watched them change from a safety net for cardholders into something else: a refund button that costs the business twice.

The numbers say it plainly. U.S. consumers disputed about $11 billion in card charges in a single recent year, up from $7.2 billion in 2019, according to figures Visa cited in 2024.¹ Mastercard expects global chargeback volume to grow another 24% between 2025 and 2028, to 324 million disputes a year.²

Much of that growth isn’t the work of criminals. It’s friendly fraud: a customer who got what they paid for and disputes the charge anyway. Visa found that up to 20% of disputes UK businesses face could be first-party fraud,³ and in 2026, 64% of merchants reported that first-party misuse was rising.⁴

The card networks know it. Visa introduced Compelling Evidence 3.0 in 2023 to help merchants answer first-party fraud,³ and Mastercard expanded its First-Party Trust program in 2025 because, in its words, businesses “face a surge of first-party fraud.”⁵

Yet for most businesses, little has changed. Resolving a single first-party dispute now costs more than $80 on average,⁴ and 41% of North American merchants still rely on manual processes.⁶ The owner of a salon, a practice or a repair shop still sits down after hours, digs through receipts and messages, and guesses at what the bank wants to see. I’ve watched too many let the money go rather than lose another evening.

That’s why we built Dispute Daddy. You upload your evidence; it builds the case, matched to the rules of your card network or lender and formatted the way reviewers read. You approve it and submit it. Minutes instead of hours, for $99 a month, and every dollar you win stays yours.

Our mission is simple: make fighting a chargeback as easy as filing one.

Not so fast.Alex GruenbergFounder, Dispute Daddy