Meaning of friendly fraud | Babel Free

Definitions

A type of fraud in which a customer purchases and receives an item using a credit card, then requests a spurious chargeback to obtain a refund, effectively gaining the item for free.

uncountable

Examples

“David Robertson, publisher of The Nilson Report, said Internet companies were plagued by "friendly fraud," in which "your perfectly valid cardholder can deny a transaction he willingly made."”

“The steps for investigating a chargeback are tedious and labor-intensive, so most merchants don't bother with them, especially for lower-cost items. This makes friendly fraud easier to pull off, even if some consumers are unaware that they're doing anything wrong.”

“Internally, the company described the problem as one of "friendly fraud", and one staff member, who was in charge of a project to increase the company's game revenues, said it was particularly bad with a few games, including "PetVille, Happy Aquarium, Wild Ones, Barn Buddy and any Ninja game".”

CEFR level