Word.ws English Dictionary

friendly fraud

friendly fraud noun: 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.

Noun

friendly fraud (uncountable)

  1. 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.
    • 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."2003 May 13, Jennifer Bayot, “Company Sues MasterCard Over Fees for Online Sales”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 19 Mar 2022
    • 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.2014 December 10, Ines Novacic, “This fraud may be "friendly," but costs are high”, in CBS News, archived from the original on 17 Aug 2022

Questions about friendly fraud

What does friendly fraud mean?
Friendly fraud means 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.
What part of speech is friendly fraud?
Friendly fraud is a noun.

Words near friendly fraud in the dictionary

  1. friendly
  2. friendly amendment
  3. friendly amendments
  4. Friendly Beaches
  5. friendly fire
  6. friendly fraud
  7. friendly giant
  8. Friendly Hills
  9. Friendly Islands
  10. friendly lead
  11. friendly leads

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: friendly fraud (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “friendly fraud.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/friendly_fraud. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.