Independent research. Shared understanding. Better outcomes.
Independent Research on Payment Disputes & Chargebacks
Every side of the dispute.
Better payment dispute outcomes don't come from rules alone. They come from the people who design, operate and live within the system understanding each other. Today the problem sits in pieces: each participant sees only its own corner, and no one carries the whole.
The Payment Dispute Institute exists to close that gap — bringing independent research and every perspective into the same room. A challenge that belongs to the entire ecosystem, examined as one.
Independence
The dispute challenge belongs to the whole ecosystem, yet no single participant can champion it — each can only argue its own corner. PDI answers to the problem itself, not to any party within it: we advocate for the issue, not a side. That is the independence that lets every participant trust us to hold the whole.
Fairness
When the rules are unclear, every party fills the gaps with its own assumptions, and the outcomes drift apart. PDI holds neutral cross-party conversations that bring those gaps into the open, so the system becomes more predictable for everyone inside it.
Clarity
The dispute ecosystem carries ambiguity at every level — in the rules, in the evidence, and in who absorbs the cost. PDI turns that contested, complex territory into clear, shared analysis the whole ecosystem can actually reason from.
External Coverage
As featured in
PDI research and analysis on chargebacks, first-party misuse and payment dispute policy has been covered in national media and industry publications, and founder Nina Kutzner speaks at industry conferences as a named expert on payment disputes.
Latest Research
Recent publications
September 2026
EMVCo's Agentic Payments Framework Fixes How AI Agents Pay. It Doesn't Touch What They Buy.
A critical read of EMVCo's Agentic Payments Framework for Specifications (Version 1.0 DRAFT), and what it leaves for disputes practice to work out on its own at this stage.
Read research →September 2026
New consumer chargeback information page live
There is a lot of misinformation out there on how chargebacks work especially for consumers. Even government and consumer advocacy sites don't always get it right, hence we created a comprehensive guide for Australian consumers. This guide was created with input from industry experts across issuing and merchants and aims to provide a balanced view.
Read research →August 2026
Submission to RBA Issues Paper - 7 Aug 2026
In June the RBA's payments policy team issued their latest issues paper seeking feedback from the industry on a range of topics across account-to-account payments, agentic payments, mobile payments etc under the considerations of competition, efficiency and financial safety. PDI made a submission specifically to argue for a fundamental reform of Australia’s dispute resolution mechanics - across payment rails. With first-party fraud driving significant economic loss - which we estimate, based on a back-of-napkin assessment due to a lack of official reporting, to be in excess of $1 billion annually by 2028 - this submission highlights the urgent need to move beyond outdated, inconsistent, and one-sided chargeback rules. We propose a new, standardised framework that ensures consistency across issuers and restores the integrity of the payments landscape.
Read research →




