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 featured in PayDay News, Australia's leading independent payments publication, and founder Nina Kutzner spoke on chargeback fraud defences at the Online Retailer Conference & Expo.
Latest Research
Recent publications
July 2026
Why Consumers Choose Chargebacks Over Refunds — And What Merchants Can Do About It
Reflections from a panel on chargebacks and friendly fraud at Online Retailer Conference & Expo, alongside Warwick Ponders (Independent Payment Forum) and moderator Brad Kelly (Payment Services).
Read research →June 2026
Chargebacks Are in Scope of the Scam Prevention Framework — at least for now
Treasury's draft codes and rules put more meat on the bones of the Scams Prevention Framework. The development the payments industry should be watching, though, is not in the headline obligations. Previously ‘goods & services” disputes were clearly marked as out-of-scope, the current expectations lean on legitimacy testing.
Read research →May 2026
Liability in Agentic Commerce: Who Pays When the Agent Gets It Wrong?
The payments industry has spent a decade building the foundations agentic commerce now depends on — 3D Secure, network tokenisation, passkeys, digital wallet authentication. Those foundations are being puzzled together to enable a model they were not designed for, and they will be pushed to the edges of their functionality in the process.
Read research →


