Independent research and analysis
To advance fairer, faster, and more transparent payment dispute resolution.
Research & Analysis
Latest research and analysis. Independent. Always.
PDI publishes across three content types: landscape pieces examining systemic issues, case studies using real events as a lens, and operational insights into specific processes and rule applications.
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reporting, to be in excess of $1 billion annually by 2028 - this submission highlights the urgent need to move beyond outdated, inconsistent, and one-sided chargeback rules.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 →August 2026
Consumers Can Complain to AFCA About Chargebacks. Merchants Can't. Should They Be Able To?
Consumers can complain to AFCA if they're unhappy with how a bank handled a chargeback. Merchants, who often carry the financial liability, can't — though not always: depending on the transaction, authentication, and presentment, liability can also sit with the bank or with the consumer. Setting that complexity aside for a moment, the asymmetry this piece set out to test was simple: should merchants get the same right to complain?
Read research →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 →May 2026
The Evidence Problem: Why Dispute Evidence Is Both Overloaded and Undervalued
Every payment dispute, in theory, turns on evidence. A cardholder says the goods were damaged. A merchant says they were delivered in perfect condition. Somewhere between those two claims sits what actually happened — and evidence is supposed to be the mechanism that gets us there. Supposedly!
Read research →April 2026
Commerce moved on. The rules didn't.
Payment dispute frameworks were built for a simpler world. Decades of change in how people buy, sell, and pay have left those frameworks struggling to keep up — and every participant in the ecosystem is absorbing the consequences.
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If you’re experiencing a chargeback you can’t resolve, a pattern you keep seeing, or a rule that doesn’t make sense — PDI wants to hear about it.
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