Average chargeback fee (industry)
$15–$70 per chargeback
Source: Chargebacks911Scenario
Digital goods, instant delivery, and refund fraud
Direct-to-consumer digital goods where the product is delivered the moment payment authorizes, and where refund-after-consumption is the dominant fraud pattern.
Reference numbers
What the math looks like in this pattern.
Illustrative repeat-refunder threshold
2 in 90 days
IllustrativeBefore Axiru
The pain we hear about over and over in this pattern.
- Refund policy is whatever the support agent on shift thinks is fair, which creates wildly inconsistent customer experience.
- Customers who consume the product and then dispute the charge get refunded by the support team to avoid a chargeback fee, even when the consumption is documented.
- Repeat refunders fly under the radar because the support ticket UI does not show prior refund history.
- Refunds are not correlated with delivery telemetry like 'product was downloaded' or 'license was activated', so fraud is invisible.
Configuration
How Axiru is set up for this pattern.
These are the policies a finance or ops team would typically enable on day one. Thresholds shown are illustrative; you tune them to your own materiality.
Delivery-aware refund check
refundsWhen a refund request comes in, Axiru checks whether the digital good was delivered, activated, and consumed. Consumption flips the decision to approval-required.
Customer refund velocity
refundsCustomers with two prior approved refunds in 90 days are auto-flagged for approval on the third.
Dispute-versus-refund cost comparison
disputesSurfaces the predicted chargeback fee at the point of decision so the agent sees the cost trade-off explicitly.
Signals to watch
What you should be measuring once this is running.
- Refund-after-consumption rate. The objective is bending the curve, not zero.
- Repeat-refunder cohort size over time.
- Chargeback-fee spend versus refund-grant spend. Decision should be data-informed.
What good looks like
The steady state if the configuration is doing its job.
- Refund decisions are consistent across the support team because the policy decides, not the individual agent.
- Customers who consistently consume and then dispute are detected after the second pattern, not the tenth.
- Disputes that are cheaper to fight than to refund are routed to dispute response, with evidence pre-assembled.
Framing
The biggest unlock was making the refund-versus-dispute cost trade-off explicit at the moment of decision. The agent stops guessing.
Next step
Run the digital goods, instant delivery, and refund fraud simulation on your own data.
Upload 90 days of refund history. Axiru replays these policies in shadow mode. Nothing actually blocks any money until you flip the switch.
Start in shadow mode first. Move to live enforcement later.