Chargeflow has launched Prevent 2.0 for Shopify merchants and published new Chargeflow Data Lab findings on Black Friday chargeback patterns.
The new fraud screening model scans every order after checkout and before fulfilment. It is designed to detect not only stolen card activity but also other dispute-related behaviour, including repeat claims and delivery anomalies. Chargeflow said the updated model catches 10 times more fraud and abuse than the previous version.
The launch also includes the first public data from the company's new research unit, which analysed about three million disputes across three peak trading seasons. The analysis suggests the main Black Friday risk is not traditional card fraud, but a rise in claims that goods never arrived.
During the Black Friday to Cyber Monday weekend in 2025, 34.7% of chargebacks cited non-delivery, compared with 19.9% in a normal week, according to the data. Over the same period, the share attributed to fraud fell to 27.2% from 37.8%.
The same pattern appeared in 2023, 2024 and 2025, Chargeflow said, pointing to a repeated seasonal shift in why consumers dispute transactions. On the busiest shopping weekend of the year, non-delivery claims overtook fraud claims as the largest category of chargebacks in the dataset.
Dispute timing
The data also points to a lag between holiday purchases and the disputes that follow. For orders placed over Black Friday weekend in 2025, the median dispute was filed 25 days later, while nine in 10 were filed within 64 days, around the end of January.
Measured by daily volume, January dispute activity ran at about 1.4 times the November rate. That suggests merchants may face the heaviest wave of post-holiday payment disputes well after the shopping peak has passed.
Prevent 2.0 uses what Chargeflow describes as network intelligence drawn from disputes across more than 20,000 merchants. This allows the system to identify patterns that may not be visible to a single retailer, including buyers with a history of disputing orders at other stores, according to the company.
The model also flags what Chargeflow called suspect delivery patterns, such as different names linked to the same shipping address. It operates after checkout rather than changing the customer's payment experience during purchase.
Existing merchants already using Prevent will be moved automatically to the new version. Prevent 2.0 is now available to Shopify merchants, with pricing set at USD $0.10 per scanned transaction after an introductory allocation for new users.
Avia Chen, Co-founder, Chief Product Officer and Chief Marketing Officer at Chargeflow, said the company built the service to help merchants retain revenue from fulfilled orders.
"We built Chargeflow so that when merchants deliver, the revenue they've earned stays theirs," Chen said.
She added that the latest model is intended to make that protection routine rather than a separate project.
"We believe every merchant should have this protection, and that it should come switched on rather than as a project. Prevent 2.0 is how we deliver on that for Black Friday 2026," Chen said.
Broader view
One aim of the Data Lab is to provide a broader picture of chargeback behaviour across online retail. Merchants usually see disputes only within their own shops, which can make wider trends in customer complaints and transaction challenges harder to spot.
Chargeflow said its cross-merchant view shows that "item not received" claims can often be challenged more successfully when backed by proof of delivery and similar records. In its dataset, disputes in this category that proceeded to a decision were won about 1.5 times as often when supported by stronger evidence.
The company argues that this should change how merchants think about peak-season losses, shifting attention from card theft alone to fulfilment records, delivery documentation and repeat dispute behaviour. The findings also suggest that the operational pressure of Black Friday extends into returns, complaints and payment disputes weeks later.
"Every merchant sees only its own chargebacks. Chargeflow sees them across more than 20,000 merchants. Starting today, the Chargeflow Data Lab publishes what that view shows us," Chen said.
"When everyone works from the same facts, the bad actors lose their edge," Chen said.