Issuers are Losing More Digital Subscription Chargebacks as Win Rates Fell 35 Percent in Just 26 Days
New Quavo Labs analysis of 25 million+ disputes gives banks and credit unions the first actionable industry-wide view
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WILMINGTON, Del., Oct. 13, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — In less than one month, issuers lost an unprecedented number of digital subscription chargebacks – including those from popular streaming services – as wins dropped 35 percent in just 26 days. This occurred even as the number of disputes filed barely moved, leading issuers to misdiagnose the changes as friendly fraud, changes in network rules or slipping evidence quality, if they detected the change at all.
This collapse was all but invisible inside any single financial institution’s data, but comes to light as the result of new industry intelligence published today by Quavo Labs. Quavo, the leading AI-powered disputes technology partner for financial institutions, built the new proprietary research hub to give banks and credit unions first of its kind visibility into industry-wide fraud and dispute trends.
“Every institution can see its own disputes, but they can’t see critical patterns that should drive operations,” said Ron Rybicki, Vice President of Data & Analytics at Quavo. “I spent nearly 30 years inside large issuers building fraud analytics, and our biggest problem was always differentiating real trends from our own irregularities. Small anomalies across separate portfolios can look like noise. But when you bring that data together, clear, actionable patterns emerge. Quavo Labs lets banks and credit unions spot those shifts early so they can understand what’s coming before it reaches their own portfolio.”
The subscription shift: What issuers can do
For nearly a year, digital streaming chargeback win rates were some of the highest in the subscription category, and this dramatic fall should have been a red flag to issuers, but it went largely unseen within individual financial institutions. This delayed the opportunity for issuers to act in three important ways:
- Recalibrate chargeback forecasts and associated operations to reflect changes in the streaming category.
- Front-load more robust claim data to reduce total chargebacks.
- Analyze aggregated industry data to see larger trends within similar merchant-level categories, and more accurately identify causal relationships in changes to key metrics.
Quavo Labs Access and Publishing Schedule
Quavo Labs is a dedicated research hub publishing original analysis of fraud, dispute, merchant performance and recovery trends drawn from Quavo’s cross-issuer network spanning +25 million disputes processed annually and +650 supported brands and issuers.
By looking at anonymized dispute and transaction patterns across many institutions at once, rather than one portfolio at a time, Quavo Labs helps financial institutions benchmark performance, identify emerging trends, and make more informed decisions before those trends show up in their own numbers.
Quavo Labs examines emerging fraud and dispute patterns as they develop, from categories like airline and merchant failures to fuel fraud, serial dispute filers, and AI-enabled scams. These aggregated insights show which categories are driving dispute volume, which are improving, and what is behind the movement.
Quavo Labs now publishes original research on a regular cadence. Each month, a data insights article covers timely, seasonal or event-driven findings drawn from network data. Each quarter, a merchant insights report highlights the merchant categories driving the most dispute activity and practical takeaways for issuers. Also each quarter, a performance report presents significant industry shifts, trends, and metrics for issuers.
Each report discloses sample size, population, and comparison set. Network findings are published at the aggregate level, and individual issuers, financial institutions and cardholders are never identified. Full methodology, including data coverage and known limitations, is published alongside every release.
The full analysis, including additional data and Quavo Labs’ methodology, is available at quavo.com/quavo-labs.
About Quavo, Inc.
Quavo enables financial institutions to transform fraud and dispute management from a costly, fragmented function into a strategic advantage. In an environment where the cost of making it right has historically meant higher risk, manual effort and strained member relationships, Quavo empowers organizations to do more, with certainty, speed and confidence.
Powered by its intelligent automation, Aria, and guided by a team of experienced dispute specialists, Quavo’s QFD® platform enables institutions to ensure compliance, streamline operations, enhance the customer experience and maximize financial recovery. Today, industry leaders rely on Quavo to process more than one million disputes every month, recover billions in disputed funds and resolve cases an average of 26 days faster than the industry standard.
By helping teams respond decisively in moments that matter most, Quavo turns fraud events into opportunities to restore trust, protect members and strengthen long-term relationships.
Learn more at quavo.com.
Quavo Media Contact:
Julia Brady
PR & Events Manager
Julia.Brady@quavo.com
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