The Green Sheet Online Edition
January 26, 2026 • 26:01:02
The future of dispute management: Turning pain points into strategic advantages
As the global payments ecosystem becomes faster and more interconnected, the challenges around dispute management are intensifying. Real-time payments, digital wallets and open banking have transformed how money moves, but they've also raised the stakes for accuracy, transparency and responsiveness.
For many financial services companies, the surge in disputes is exposing the limits of legacy back-office systems and manual workflows. What was once a routine operational function has become a strategic differentiator.
Disputes on the rise: A growing operational pressure
The speed of payments has outpaced the systems designed to manage them. In a world where consumers expect near-instant settlements, even minor errors or delays can trigger disputes. The complexity multiplies when you add in the growing sophistication of fraud and the increasing number of payment touchpoints such as merchants, networks, gateways, processors and issuers.
This convergence of speed and complexity is pushing dispute volumes higher while stretching operational resources thinner. In a recent Mastercard document titled "What's the true cost of a chargeback in 2025?" (tinyurl.com/2s4x26v8), global chargeback volume is forecast to grow 24 percent from 2025 to 2028, reaching 324 million transactions per year, and each dispute costs between USD 9.08 and USD 10.32 to process on average.
Companies that rely on manual processes or fragmented data find it increasingly difficult to respond within expected timeframes. The result: higher costs, slower resolutions and a greater risk of customer attrition. With dispute volumes rising, manual processing becomes not just inefficient but unsustainable.
Transforming the dispute lifecycle
The future of dispute management lies in automation, integration and AI. Automation replaces repetitive, error-prone tasks like document gathering, case routing and data entry.
AI introduces intelligence and adaptability, identifying dispute patterns, predicting likely outcomes, and flagging anomalies before they escalate.
Together, these tools create a dispute management framework that is faster, more accurate and more resilient.
Integration further enhances visibility by breaking down silos between front-office and back-office systems. It also provides two way communication with external systems such as card network dispute systems.
A unified, real-time view of transactional data and dispute activity allows for quicker validation, more efficient collaboration and greater transparency throughout the lifecycle of a dispute.
"The volume and complexity of disputes today make manual processing unsustainable. Automation isn't just a convenience, it's the only way to efficiently gather, interpret, and act on the data required for timely resolution," said Travis Johnson, dispute regulations manager at BHMI.
Kate Knudsen, senior program director at BHMI added, "Dispute resolution is only as strong as the data that supports it. Centralizing information from every step of the transaction lifecycle allows teams to resolve card disputes faster, improve accuracy, and strengthen customer trust."
Modern back-office systems: Speed, accuracy and trust
When companies apply automation, integration and AI in real-world back-office systems, the results are compelling.
- Reduced manual intervention: Many disputes can be entirely auto-handled or only lightly moderated, cutting down labor hours significantly.
- Shorter resolution times: With streamlined processes and fewer handoffs, turnaround shrinks from days/weeks to hours or even minutes.
- Better compliance and auditability: Workflows enforce network regulations and reason codes. In addition, automated notifications ensure now steps are missed, and every step is logged.
- Improved customer experience and trust: Faster, transparent resolution builds client confidence. Handling disputes well becomes a brand differentiator.
From cost center to strategic advantage
Dispute management has historically been viewed as a cost center. Today, it's evolving into a source of strategic advantage.
Companies that invest in modern, automated payment back-office infrastructures are positioning themselves not only to handle the rising volume of disputes, but also to gain a strategic advantage.
When dispute resolution is fast, accurate and transparent:
- Efficiency improves, enabling dispute management teams to be more successful.
- Unnecessary losses and fees are avoided, protecting profit margins.
- Reputation strengthens, which is essential in an industry built on trust.
By embracing these new technologies, organizations can transform one of the most persistent pain points in payments into a catalyst for operational excellence and customer trust. 
Casey Scheer serves as the Director of Marketing at BHMI, a trusted software solutions provider that helps leading financial services organizations modernize their payments back office. BHMI has decades of experience guiding network operators, processors, and financial institutions on how to transform their back-office operations to support both traditional card payments and real-time payments within a unified system. To learn more about BHMI, visit www.bhmi.com.
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