Item not received: the dispute your fraud stack can't stop.

Provider rules checked on 13 October 2026

01The fraud SCA was built for

The European Banking Authority and the European Central Bank published their joint report on payment fraud on 15 December 2025, covering data up to the end of 2024. Reported fraud across the European Economic Area (EEA) rose to €4.2 billion in 2024, from €3.5 billion in 2023. Fraud on cards issued in the EU and EEA accounted for €1.329 billion of it.

The same report carries the encouraging finding. Transactions authenticated with strong customer authentication (SCA) were generally less susceptible to fraud. Card fraud was 17 times higher when the payee sat outside the EEA, where SCA is not legally required and often not used. The regulators' own summary: strong authentication remains effective, but fraudsters are adapting.

SCA answers one question: is the person paying the person who owns the account? Against a stolen card or a taken-over account, that is exactly the right question to ask.

02The claim that arrives authenticated

An item-not-received claim starts after a payment that passed every check. The account holder ordered, authenticated and paid. Days or weeks later, the same person tells PayPal, Klarna or their bank that the parcel never arrived.

Some of those claims are true. Parcels get left with a neighbour, scanned as delivered at the wrong door, or lost between depots. Some are not. In a survey of more than 6,000 consumers in the UK, France and Germany, published in November 2023, Ravelin found that more than 40% of online shoppers admitted to committing fraud against a retailer within the previous 12 months. The figure is self-reported and covers more than delivery claims, but it is not a rounding error.

This is first-party misuse, often called friendly fraud. Device fingerprinting, velocity rules and 3-D Secure are built to catch a stranger. Here there is no stranger: the device, the account and the address are all genuine.

When the notice lands, a merchant usually cannot tell an honest claim from a false one, and doesn't need to. Both are answered the same way: by checking what the delivery record shows. If the parcel reached the address on the order, there is a defence. If it didn't, the parcel probably went missing, and an early refund is the cheapest outcome. Either way the evidence decides, and it has to exist in the form the payment method accepts.

03PayPal: delivered, at the right address

PayPal's Seller Protection programme covers Item Not Received claims when the seller meets the basic requirements and provides proof of delivery. The terms PayPal publishes for the Netherlands and Germany, last updated 17 July 2025, define that proof as documentation from a shipping company that includes:

• an online, verifiable tracking number;
• the date of delivery and a "delivered" status;
• a recipient address that matches the shipping address on the transaction's Transaction Details page;
• an address showing at least the city and postal code, or the international equivalent.

Three further conditions decide more cases than they should. The item must be shipped to the address on the Transaction Details page, and a parcel redirected to a different address after dispatch loses eligibility; PayPal recommends against shipping services arranged by the buyer for that reason. The seller must answer PayPal's requests for documentation within the time PayPal sets. And PayPal warns that the choice of carrier and service matters: if the carrier cannot show "delivered" at the correct address, especially on international shipments, the claim may be denied.

Seller Protection does not cover Significantly Not as Described claims at all. That is a separate argument about the goods themselves, and delivery proof will not settle it.

04Klarna: an attachment, not a link

Klarna's dispute documentation gives the merchant 14 days to answer a request for most dispute reasons. For unauthorised purchases the window is 7 days, with another 7 for each follow-up request. Failing to respond leads Klarna to resolve the dispute in the customer's favour.

For goods not received, Klarna asks for the tracking ID, the carrier, the delivery date, the address the purchase was delivered to, and one further piece of evidence that the entire purchase arrived. Its evidence guidance adds four rules that catch teams out:

• A link to online tracking is not sufficient. The evidence must be an attachment, uploaded as a PDF.
• All information must be linked to the tracking ID, the order ID or another reference number.
• Carrier GPS data or a photo of the parcel count as supporting evidence only. They cannot replace the mandatory proof of delivery.
• If the proof-of-delivery requirements are not met, the dispute may be decided for the customer regardless of shipment status.

The last rule is the one to remember. With Klarna, a parcel that really was delivered can still lose if the document does not carry the required details.

05Wero: a conversation first, then the bank

Wero, the account-to-account wallet run by the European Payments Initiative (EPI), routes disputes differently. A shopper with a problem first raises a pre-dispute with the merchant from the Wero or banking app. Payment service providers that offer Wero describe the same sequence:

• The shopper can open a pre-dispute up to 120 days after payment, and up to 540 days in specific cases.
• Merchant and shopper then have 30 calendar days to agree. The merchant can refund, offer a replacement, or answer with evidence.
• Within 14 days of the pre-dispute closing, the shopper can escalate to their own bank as a formal dispute.
• The merchant then has about 30 calendar days to submit evidence. Without it, the dispute is usually lost.
• If the parties still disagree, the case can go to arbitration by EPI, whose ruling binds everyone involved.

The evidence that helps is familiar: proof of shipment, track and trace, proof of delivery, the order confirmation and the messages exchanged with the shopper. What differs is the order of events. The pre-dispute is a chance to settle an honest claim before it becomes a bank case, and to put the delivery record in front of a dishonest one early.

06The clocks

In all three, silence loses. The deadlines below are the ones published by the providers and their payment partners on 13 October 2026. Check them against your own contract.

07Prevention starts at dispatch

Most of what wins an item-not-received dispute is decided before the claim exists. Most of these controls come straight from the provider rules above; the last is ordinary fraud hygiene.

• Choose shipping that proves delivery. Use carrier services that record a "delivered" status with an address. For higher-value orders, consider a signature or photo service, remembering that Klarna treats photos and GPS as supporting evidence only.
• Ship only to the address on the payment. A late request to send the parcel somewhere else costs PayPal Seller Protection. Change the order and the payment first, or decline.
• Tie the tracking ID to the order ID at dispatch. Klarna requires the link, and every other case is easier with it.
• Save the carrier record as a document. Klarna does not accept a tracking link, and a tracking page can change or disappear. A PDF saved at delivery does not.
• Keep customer messages on the order. A "it arrived, thanks" in the support thread is exactly the kind of second piece of evidence Klarna asks for.
• Refund genuine losses early. When tracking shows no delivery, settling in the first stage costs less than defending. Wero's pre-dispute exists for exactly this.
• Watch for repeat claimants. Record item-not-received claims per customer, address and payment account. One claim is ordinary. A pattern across accounts at one address is a fraud-prevention signal to act on before the next order ships.

08What it means for a dispute team

Item-not-received claims fall between two functions. Fraud prevention cannot block them, because the payment is genuine. Customer service cannot settle them without evidence. What resolves them is retrieval: the order, the carrier record, the messages and the payment record, assembled in the form each provider accepts, before its deadline.

That retrieval is the work Austral takes off a merchant's desk, as a service rather than a tool. Austral reads those records from the systems a merchant already runs and files the result in PayPal's, Klarna's or Wero's own dispute process. If you have an item-not-received case open right now, bring it to a demo.

09Sources

All sources were read on 13 October 2026. Provider rules change; the linked pages are the current word.

• European Banking Authority, Joint EBA-ECB report on payment fraud: strong authentication remains effective but fraudsters are adapting, 15 December 2025.
• Ravelin, consumer fraud survey of more than 6,000 shoppers in the UK, France and Germany, 15 November 2023.
• PayPal, PayPal's Seller Protection Program, Netherlands edition, last updated 17 July 2025. The German edition carries the same requirements.
• Klarna, Disputes evidence and Dispute management overview.
• PAY.NL, Wero's disputes and chargebacks process.
• Airwallex, Wero disputes.

General information, not legal advice. Austral Technologies is not affiliated with PayPal, Klarna, EPI or the sources above.