In 2003 the Wall Street Journal estimated that the credit card industry generated $500,000,000 in annual revenue in research and investigation fees paid by consumers and businesses.

This additional revenue offsets some of the costs incurred by credit card issuing and processing companies' when investigating chargeback claims. Some merchants believe the high revenue generation by the banks from the crime victims, reduce the incentive for the credit card banks to implement procedures to reduce credit card crime. However, the companies which collect these fees are not capable of dictating fraud prevention policies to the rest of the world. Payment transfer associations, like Visa and Mastercard, receive profit from transaction fees calculated as a percentage of the amount of money they transfer. These associations are motivated to enact policies which increase the amount of money transferred by their systems. Credit card fraud has a chilling effect on merchant acceptance of credit cards, motivating merchants to not accept credit card payments to mitigate their risk of loss. These payment transfer associations are therefore motivated to enact policies and enforce regulations which reduce credit card fraud.

Merchants have begun to request changes in State and Federal Laws to protect consumers and merchants from fraud, but the credit card industry has opposed many of the requested laws.

Because all card-accepting merchants and card-carrying customers are bound by contract law, according to the agreements they sign with their processing / issuing banks, respectively, State and Federal law has a smaller role in preventing merchants from being tricked. Payment transfer associations enact regulatory changes, and issuing / acquiring banks, merchants, and cardholders are contractually bound to these new regulations.