Rusty Nart owns Green Monkey London, a cafe in Tooting, south London, and Fingers Kebab shop, in New Addington, also in south London.
He told the BBC that he noticed an increase in friendly fraud scams at both businesses.
“People will come in and spend a certain amount of money, and then within a three month period, they’ve got a window where they can chargeback a payment,” Mr Nart explained.
The restaurant owner said it often happened after taking credit card payments over the phone. Payments would be fraudulently charged back to the business, with customers denying they made the original purchase.
The scam was having a negative impact on business, he said.
“Not only do you have to pay back the money that they spent, but the card provider makes a chargeback fee of £28 plus VAT.
“You’ve provided that customer with the product or the service so you lose out on all ends.”
He has started to keep every paper receipt, in an effort to investigate each chargeback.
“I took it into my own hands and started keeping every food order receipt within a three month period,” he said.
“This way I could go back to that date and time through my physical paper tickets and locate the customer’s address, drive to their house and ask them why they’d done this.”
Although he recovered the funds each time, he suggested others avoid doing the same.
“I don’t advise other business owners to do this as it could be a little dangerous, but this was the route I took since the card machine providers and banks don’t seem to be doing anything.”