How about this? Set up a recording that shames the thief when triggered, inflicting emotional damage.

Reasonable people can disagree. What is a customer to do if they think a merchant is not a bad actor, but mistakenly refuses to refund their purchase? A chargeback seems like the fastest and cheapest option to resolve the dispute.

Only if you approach the domain with ignorance. It's very, very clear that chargebacks are not the play in most cases.

1. What are the alternatives? 2. Can you explain why chargebacks are not the play in most cases?

Here's a solution implemented by a friend a couple of years ago. It detects pigeons and shoos them away by waving a stick with ribbons: https://towardsdatascience.com/how-to-use-deep-learning-to-s...