A chargeback is when a cardholder disputes a charge with their bank in order to reverse the charge.
It’s a tool meant to give cardholder’s a last means of defense against rouge merchants who refused to refund the cardholder directly. However, for some merchants, that crucial step gets missed and results in what we call “friendly fraud.”
Friendly fraud is the not the only reason a chargeback can happen. Here are some other common reasons for chargeback:
But merchants are not left without a defense of their own, they have the ability to dispute a chargeback and win their money back if the transaction was legitimate.
When a cardholder initiates a chargeback, the merchant is notified that the funds have been drafted from their account. This money is held “in escrow” essentially, until the chargeback review process is complete. Depending on the amount of the chargeback, a merchant may decide to act or not act. While disputing a chargeback is often a good thing, sometimes the cost of fighting a chargeback may not outweigh the amount of the chargeback.
When the merchant receives a notification from the Risk Management team, it will ask for supporting documents, or evidence, to verify the legitimacy of the charge.
Evidence can include:
Here is where things start to get a little tricky. Merchants only have the one opportunity to dispute the chargeback, so submitting as much as evidence as possible in the first instance is the best way to support the merchant’s claims. From here, the banks will decide if the reason the chargeback was initiated is supported by the evidence or not.
Let’s talk about a few ways merchants can protect themselves from potential chargebacks, which can be costly even if the merchant wins their chargeback case.
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