How can I avoid chargebacks?

It is important that you take actions to help prevent chargebacks because:

• Your processor charges you a fee for each chargeback you receive.
• Multiple chargebacks may result in compliance issues.

To help prevent chargebacks, we recommend you follow these best practices:

Do:

• Make sure your merchant descriptor matches the name of your business so that it displays correctly on the cardholder’s statement
• Check the expiration date of a cardholder’s card to make sure it has not expired
• Get another form of payment if the cardholder’s card is declined
• Confirm you received a valid authorization before running all transactions
• Run all transactions using the correct currency
• Make sure your receipts show the correct currency
• Tell the cardholder about your refund policy and cancelation policy at the time of the transaction
• Issue refunds to the cardholder in a timely manner

Don’t:

• Make any adjustments to the transaction documentation after the transaction without consulting the cardholder and obtaining their agreement
• Use the cardholder’s payment details to recover a dollar amount from previous chargebacks, bad checks, or any other incidents where a financial loss occurs
• Force an authorization by lowering the amount or altering any of the transaction details
• Manually enter the transaction or call to get a voice authorization after you receive a “Decline” response
• Batch out the same transaction multiple times
• Continue to charge the cardholder’s account after you receive a chargeback
• Run a transaction more than seven days after you receive a voice authorization
• Refund the cardholder for a transaction they have disputed

Tags: future, issue chargeback, chargeback process, dispute, retrieval request, defend chargeback, avoid chargebacks