Disputes and chargebacks

A dispute happens when a customer questions a charge with their bank instead of contacting you. Paysio collects every dispute in one place, warns you early when it can, and gives you the tools to respond: refund an alert before it becomes a chargeback, or fight a chargeback with evidence and win the money back.

Alerts and chargebacks are different things

• An alert is an early warning. Networks like Ethoca and Verifi (CDRN) tell Paysio that a cardholder has complained, usually before the bank turns the complaint into a chargeback. If you refund the payment while it is still an alert, the chargeback usually never happens and your dispute rate stays clean.
• A chargeback is the real thing. The customer's bank has already reversed the payment and pulled the money back. You can fight it with evidence, or accept it.
• An RDR alert is already resolved. Visa's Rapid Dispute Resolution refunds the cardholder automatically on your behalf. There is nothing to do, and the case is recorded so your books stay accurate.
• ACH returns and reversals are bank payments that came back, for example because of insufficient funds or a closed account.
• TC40 reports are fraud reports from card issuers. They are informational and need no action.

The Disputes page

In the sidebar, click Disputes. Every case is listed with its type, amount, status, and date.

• Use the pills at the top to jump between All, Alerts, Chargebacks, and Returns.
• Use the filters to narrow by type or status. The Needs attention status shows every case you can still act on.
• The header shows the total amount currently in dispute.
• Click a row to open the case. A disputed payment also shows on its own transaction page. See Transaction details.

Reading a dispute

The dispute page shows the amount at stake, the current status, and a countdown when a response deadline is close. Below that are the reason from the bank, the card network, the card, and the matched transaction. The timeline at the bottom records everything that has happened on the case.

If Paysio could not match the dispute to a transaction automatically, the page lists likely candidates instead. Click Match next to the right one. A chargeback must be matched before you can fight it, because the evidence is built from the transaction.

Acting on an alert

An alert is a race: refund before the bank escalates and the chargeback never lands.

1. Open the alert.
2. Click Refund.
3. Confirm.

Paysio refunds the payment and reports the outcome to the network, which normally stops the chargeback. If you cannot resolve the alert, click Can't resolve and pick a reason, for example that the payment was already refunded or you cannot find the transaction. That answer is reported to the network too.

You can also automate this entirely with an auto-refund policy. See the settings section below.

Fighting a chargeback

If you believe the charge was legitimate, build and submit a response:

1. Open the chargeback and click Fight.
2. Describe what happened in the Tell the AI what happened box, in your own words, then click Generate with AI. The AI writes a formal rebuttal from your notes. Edit it freely, or skip the AI and write the rebuttal yourself.
3. Under What was sold?, pick the type of product or service.
4. Review the Evidence sections. Paysio fills these in from what it already knows: the transaction record, the cardholder details, the customer's purchase history, 3-D Secure results, the checkout device and location, fulfillment and tracking, and the order items. Toggle off anything you do not want to include.
5. Upload Supporting documents such as a receipt, proof of delivery, or emails with the customer. Give each file a clear name and pick a category, so the bank's reviewer knows what they are looking at. Recommended documents for your dispute reason appear as chips, and clicking a chip uploads straight into that category.
6. Check the live preview on the right. It mirrors the exact document the card network receives. Click Open as PDF to see the finished response.
7. Click Submit and confirm.

Your work saves automatically as you go, so you can leave and come back before submitting. Once submitted, the response cannot be edited.

Accepting a chargeback

If the dispute is valid, accept it to close the case:

1. Open the chargeback.
2. Click Accept.
3. Confirm.

The funds stay with the cardholder. This cannot be undone.

After you submit

The dispute moves to Response submitted while the card network and the issuing bank review your evidence. A decision usually takes 30 to 75 days.

• Won. The issuer ruled in your favor, and the disputed funds are returned to you.
• Lost. The issuer sided with the cardholder, and the funds stay with them.

Either way, the outcome appears on the dispute page and its timeline, and you are notified by email.

Dispute settings

Open Settings, then Disputes.

• Alert handling. Choose what happens when an alert arrives: Notify me only, Auto-refund alerts under a threshold you set, or Always auto-refund. Auto-refunding is the safest way to keep chargebacks off your record. The trade-off is that you refund some charges you might have contested.
• Notification emails. Dispute emails go to your general notification emails unless you add addresses here to send them to a separate list. Emptying the list turns dispute emails off entirely.

Preventing disputes

Most disputes come from confusion rather than fraud. To cut them down:

• Set a clear statement descriptor so customers recognize the charge on their statement. See Checkout options.
• Let the automatic receipt give customers a record of what they bought. See Receipts and confirmations.
• Keep fulfillment and tracking up to date so you can prove delivery. See Orders and fulfillment.
• Add repeat bad actors to your blocklist to stop them before they charge again. See Blocking bad actors.