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Questions about a card or an order? Pick how you'd like to reach us.
See what a refund, a won dispute and a lost chargeback each leave you with on an order, including goods, fees and staff time. Then check your chargeback ratio against Visa and Mastercard limits.
What you end up with on this order
A chargeback also counts towards your monitoring ratio even if you win it. A refund issued before a dispute does not.
Card networks watch how many disputes you get compared with how many card payments you take. Enter one month of numbers.
Mastercard divides this month's chargebacks by last month's transactions; if your volume is steady, using one month is a fair estimate.
The fee is the part merchants notice. It is rarely the biggest part.
When a customer complains before going to their bank, a quick refund is almost always cheaper: you lose the processing fee, but avoid the chargeback fee, the staff time and a mark against your ratio.
Once a dispute is open, refunding no longer helps, so the choice is between accepting the chargeback and contesting it. Contest when you have evidence the bank will accept:
Without that evidence, contesting usually just adds time and any counter fee. Use the win-chance setting above to see where the line falls for your orders.
Both networks run monitoring programs. Cross a threshold and your payment provider can face fees it usually passes on to you.
| Program | What is counted | Ratio | Minimum a month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visa VAMP (Excessive) | Fraud reports + disputes ÷ settled card-not-present transactions | 1.5%* | 1,500 fraud + disputes |
| Mastercard ECM | Chargebacks ÷ previous month's transactions | 1.5% | 100 chargebacks |
| Mastercard HECM | Chargebacks ÷ previous month's transactions | 3% | 300 chargebacks |
* Visa lowered its merchant level from 2.2% to 1.5% on 1 April 2026 for the US, Canada, Europe and Asia Pacific. VAMP replaced Visa's separate dispute and fraud programs in April 2025. Rules and fees change, and your payment provider may act earlier, so confirm current limits with them.
Seeing disputes from cards you don't expect? Use the BIN checker to see a card's issuing country and type, and compare it with the customer's address and IP location.
A chargeback is when a cardholder disputes a payment with their bank and the bank takes the money back from the merchant. The merchant can accept it or send evidence to challenge it, and the bank decides the outcome.
A refund is the merchant returning money voluntarily. A chargeback is forced by the cardholder's bank. Chargebacks add a fee, take staff time, and count towards card network monitoring ratios. Refunds do not.
It depends on your payment provider and risk level. Fees of about $15 to $25 per dispute are common for low-risk merchants and can reach $100 for high-risk accounts. Stripe, for example, charges $15 per dispute in the US. Check your own fee schedule.
Usually not. Many providers, including Stripe and PayPal, keep the original processing fee when you refund a payment, which is why the calculator assumes the fee is lost unless you change that setting.
As low as possible. Mastercard's first monitoring level starts at 1.5% with at least 100 chargebacks in a month, and Visa's merchant level is 1.5% of fraud and disputes from April 2026. Many payment providers start reviewing accounts well before those levels.
Generally no. Once a dispute is open, a refund does not stop it, so you can end up paying twice. Respond through the dispute process instead, or accept the chargeback if you have no evidence.
Yes, when you have clear evidence: proof of delivery, a matching billing address, 3D Secure authentication, signed terms or usage logs. Without evidence, contesting usually just adds staff time and any counter fee.
For most reasons it is around 120 days from the transaction or the expected delivery date, but the exact window depends on the card network and the dispute reason.