Sara Craven
You're about to get hit with a chargeback.
Right now, somewhere in your customer base, someone is
staring at their credit card statement, squinting at a charge they don't
recognize. Maybe it's a subscription renewal they forgot about. Maybe it's a
gift their spouse bought. Maybe the descriptor on their statement looks nothing
like your brand name.
In about thirty seconds, they're going to do what everyone
does: call their bank and dispute it. And just like that, you've lost the sale,
eaten the chargeback fee, and probably kissed that customer relationship
goodbye. Multiply that by a few hundred, or a few thousand, times this quarter,
and you're looking at serious money walking out the door.
Here's the thing: you could have stopped it.
The perfect storm is already here
It's not just one problem, it's
three colliding at once.
First, the economic outlook can change. When people are
worried about money, they scrutinize every line item on their statement. That
charge that would have slid by unnoticed six months ago? Now it's suspicious. Now it's worth a phone call.
Second, we’re about to enter the busiest shopping season of
the year. More transactions, more gifts purchased by someone other than the
cardholder, more shipping delays and delivery confusion. It's a recipe for
"I didn't buy this" and "Where's my package?" disputes.
Third, friendly fraud (or first-party misuse) has been climbing.
Customers who know exactly what they bought are claiming they don't, because disputes
are easier than dealing with your return policy or waiting for a refund.
More transactions compounded by more scrutiny and savvy
fraudsters equals a tidal wave of disputes growing as we go into January and
beyond. Most companies are going to do what they've always done: wait for the
chargebacks to land, then scramble to fight them one by one. They'll burn hours
gathering evidence, writing rebuttals, and recovering maybe 20–30% of the value
if they're lucky.
That's playing defense. And defense loses.
Meet your Dispute Opportunity Zone
Here's what the smartest merchants already know: there's a
critical stretch of time between when a customer completes a purchase and when
they pick up the phone to dispute it, where you have all the power.
We call it the Dispute Opportunity Zone. It's
the moment when you can see the warning signs, reach out proactively, clarify
confusion, solve problems, and turn a dispute that was about to happen into a proactive
refund.
This is the period when a confused or frustrated customer is
thinking about disputing, or has already contacted their bank, but the
chargeback hasn't been created yet. It's your last chance to intervene,
clarify, resolve, and save the sale. Miss this window and you're stuck in the
expensive, time-consuming world of chargeback representment with terrible odds.
The difference between companies that control their dispute
volumes and those that don't comes down to two things: data transparency
and automation: Can you see what's happening in real time? And can you act on
it instantly, without manual intervention?
See disputes before they become chargebacks
You can't stop what you can't see. The first step is making
transaction data visible and understandable, not just to you but to the people
who matter most: cardholders and issuer call centers.
Think about what happens when a customer calls their bank
confused about a charge. The call center agent sees a cryptic merchant
descriptor, a dollar amount, and a date. That's it. No other details. So, what
does the agent do? They side with the cardholder and initiate a dispute. It's
the path of least resistance.
Now imagine a different scenario. The agent pulls up the
transaction and instantly sees your brand logo, a digital receipt with
line-item details, the shipping address, delivery confirmation, and your
customer service contact information. Suddenly the cardholder says, "Oh
right, that's the subscription box I ordered for my sister." Dispute
avoided. Transaction saved.
That's the power of Order Insight.
It shares rich transaction data directly with issuers through their existing
systems such as mobile banking apps, online portals, and call center platforms.
When cardholders and agents have full context, confusion evaporates.
First-party misuse can get deflected before it even starts.
Data transparency doesn't just help issuers, it helps you
prioritize where to focus. When you can see which transactions are generating
inquiries, which descriptors are causing confusion, and which types of customers
are disputing most often, you can fix the root causes instead of fighting the symptoms.
Resolve disputes instantly, at scale
Visibility is step one. Step two is acting on what you see: fast,
consistently, and without burning your team's time.
Here's the reality: not every dispute is worth fighting. A
$15 subscription dispute with weak evidence and a customer you'll likely never
see again? Fighting that costs you more in labor and
fees than the transaction is worth. But manually reviewing every case, deciding
which to contest and which to refund, and executing those decisions across
multiple systems? That doesn't scale.
This is where automation changes the game. Rapid Dispute
Resolution (RDR) lets
you set rules that automatically resolve disputes the moment they're
initiated—before they become chargebacks. You define the criteria: transaction
amount, dispute reason code, customer lifetime value, evidence strength,
whatever matters to your business. When a dispute matches your rules, the
system instantly issues a refund to the cardholder and closes the case. No
chargeback. No fees. No operational drag.
For disputes that need a human touch such as higher-value
transactions, repeat customers, or cases where you have strong evidence, Cardholder
Dispute Resolution Network (CDRN) gives
you 72 hours to review and decide. That gives you time to pull transaction
details, contact the customer directly if needed, issue a refund, or prepare to
fight. The key is to make the call during the Dispute Opportunity Zone, when
you still have options, instead of after the chargeback has already landed.
Automation doesn't just save time. It optimizes
profitability. You're strategically choosing which disputes to absorb and which
to contest based on data, not gut feel or whoever happens to be reviewing cases
that day. You're controlling your chargeback ratio by resolving disputes before
they count against you. And you're freeing up your team to focus on high-value
activities like improving the customer experience, analyzing trends, or fixing
systemic issues instead of drowning in case-by-case firefighting.
Let's talk numbers
Every dispute that escalates to a chargeback costs you the amount
of the transaction plus a chargeback fee (typically $20–100) and time to gather
evidence and respond. If you're in a high-risk vertical or you've hit network
thresholds, you can also add monitoring program fees, higher processing rates,
and the risk of losing your ability to accept cards altogether.
Now flip the equation. Every dispute you resolve in the
Dispute Opportunity Zone saves all of that. Deflect 100 disputes a month at an
average transaction value of $50, and you've protected $5,000 in revenue plus
$2,000–10,000 in fees. Scale that across a year and you could
be looking at six or seven figures in direct savings—before you even
count the indirect benefits like better customer retention, lower operational
overhead, and staying comfortably below compliance thresholds.
This isn't just a holiday tactic, it's year-round
resilience
The Dispute Opportunity Zone isn't a one-time fix for the
January chargeback wave. It's the foundation of a modern risk management
strategy that anticipates problems, intervenes early, and continuously improves
based on data.
The post-holiday dispute wave is predictable. It happens
every year. The only question is whether you're going to be ready.
Your next step: Don't wait for January
Book
a meeting with our dispute experts. Want to know more? Join our upcoming 45-minute
webinar.
Stop letting disputes dictate your revenue and
relationships. Step into your Dispute Opportunity Zone and take control.