- Acquirer
- The bank or payment processor that provides a merchant with the ability to accept card payments. Sits on the merchant's side of a dispute.
- Arbitration
- The final stage of a dispute, where the card network itself (Visa or Mastercard) reviews the case and issues a binding decision. Carries filing fees and is relatively rare.
- Authorization
- The step where a card issuer approves or declines a transaction in real time, before it's captured or settled.
- CE 3.0 (Compelling Evidence 3.0)
- A Visa program that lets merchants use a cardholder's prior undisputed purchase history as evidence against "friendly fraud" disputes for recurring or repeat customers.
- Chargeback
- A forced reversal of a card transaction, initiated by the cardholder's bank on the cardholder's behalf, that pulls funds back from the merchant.
- Chargeback Ratio (Dispute Ratio)
- The number of disputes divided by the number of total transactions over a given period — the figure card networks use to flag high-risk merchants, not the raw dispute count.
- Card-Not-Present (CNP)
- A transaction where the physical card isn't presented at the point of sale — the default for nearly all e-commerce. CNP transactions carry materially higher fraud and dispute risk than in-person "card-present" transactions.
- Compelling Evidence
- Documentation submitted during representment that directly rebuts the cardholder's specific claim — delivery confirmation for "not received," a signed agreement for "not as described," and so on.
- Deflection / Alerts
- Services that notify a merchant of a dispute before it formally becomes a chargeback, giving the merchant a chance to refund the transaction and avoid a chargeback being recorded against their ratio.
- Dispute
- The broader term for a cardholder's challenge to a transaction — a dispute can resolve before it ever becomes a formal chargeback.
- First-Party Fraud
- See Friendly Fraud — a dispute filed by the legitimate cardholder despite having authorized and received the purchase.
- Friendly Fraud
- A chargeback filed by the actual cardholder for a transaction they genuinely made, whether from confusion, impatience, or intent to get something for free. Distinct from criminal/third-party fraud.
- Issuer
- The cardholder's bank — the institution that issued the card and that the cardholder contacts to file a dispute.
- Liability Shift
- A rule (common with 3-D Secure authentication) that moves fraud liability from the merchant to the issuer when specific authentication steps were correctly completed at checkout.
- Pre-Arbitration (Pre-Arb)
- A second escalation step after representment, where the issuer re-challenges the merchant's rebuttal before the case would proceed to full arbitration.
- Reason Code
- A code assigned by the issuer that categorizes why a dispute was filed (e.g., "goods not received," "unauthorized transaction"). Determines what evidence will actually move the needle in a rebuttal.
- RDR (Rapid Dispute Resolution)
- A Visa program that lets merchants pre-set automatic rules (e.g., "always refund disputes under $X for this reason code") to resolve eligible disputes instantly, without manual representment.
- Representment
- The merchant's formal rebuttal to a chargeback — evidence and argument submitted through the acquirer, asking the issuer to reverse the reversal and return the funds.
- Retrieval Request
- A request from the issuer for transaction documentation, occurring before a formal chargeback is filed. Responding well can sometimes prevent escalation entirely.
- Revenue Recovery
- The broader process of reclaiming money lost to chargebacks, processing errors, and payment disputes — through representment, deflection, and process fixes.
- SAFE Data
- Mastercard's System to Avoid Fraud Effectively — the reporting system acquirers use to flag fraud and dispute activity that feeds a merchant's risk profile.
- TC40 / SAFE Report
- Standardized fraud-reporting records (Visa's TC40, Mastercard's SAFE) that issuers file when a transaction is confirmed fraudulent — these feed directly into monitoring programs like VAMP.
- Timely Filing Window
- The strict deadline a merchant has to submit representment evidence after being notified of a dispute — commonly around 30 days for Visa and 45 days for Mastercard, though it varies by case. Missing it typically forfeits the case automatically.
- VAMP (Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program)
- Visa's current risk-monitoring program (effective 2025–2026), combining fraud and dispute ratios into a single measure evaluated largely at the acquirer-portfolio level. Replaced the older VDMP and VFMP programs.
- Win Rate
- The share of representment cases a merchant successfully overturns. Varies heavily by industry, evidence quality, and reason code — there's no universal benchmark, but consistent process improvement moves it over time.
