A payment dispute is the process initiated when a cardholder contacts the issuing bank to challenge a charge made with their debit or credit card. This challenge may be due to fraud, a billing error, a product issue, or a transaction they don’t recognize. Once initiated, the issuer investigates the claim and may issue a chargeback, temporarily or permanently reversing the transaction. Disputes that advance to chargebacks are governed by network-specific rules and timelines, with different levels of documentation required depending on the reason.

Disputes should be taken seriously regardless of the amount involved. They can directly affect your chargeback ratio and VAMP ratio, operational workload, and in some cases, your access to processing services. AltoPay helps you track, respond to, and learn from disputes through integrated tools and analytics. Understanding the common triggers and resolution paths is key to improving your defenses and minimizing long-term losses