When a client disputes a card payment, their bank reverses the money, charges you a fee, and gives you usually 7 to 21 days to send evidence that the charge was valid. If you miss the window, you lose by default. Respond fast, lead with your signed agreement and the client's approval, and refund early if you were in the wrong.
Chargeback, refund and dispute are three different things
The words get used loosely, and the confusion costs people money.
A refund is voluntary and cheap. If a client is unhappy and you would rather return the money, refunding directly is almost always better than letting it become a chargeback, because a chargeback adds a fee on top of the amount even in the best case. Our guide to handling a refund request covers how to decide.
The clock is the whole game
The client gets months. You get days.
According to Stripe's explanation of how disputes work, card networks typically allow cardholders to start a dispute within 120 days of the original payment, so a payment you thought was settled can be pulled back four months later. Once a chargeback is filed, you have a limited time to respond, usually 7 to 21 days depending on the card network. After you submit evidence, the issuer review usually takes 60 to 75 days, and the full process can run two to three months.
Read that as a business owner. They had 120 days to complain, you get about two weeks to answer, and then everyone waits two months for a verdict. People lose disputes they should win on that middle number. A notification email gets buried, the deadline passes with no evidence submitted, and the loss is by default, not on the merits.
Written by
The Delivvo team
Delivvo runs the client cycle for service businesses: inquiry, quote, contract, deposit and delivery. Payments go straight to your own account.
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Guides for service businesses, from the first inquiry to the final payment. Written by the team behind Delivvo.
A person looking stressed at a laptop while dealing with a disputed payment
What it costs even when you win
A chargeback is not only the risk of losing the sale. Fees land regardless of the outcome.
Stripe's pricing page lists a fee for each dispute received and a separate fee when you respond to one manually. The second is returned if you win and kept if you lose. The amounts depend on your country, and the US page has listed $15 for each, so check yours.
Work it through for a small invoice. A disputed $150 payment means the $150 is reversed at once, plus a $15 fee you do not get back, plus a $15 counter fee that is only returned if you win. Win, and you are out $15 and some hours. Lose, and you are out $180. On a small job, one lost chargeback can erase the profit from several good ones.
Most disputes are friendly fraud
A lot of chargebacks are not fraud in the way you picture it. They are real customers disputing charges they actually made, sometimes by mistake and sometimes not. The industry calls it friendly fraud.
The Merchant Risk Council's 2024 Chargeback Field Report found that roughly three quarters of surveyed merchants saw an average 18% increase in friendly fraud over three years. It also found that 53% of cardholders had disputed a transaction with their bank without contacting the seller first. They skip you and go straight to the bank.
Volume is rising too. ChargebackGurus, reporting Mastercard data, projects global chargebacks growing from 261 million in 2025 to 324 million by 2028. That is secondary reporting, so treat it as a direction, not a precise forecast.
Why this matters to you: if the charge really happened and you really did the work, you have a genuine case, which is not true of stolen-card fraud. Most disputes you see are winnable if you can prove both.
You win or lose on evidence
Fighting a chargeback is called representment: you send the transaction back to the issuer with proof it was valid. Win rates vary by source and reason code. The consistent finding is that outcomes depend on the quality of evidence, not the strength of your argument.
For a service business, the evidence that moves an issuer is dull and specific:
A signed agreement showing the client authorised the work and the amount.
A record that the client approved the deliverable.
Proof the work was delivered.
The message trail around it.
A screenshot of "looks great, thanks" is worth more than a paragraph on how hard you worked. The bank is not judging your craft. It is deciding whether a real, authorised transaction took place.
That is also why refunding a genuinely unhappy client early is smart. If the work was not delivered or not authorised, you will lose the dispute and pay the fees on top. Save representment for cases where you held up your end. Our longer piece on chargebacks and payment disputes goes deeper on reason codes.
A dispute-response playbook
Refund early when you are in the wrong. A chargeback on the same facts only adds fees to the loss.
Never miss the response window. Turn on dispute notifications from your gateway and treat them as urgent.
Lead with authorisation and approval. The signed contract and recorded sign-off are the strongest evidence for a service. Attach them first.
Show delivery. Proof the client received the work counters "I never got it".
Keep it in one place before you need it. You cannot assemble a clean trail in two weeks if it lives in five apps.
Where the evidence trail comes from
The problem is rarely that the evidence does not exist. It is scattered. The contract is in one inbox, the approval is in a chat thread, the delivery went out over a link, and gathering it all inside a 7 to 21 day window is its own scramble.
How Delivvo keeps the evidence in one place
Delivvo does not process your card payments and does not run your disputes. Your own gateway is the merchant of record, so the dispute happens there. What Delivvo gives you is the paper trail to hand that gateway, built as you work.
The quote, contract and deposit invoice go to the client on one link, so the amount they agreed to and the amount they paid are connected.
The client signs the contract by typing or drawing a signature. Delivvo stores a signing record with a SHA-256 hash, IP address and device, plus an archived PDF.
Deliverables go through the client portal, where files, versions and approvals live next to the invoice. The client approves in the portal instead of in a chat thread.
Every contract, invoice and receipt carries a verification code that shows the issuer, number, dates, amount and status at delivvo.io/verify.
If you split the fee into scheduled payments, each payment keeps its own date and status, which makes it easy to show which part was paid against which stage of work.
Money goes from your client to your gateway account, and Delivvo takes 0%. Nothing prevents a chargeback. A client can dispute a charge whatever software you use. What a clean trail changes is your odds when you contest one, and how fast you can respond before the window closes.
What is the difference between a chargeback and a refund?
A refund is money you choose to return. A chargeback is the client's bank forcibly reversing the payment, usually with a non-refundable fee charged to you. Refunding a fair complaint early often beats fighting a dispute later.
How long does a client have to dispute a payment?
Card networks typically allow up to 120 days from the original payment, according to Stripe, and some situations allow longer. Once a chargeback is filed, you usually have 7 to 21 days to respond.
Can I stop chargebacks completely?
No, and be wary of any tool that says it can. A cardholder can dispute a charge regardless of your software. You can control your evidence and your response speed.
What evidence wins a chargeback for services?
Proof that the transaction was authorised and the work delivered: a signed agreement, a recorded client approval, delivery records and the message trail. Banks decide whether a valid, authorised transaction happened, not how good the work was.
Delivvo runs the whole client cycle for service businesses, from the first inquiry to the quote, contract, deposit, invoice and delivery, so the evidence behind every payment is already in one place if a dispute arrives. Clients pay you directly through your own gateway, and Delivvo takes 0%. Start free
