Shopify Chargeback FeeWhat You’ll Pay, When You’ll Get It Back, & How to Minimize Your Costs

Shopify Chargeback Fees: Receive a Shopify Dispute? It’ll Cost You (Unless You Win)

Shopify’s fee structure makes it cheap and affordable for merchants to sign up. 

As of this writing, they’re offering a free, three-day trial; no credit card required. Then, the platform doles out a $1/month promotion for three months, before finally moving merchants onto a more permanent payment structure.

Unfortunately, there’s no introductory pricing for disputes, though. If you’re a Shopify seller and you receive a chargeback, you can expect to incur an administrative fee that’s refundable only if you win.

In this article, we take a closer look at Shopify chargeback fees, how they compare to other payment processors, and how much disputes — whether on Shopify or other on another platform — are really costing your business.

What Is the Shopify Chargeback Fee?

The Shopify chargeback fee is a $15 administrative fee that US merchants on Shopify incur every time they receive a chargeback against a previously completed transaction. This fee is charged regardless whether the claim made by the cardholder is valid.

Shopify tacks on a chargeback fee immediately after a buyer files a dispute with their issuer, and you’ll see the amount deducted from your next payout. Chargeback fees are separate from the amount disputed by the cardholder, meaning that every Shopify chargeback received results in a $15 fee, even if the transaction being disputed was less than $15.

The platform’s $15 dispute fees aren’t meant to be punitive, though, at least not in principle. Rather, they allow Shopify to cover the administrative costs associated with communicating with banks, collecting and handling evidence on behalf of sellers, and processing disputes for merchants.

Of course, one other reason why Shopify assesses chargeback fees is because it’s industry standard for platforms to do so. From seller marketplaces like Amazon to payment processors like PayPal, nearly all merchant service providers charge sellers fees for receiving disputes on their platforms.

How Much You'll Actually Pay (By Currency)

Shopify’s chargeback fees vary by country. Whenever you receive a chargeback, you’ll see the fee deducted from your Shopify merchant account, and it will be denominated in your store’s default payout currency, even if the customer disputing the charge is located in a different country.

Here’s what you can expect to pay in Shopify chargeback fees by currency:

Country or Region	Chargeback Fee
Australia	$25 AUD
Austria	€15 EUR
Belgium	€15 EUR
Bulgaria	€15 EUR
Canada	$15 CAD or $15 USD
Croatia	€15 EUR
Cyprus	€15 EUR
Czechia	€15 EUR 400 CZK
Denmark	€15 EUR 115 DKK
Estonia	€15 EUR
Finland	€15 EUR
France	€15 EUR
Germany	€15 EUR
Gibraltar	£15 GBP
Greece	€15 EUR
Hong Kong	$85 HKD
Hungary	€15 EUR or 7000 HUF
Ireland	€15 EUR + 23% Value added tax (VAT)
Italy	€15 EUR
Japan	¥1,300 JPY
Latvia	€15 EUR
Liechtenstein	€15 EUR or 15 CHF
Lithuania	€15 EUR
Luxembourg	€15 EUR
Malta	€15 EUR
Mexico	$200 MXN
Netherlands	€15 EUR
New Zealand	$20 NZD
Norway	€15 EUR or 200 NOK
Poland	€15 EUR or 75 PLN
Portugal	€15 EUR
Romania	€15 EUR or 75 RON
Singapore	$16.35 SGD
Slovenia	€15 EUR
Spain	€15 EUR
Sweden	€15 EUR or 150 SEK
Switzerland	€15 EUR or 15 CHF
UK	£10 GBP
US	$15 USD

One small silver lining, though: while Shopify typically tacks on a currency conversion surcharge for sales, this extra charge isn’t applied to chargeback fees. However, fluctuations in foreign exchange rates may cause you to gain or lose money compared to the value of the original transaction when the purchase itself is reversed.

When & How the Fee is Charged

Shopify assesses a $15 dispute fee every time you receive a chargeback, and there’s no cap to the number of chargeback fees you can incur. If you receive five chargebacks per month, that’s $75 in fees per month. If you’re a high-volume merchant who faces hundreds of disputes per month, it’s still $15 per every single dispute, meaning those fees can add up fast.

As mentioned in a previous section, Shopify chargeback fees are assessed the moment a chargeback is filed, well before the final outcome of a dispute is determined. These fees are then deducted from your next payout.

Although these fees don’t appear in a separate line item attached on an order or a customer-facing invoice, you can see how much you incurred in chargeback fees by running payout reports and examining the deductions that were made.

What If I Don’t Have Enough in My Account to Cover a Shopify Chargeback Fee?

But what happens when you don’t have enough in your Shopify merchant account to cover the cost of a chargeback? The short answer is that your payout balance will dip into the negative. Like a bank overdraft, this can result in unpleasant consequences.

For example, let’s say you have $50 in your payout account. Then, a customer files a chargeback against a $100 order, resulting in a $115 payment reversal, which is the sum of the $100 original transaction plus a $15 Shopify chargeback fee.

Suddenly, your payout balance falls to -$65. When this happens, Shopify will attempt to deduct the sum of the reversed payment and the chargeback fee twice.

If both attempts result in insufficient funds, merchants in the US, Canada, and Australia will be required to bring their payout balance to at least $0 by depositing funds from an external bank account. Sellers in other countries, however, can technically overdraft their payout balances, since Shopify allows these merchants to offset their negative balances using funds from subsequent new sales.

Comparing Shopify’s Fee to Other Processors

Shopify’s chargeback fee structure is competitive. It's generally lower than the fees charged by either traditional merchant account providers or high-risk processors. Here is how Shopify’s dispute fee compares to other notable names in the payment processing space.

Payment Processor	Chargeback Fee	Details
Shopify	$15	Refundable if you win, though this is region-dependent
Stripe	$15	Non-refundable in many cases; new 2025 fee structure introduces refundable “dispute countered” fees, which are separate from initial dispute fees
PayPal	$20	Fee can increase for high-risk accounts or international transactions
Square	$0	Square generally covers dispute fees for merchants, a rare exception in the industry
Traditional Processor	$20-100	Fees vary wildly by contract and often include hidden administrative costs

When Will a Shopify Chargeback Fee Get Refunded?

Here’s what the Shopify Help Center has to say regarding the refunding of Shopify chargeback fees:

“If you win the chargeback, then you get the disputed amount back, and Shopify might refund the chargeback fee depending on your country or region.”

Shopify doesn’t publish an official list of which specific countries are eligible for chargeback fee refunds. The general rule for US merchants is that the fee is refundable… but only if you submit compelling evidence to re-present the chargeback, and the issuer rules in your favor.

If you accept the chargeback, or if the bank rules in favor of the cardholder, Shopify’s $15 dispute fee becomes permanent. And, if your order is covered by Shopify Protect, the platform’s built-in, free-to-use fraud protection tool, the chargeback fee is automatically refunded alongside the disputed amount, effectively shielding you from the cost entirely — no matter the chargeback’s ultimate outcome.

How Fees Show Up in Your Account

When a chargeback hits, it can be confusing to track exactly where the money went.

As mentioned before, Shopify doesn’t bill you directly for these fees. Rather, they are deducted from your payout balance. Here is how to identify them in different views:

In your payout details, the fee appears as a specific line item labeled “Chargeback fee.” Because it’s listed separately from the disputed order amount, you can easily distinguish between the revenue lost from the sale and the fee charged by Spotify.

You can verify this by navigating to Finances in your Shopify admin dashboard. Then, in the Payouts section, click on Transactions.

Your bank statement won’t show a separate transaction for the $15 Shopify dispute fee. Instead, you’ll see a net payout amount that is lower than your total sales, since the fee is deducted from your accumulated payout balance before Shopify transfers the money to your bank.

To account for chargeback costs correctly, you’ll want to make sure you break out chargeback fees into a separate line item. Here are some tips:

• Don’t lump chargeback fees in with your Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) or standard customer refunds.
• Don’t bundle dispute fees with other bank service charges, like monthly maintenance fees or bank transfer fees
• Create a separate expense account titled “Disputes” or “Chargeback fees.” Doing so gives you a better idea of how much chargeback fees in particular are costing your business.

The True Cost of a Shopify Chargeback

While painful, the immediate financial hit of a chargeback — the lost revenue, the lost inventory, and the $15 Shopify dispute fee — is unfortunately often just the tip of the iceberg. Hidden below the surface are a host of other insidious medium- and long-term costs, including:

Shopify chargeback fees are not egregious, compared to benchmarks set by other payment processing service providers out there. That said, it’s never a good day to pay an unnecessary fee.

You should invest in Shopify fraud and chargeback prevention best practices to make sure you never pay more than you absolutely have to in order to keep your business thriving.

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