Visa Dispute Prevention Best PracticesGood Habits Can Go a Long Way

Other Tips & Tricks You Can Use to Minimize Visa Disputes

Visa’s specialized tools and robust ecosystem can, without a doubt, help you prevent disputes. Or, at least, fight and win any invalid ones that come through.

But you shouldn’t rely on technology alone. After all, it would be remiss to neglect simple but powerful best practices, including clear communication, excellent customer service, or secure transaction processing. These habits can likewise stop many disputes before they ever start, saving you time, money, and frustration.

Here’s a rundown of best practices for Visa dispute prevention, straight from the horse’s mouth:

One of the fastest ways to get a dispute is when a customer looks at their credit card statement and can’t recognize a charge. If your billing descriptors are vague or confusing, you could be setting yourself up for entirely preventable disputes.

To fix this issue, make sure that the billing descriptor that appears on your customers’ statements is easily recognizable as your business. As a best practice, this means using your commonly-recognized “doing business as” (or “DBA”) name, rather than your legal name. One other good practice is to include your customer service phone number or website in the descriptor field so customers can contact you directly with questions.

You can also deploy dynamic billing descriptors, which display a different message depending on the product or service purchased by the customer. This helps remind the cardholder exactly what they bought from you.

Subscription and recurring billing models require extra transparency. Always be upfront with customers, explaining that they are signing up for recurring payments, and clearly state the amount and frequency of the charge.

You should also provide a straightforward way for customers to cancel their subscriptions and send a notification before processing a recurring transaction, especially for annual or infrequent plans.

Also, make sure to communicate proactively before any price changes, service modifications, or inventory stockouts. You risk chargebacks if you blindside your customers with anything unexpected.

Many disputes can be avoided if a customer can easily resolve an issue directly with you. Make sure your contact information — including a phone number and email address — is easy to find on your website.

Be reachable during (and ideally beyond) standard business hours, and try to minimize hold or wait times as much as possible. In addition, empower your customer service team to issue refunds or offer concessions. Doing so can give your frontline staff the tools they need to defuse customer grievances and prevent potential disputes.

This should almost go without saying, but you should make sure the buyer is actually the legitimate cardholder. After all, criminal fraud chargebacks can’t be represented, and you may provoke the ire of genuine cardholders if you aren’t careful enough.

In practice, use tools like an Address Verification Service (AVS), which checks if the billing address entered by the customer matches the address on file with the card issuer, when handling online orders. Also, require that the buyer enter a card verification value (CVV) — the three- or four-digit security code on the card — to help confirm that the customer has the physical card in their possession.

When a customer is due a refund, process it as quickly as possible. Delays in providing refunds or store credit for returned merchandise or canceled services can lead cardholders to file a dispute.

Just as you would for a sale, keep a record of the credit transaction as proof that you issued the refund. This will come in handy if there are any questions that arise later about whether or not you submitted a refund for processing.

Billing errors, like double charges or wrong transaction amounts, can lead to chargebacks you can’t fight. To prevent this from happening, regularly examine your point-of-sale (POS) device’s transaction logs, and make sure every sale was submitted for processing only once.

Next, verify transaction amounts against your sales receipts, and make sure all numbers match. If a dollar amount is off, double-check the transaction for accuracy, and refund the difference if you determine you made an error.

If you sell physical goods, your shipping practices can be a line of defense against disputes.

Whenever possible, ship to the cardholder’s verified billing address. For expensive items, consider requiring a signature upon delivery to ensure the order reaches the right person. If you get a large, expedited order from a new customer, it might be wise to delay shipping for a day to allow extra time to verify the order’s legitimacy.

In any case, ship an order before you submit a payment for capture. Charging them before you dispatch an order can lead to potential resentment — and disputes — from buyers, if any unexpected delays come up.