Costs

Chargeback

A payment reversed by the customer's bank, plus a fee.

Updated

The short answer

A chargeback is a payment pulled back by the customer's bank after a dispute. The merchant loses the disputed amount and is usually charged a fee on top. It is not a return: no parcel comes back, so on a P&L the amount belongs with returns and the fee with transaction costs.

It is not a return: there is no parcel coming back, so there is no return processing cost and no restocking. Treating the two the same overstates your logistics costs and understates your fees, which is why a chargeback and a return are not the same cost.

In a P&L the disputed amount belongs with returns and the fee belongs with transaction costs, attributed to the gateway that charged it, and that is how the nouz statement is built to book the two halves. It does not read Shopify's disputes, though, so today a lost chargeback and its fee are missing from the statement. Shopify lists them on its Orders page under the chargeback status filter, and they belong on the month-end checklist.

A handful of chargebacks is a cost of taking cards; a rising rate is a signal about fraud, product claims or delivery times, and it deserves attention long before the fees hurt, because providers price and even terminate accounts on it. The payment fee calculator carries a chargeback line for exactly this reason.

Where it lives in nouz. Not on the statement today: nouz does not read Shopify's disputes. Its rules put the amount with returns and the fee with transaction costs.

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