Accepting payments may be accompanied by customer disputes. When a customer questions or disputes a transaction with his/her issuing bank, you deal with chargebacks. The issuing bank gathers evidence from the customer and categorizes the chargeback based on the given reason code. There exist 151 chargeback reason codes across 4 major card networks.
You should understand the reason code related to the chargeback and submit a response that includes the appropriate compelling evidence. Fortunately, there are reputable payment processors like emerchantbroker.com that provide top chargeback protection for merchants of any type and size.
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Categories of Reason Codes and the Specific Reason Codes
Below you can find the categories of reason codes that merchants come across most often and the specific reason codes concerning the categories.
Fraudulent Chargebacks
Fraudulent chargebacks mostly represent the bulk of customer disputes they see. Chargeback reason codes used to categorize fraudulent chargebacks are as follows: American Express reason code 193, Visa reason code 83, MasterCard reason code 4863, and Discover reason code 6040.
Unrecognized Chargebacks
Unrecognized chargebacks are like fraudulent chargebacks: the cardholder doesn’t recognize a transaction on his/her statement. In this case, the cardholder doesn’t initially believe that his/her account information has been compromised. The reason codes include but aren’t limited to MasterCard reason code 4837, Discover reason code UA38, and Visa reason code 72.
Subscription Billing Chargebacks
Subscription billing can be quite successful for merchants who execute recurring payments well. However, even these merchants will deal with chargebacks associated with subscription billing disputes. In this case, the customer notified you of recurring payment cancellation, yet they continued to be charged in the following billing cycle.
Product Not Received Chargebacks
In the case of “product not received chargebacks,” the customer didn’t receive the merchandise he/she purchased. Merchants that don’t have a solid shipping and fulfillment policy are likely to deal with this chargeback category very often.
Different networks have different reason codes to represent customer disputes where the cardholder claims they never received the products/services. So American Express reason code is 155, Visa reason code is 30, MasterCard reason code is 4855, and Discover reason code is 4755.
Product Unacceptable Chargebacks
This type of chargebacks implies that the customer feels the merchandise they received either arrived damaged, was defective or wasn’t as described by the merchant at the time of the transaction. A customer can also deem merchandise unacceptable if they think it has low quality, is counterfeit, or if the terms of sale were misrepresented. The reason codes are as follows: American Express reason code C31, Visa reason code 53, MasterCard reason code 4853, or Discover reason code 4553.
If you’re dealing with chargebacks, take into account the above mentioned information to tackle your problems with ease.