Follow these links to get to Visa’s, Mastercard’s, American Express’, and Discover’s chargeback rules.

The fact is that any business that accepts credit card payments will have to deal with chargebacks from time to time. One way to avoid chargebacks is to understand why they occur in the first place, and then setting up policies that prevent these situations from arising at your business.. According to Visa, the most common chargeback reasons include:

Unfortunately, as a merchant, you don’t have many protections when it comes to fighting against chargebacks. Even if your store has a ‘no refund’ policy, the Fair Credit Billing Act allows consumers to file chargebacks. Despite that, it is advised that business owners clearly display their return policies and make consumers aware of their sales rules. This may become particularly relevant if a chargeback goes through an arbitration process.

By most accounts, banks tend to favor the cardholder over the merchant in most chargeback disputes. This is why it’s important for merchants to do everything in their power to have purchases and transactions well documented, and in strict accordance with the rules set forth by the card networks.