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Streamline Your Disputes Workflow with the Disputes API

Published Date
Author Frederik von Mohl

 

Disputes are a challenging but inevitable part of e-commerce (especially for card payments) and it’s important to monitor and respond to disputes as quickly as possible. Our Disputes API offers a better way to handle disputes by simplifying the disputes workflow – allowing you to identify and act on disputes, provide evidence with ease, and track the progress of your disputes in real-time.

The mechanism that allows consumers to dispute a charge exists in order to protect them from fraudulent payments or activities – fraud that could take place either on the part of the merchant or an individual. While fraud remains the primary reason for disputes in e-commerce, it is not the only reason. Consumers can also dispute payments, claiming the following reasons:

  • A product was not as described
  • They were billed for an already canceled subscription
  • They were charged twice for the same purchase
  • They were charged an incorrect amount
  • They never received the product or service

If a customer suspects that a charge is illegitimate, they can file a dispute. It is then up to their issuing bank to decide whether to refund that payment – in most cases, the bank will decide to do so. This will result in Checkout.com pulling the funds from the merchant’s account and alerting them about the chargeback.

The good news: This doesn’t necessarily mean that the funds of this transaction are lost.

Checkout.com’s Disputes API gives merchants the tools they need to win back this money in case the claims made by the customer are false. Should you have the evidence to prove that the transaction was legitimate, simply upload the files through the API and Checkout.com will take care of the rest.

Features of the API

  • Notifications. You can get status updates of a dispute through webhook notifications. You’ll also be able to see exactly what stage of the disputes process you’re in.
  • Recommendations. We also make the disputes process easier by providing recommended solutions and advice on how to respond to each dispute. There are several reasons a payment might be disputed, the most common being fraudulent charges. We list all possible dispute reasons, as well as the type of evidence we recommend submitting to make your case.
  • Submitting Evidence. Use the API to send evidence directly to us. You can send evidence as .jpeg, .pdf or .png files up to 4MB file size.
  • Accept the Dispute. If a dispute is legitimate, you can choose to accept it. This will close it for you and remove it from your list of open disputes. There are no further financial implications.

The newer, better way

Checkout.com’s Disputes API is designed to ease the disputes process, giving merchants more confidence in fighting disputes and the opportunity to recover funds that may otherwise have been lost – which could add up to substantial savings. The new API will also ease the strain on your organization’s payments and disputes teams by reducing manual workloads allowing you to focus resources on other parts of the business.

To learn more about our Disputes API or any of our products and tools, contact our team of payments experts today.  

To integrate our new Disputes API and get faster disputes resolution, visit our Disputes API Documentation or contact your Customer Success Manager for more information.