The following is from a post Visa published to its corporate blog on June 16th, 2022, outlining the motivation behind changes to its Dispute Management Guidelines for Merchants. To read the full post, click here.
At Visa, our goal is to reduce all types of fraud in the ecosystem and we’re taking action to do so. To relieve the burden of these losses, starting on April 15, 2023, merchants will be able to better fight back against first party misuse with a change to our dispute program developed in partnership with clients, the Merchant Risk Council (MRC) and Merchant Advisory Group (MAG). With this change, if merchants can provide additional data or evidence to show that the disputed charge is valid, then the dispute will be invalid.
“Reducing the impacts of first party misuse on small businesses requires industry-wide support,” says Julie Fergerson, CEO at MRC. “We stand with Visa in their commitment to ensuring the entire ecosystem is taking the right steps against inaccurate chargeback disputes and protecting merchants from bearing the weight of these costs.”
This change will empower merchants to protect themselves against first party misuse by enabling them to submit additional evidence that a purchase was indeed legitimate and authorized by the cardholder in order to stop the dispute claim. Additional examples that can help identify that a purchase is legitimate include a customer using the same payment credential previously at the merchant, login credentials, proof of use of a product and more.
“Friendly fraud is not always friendly, especially from a merchant’s perspective,” said Mike Lemberger, Senior Vice President of North America Risk at Visa. “At Visa, we’re evolving our disputes program using technology and insights that help level the playing field for the entire ecosystem. When we give merchants and issuers the tools to take more fraud out of the equation — everyone wins.”