When you run an online business and process card-not-present transactions, it’s all too simple to build up a high chargeback ratio–if you are not cautious, that is. A high chargeback ratio can result in a significant revenue loss (chargeback fees as well as losing the approved funds from the original purchase) and may even result in your acquiring bank terminating your merchant account. Read more about Visa and MasterCard’s chargeback rules.
Here at Instabill, we love helping merchants prevent chargebacks and showing them how to practice safe processing techniques. One way to help prevent chargebacks is to provide a detailed transaction receipt. When your customer receives their credit card statement, they can reference their transaction receipt to clarify any questions they may have regarding the charge on their statement. Online transaction receipts should include:
- Merchant name and location
- Merchant Web address
- Transaction date
- Description of goods or services
- Payment method used
- Authorization code
- Transaction type (i.e. purchase or credit)
- Refund and shipping policy
- Estimated arrival date of goods
- Transaction amount (e.g. subtotal, shipping and handling, taxes, and grand total)
You may even go so far as to email transaction receipts to your customers and request they return a signed copy before you complete the transaction. We encourage merchants to require a signature and copy of a photo ID from the cardholder on all purchases more than $1,000.
Customers can return a signed copy of the receipt by either photocopying and emailing or faxing it back to you. This will give you and your customer an exact record of the purchase details and authorization, and will come in very handy if you need to dispute a chargeback.
For more information about chargeback prevention or disputing a chargeback, contact us online today or call us toll-free at 1-800-318-2713.
