As a card issuer, you can dispute a transaction that you do not recognize, suspect to be fraudulent, or have some other issue with. Stripe provides a guided process in the Dashboard for you to open a dispute and submit evidence to support your claim.

Once you have created the dispute, the payment is reversed and the business that charged the card is given a set amount of time to respond with their own evidence that the transaction was valid. If the dispute is upheld in your favor, the disputed amount is returned back and your account balance is credited.

Creating a dispute

You can create a dispute by clicking Dispute transaction when viewing a transaction. This begins the dispute process and gives you the opportunity to provide the necessary information and evidence.

Once you’ve created a dispute, Stripe sends an issuing_dispute.created event. Similarly we send issuing_dispute.updated and issuing_dispute.closed events as the dispute progresses through its lifecycle.

We recommend most users create disputes within the Dashboard, as it guides you through the submission process, step-by-step, and automatically formats the information you provide. You’re asked to provide different pieces of evidence and upload any necessary files, depending on the dispute category. All this works to increase the likelihood of a dispute being found in your favor.

If you have any information you think will help present your case, ensure you have entered the information in the dispute form. After you complete the form, click Submit to formally begin the dispute process with the card network.

If the original payment was converted into your account’s default currency (e.g., a USD transaction paid for on your GBP card), the disputed amount is converted back to the transaction’s original currency (e.g., USD is converted back into GBP and deposited into your account).

You can also create disputes using the API, allowing you to programmatically manage disputes made with issued cards. When creating a dispute, provide the transaction ID, reason, and evidence for why you are disputing the purchase.

Once you’ve created a response, the dispute’s status is set to under_review. You can view the status of disputes at any time in the Dashboard, or retrieve disputes using the API.

If a dispute is found in your favor, this changes to won. If the business wins the dispute, the status changes to lost. Once a dispute is closed, we send you an email with information about the outcome and an issuing_dispute.closed webhook event.

How evidence submission works

There are multiple parties involved in the dispute process. Although Stripe is not involved in deciding the outcome of the dispute, we play a role by conveying your evidence to our financial partners. In turn, our financial partners are obligated to pass your evidence on to the business if they deem it sufficient. These are necessary steps in the evidence submission process.

Depending on the reason for the dispute, liability is either automatically assigned by our financial partners or collaboratively determined between the business acquirer and Stripe. In both scenarios, after the evidence has been reviewed and there is a final outcome, we will communicate it to you through the Dashboard and webhook events.

Use the following information to ensure you’re submitting the best possible evidence. If you’re regularly losing disputes, you can contact us with examples of your disputes so we can help ensure that your evidence is sufficient.

What to submit

The evidence you submit should be appropriate to the category of the dispute. Receipts, shipment tracking numbers, proof of prior communication, etc., can all be helpful. Stripe electronically submits this information to our financial partners and notifies you of any updates to the dispute.

When you create a dispute, Stripe automatically formats the evidence you provide into a format accepted by card issuers. This includes all mandatory payment information (e.g., amount, date of payment), CVC or postal code verification results (if available), and any additional information that you provide.

Formatting documents and images to upload

Dispute evidence is often transmitted through several legacy systems and some parties still utilize paper faxing. Before sending your response, ensure that any text or images are clear and large enough to show up clearly in a black and white fax transmission.

While you can zoom in on your electronic documents, the business acquirer will not be able to do so. Any evidence that is too small to transmit clearly won’t be considered, so it’s better to have large, full-page images than try to fit too many on one page.

When submitting documents or images as evidence, use the following recommendations to make sure they can remain legible:

• Use a 12 point font or larger
• Ensure that documents are U.S. Letter or A4 size, in portrait orientation (screenshots can still be added to your documents in landscape orientation)
• Use bold text, callouts, or arrows to draw attention to pertinent information
• Avoid using color highlighting

When uploading screenshots:

• Crop the screenshot to the area of interest and circle any key components (e.g., delivery confirmation or signature)
• Use the text fields in the dispute evidence form to describe what the image contains and how it supports your response

Next steps

Congrats! You can now create disputes. You may want to learn more about the different dispute categories:

• Dispute categories