Top 9 Chargeback Management Software Solutions in 2023

Today, accepting payments online is easier than ever.

Unfortunately, getting hit with chargeback requests is also a fact of life for any company that accepts payments in a CNP (card not present) scenario.

It doesn’t have to be, though – not if you deploy the right chargeback management software.

List of the Best Chargeback Management Software

• SEON: Best for Transaction Fraud Prevention
• Chargeflow: Automates Chargeback Dispute Responses
• Sift: Controlling Payment Fraud at Every Level
• Chargebacks911: Resolution Templates and Solutions
• Verifi: A Visa Solution for Merchants and Issuers
• ChargebackGurus: Managed Chargeback Prevention and Resolution
• MiDiGATOR: Single Integration for All Chargeback Concerns
• ChargebackOps: Human Chargeback Experts at Your Disposal
• Quavo: Cloud-Based Automation for Disputes
  

What Is Chargeback Management Software?

Chargeback management software helps companies that accept credit and debit card payments reduce the risk of transaction fraud which can lead to chargebacks, be these chargebacks fraudulent or not. This is done by monitoring, logging, and flagging transaction data. Certain software may also offer chargeback dispute resolution tools.

In other words, chargeback management software helps you manage chargeback risk by either reducing it proactively via defenses such as ensuring only legitimate payments go through, or by efficiently challenging chargeback requests.

It does not matter whether the chargeback in question is a result of fraud or not. Merchants always bear the brunt of chargebacks, and are looking to avoid the additional charges associated with them, even when compared to a simpler refund.

Key Features of Chargeback Management Tools and Solutions

Chargeback management software works by letting your company do some or all of the following:

• Monitor chargeback rates: Your chargeback rate should ideally never go above 1% of all processed transactions. If it does, you may be classified as high risk, charged a higher card transaction fee, or even get blacklisted by card networks.

• Prevent chargebacks: By monitoring payment and user data, you should be able to flag and stop suspicious transactions. This is usually done by feeding the data through risk rules, which output a risk score. You can then accept, refuse, or review the payment.

• Investigate payments: All the payment and user data should be kept in detailed logs, which you can investigate to understand how chargebacks happen at your company.

• Resolve chargeback disputes: If you enter the chargeback dispute process, your chargeback management software should provide you with all the evidence you need in the form of spreadsheets, dispute templates, dispute codes, etc.

• Review chargeback rules: Finally, a key part of managing chargebacks is the ability to label information from past chargeback cases. This can help train your system to avoid false positives and false negatives, thus improving results. When machine learning is available, as is with SEON, you will also get new rule suggestions specific to your needs.

The 9 Best Chargeback Management Solutions

The nine vendors we have selected and are presenting below implement different approaches to chargeback management.

Remember that there is no one-size-fits-all. Make sure you keep your specific needs in mind when choosing the tool for your company.

Disclaimer: Everything in this article was gleaned from online research, including user reviews. We did not have time to manually test all the tools. However, we ensured the information was correct as of Q3 2022. Feel free to contact us to request an update/correction.

SEON – Best for Transaction Fraud Prevention

A key point to understand with chargebacks is that you usually have different tools for prevention and resolution. SEON is one of the best solutions for preventing chargebacks before they happen.

This is all done by giving you the most complete transaction and user behavior monitoring options available, including:

• Data enrichment modules: You can learn a lot about whether your users are legitimate buyers or not by looking at red flags raised by a fake email address, phone number, or a lack of social media presence, for instance.
  
• Flag suspicious payments: Gain all the data intelligence you need without asking for extra verification. You can request 3DS PSD2 exemption, and process more payments without adding friction to the buyer’s journey.
  
• Better control over transactions: SEON’s powerful risk scoring lets you set thresholds manually and use custom rules to instantly approve, deny, or manually review transactions.
  
• BIN check: Learn when you’re dealing with valid cards, prepaid cards or gift cards thanks to our BIN checks. Only accept the cards you deem safe enough, to avoid processing fraudulent purchases. 

“We now have a constant source of truth for card BINs. If you go and type a card BIN on the internet, you’ll get 50 different results because the lists are all over the place. But now, with SEON, we can be consistent when linking cards across the team.”

Rick Hiltbrunner, Senior Manager of Fraud Operations at Patreon

SEON Pros

• Check social signals: SEON aggregates user information from 50+ online platforms and social networks, letting you spot when you’re dealing with suspicious customers.
  
• Custom rules: Give your payment team complete control over approved and rejected rules to match your risk appetite.
  
• Fast and frictionless: Integrate via APIs for split-second decisions.
  
• Transparent pricing: Few chargeback management tools give you a free 30-day trial and a true cancel-anytime SaaS model.

SEON Cons

• No chargeback resolution: While you can export all the transaction and customer info to resolve chargebacks and to prove friendly fraud, you don’t get specific tools for resolution.

SEON Pricing

• Pay-per-API with free trial and free support.

Choose SEON If:

• You want to prevent rather than resolve chargebacks and stop other types of fraud.

Chargeflow – Automates Chargeback Dispute Responses

Chargeflow is a chargeback automation platform that takes a modern and scalable approach to chargeback recovery.

After analyzing millions of chargebacks and feeding them into its AI-based system, Chargeflow created ChargeResponse®, the world’s first science-based chargeback response system.

ChargeResponse analyzes a business to generate tailor-made chargeback responses to be submitted on the merchant’s behalf. A team of dispute experts with years of experience human-proofs every such chargeback response before sending it to the bank, aiming to maximize merchants’ chances of a positive outcome.

Founded in 2021 by two ecommerce entrepreneurs, Chargeflow maintains one of the highest win rates in the chargeback dispute industry, averaging at around 80%.

Chargeflow Pros

• Fully automated chargeback solution: Chargeflow features end-to-end management for all of your chargebacks, so merchants can win them without lifting a finger.
• Success-based pricing: No monthly fees, contracts, or anything similar. The transparent pricing option is highly scalable and ensures you pay only a percentage of the recovered chargebacks.
• Industry-leading recovery rates: Chargeflow maintains one of the highest recovery rates in the industry.
• Integrate in 60 seconds: You can fully set up Chargeflow in less than a minute, and Chargeflow integrates seamlessly with leading platforms such as Shopify, Stripe, and PayPal.

Chargeflow Cons

• Limited prevention abilities: Chargeflow does not prevent chargebacks from happening in the first place.

Chargeflow Pricing

• Merchants pay 25% of recovered revenue. However, it doesn’t carry any monthly fees, integration costs, or contracts.

Choose Chargeflow If:

• Chargebacks are a fact of life for your company and you want to handle them as efficiently as possible.

Sift – Controlling Payment Fraud at Every Level

Sift is another complete fraud prevention solution that happens to offer a chargeback module. The good news is that the module comes from the acquisition of Chargeback.com, the pioneer in real-time dispute resolution for merchants, so you get both prevention and resolution in one neat package. 

While Sift offers custom rules, some customers report that the blackbox AI (which takes over the fine-tuning when accepting or declining transactions) can be perhaps too opaque. For small businesses, this can be an advantage: You won’t have to think too hard about how to tailor Sift to your preference. Other companies, however, might enjoy having a bit more control.

Sift Pros

• Chargeback-specific module: Sift’s acquisition of the company Chargeback.com means the platform has a pre-built connector to reduce chargebacks.
  
• Works for other fraud attacks: Sift offers general fraud protection tools that go beyond chargeback management, such as KYC and trust and safety.

Sift Cons

• Blackbox AI: When it comes to AI suggestions and recommended rules, it’s not always easy to know why the transactions are blocked, due to the opaque nature of the blackbox system.

Sift Pricing

• Available upon request. 

Choose Sift If:

• You’re a small online shop looking to set and forget your chargeback defenses.

Chargebacks911 – Resolution Templates and Solutions

When it comes to being prepared for a post-chargeback dispute, Chargebacks911 is not only one of your best online resources, but also a solid software solution. The company offers all the tools you need to collect evidence, submit it in the context of a dispute, and sift through the data for your own reporting. 

You’ll also get a single source for all your resolution templates, chargeback codes, and the kind of evidence you need to submit.

Chargebacks911 Pros

• Chargeback-specific resources: Chargebacks911 offers dispute resolution letter templates, chargeback reason codes, and much more.
  
• Precise reporting: You get granular information including recon reports, win-loss verdict reports, and more.

Chargebacks911 Cons

• Not suitable for prevention: A great tool to fight a chargeback. Not so great to prevent it from happening in the first place. 

Chargebacks911 Pricing

• Available upon request. 

Choose Chargebacks911 If:

• You want to be able to challenge chargeback requests efficiently.

Verifi – A Visa Solution for Merchants and Issuers

One of the key offerings of Verifi is its trademarked Cardholder Dispute Resolution Network. The idea is to act as an intermediary between merchants and issuers, allowing you to close the loop during the chargeback process, resolving the issue directly with the consumer. 

According to the company, it accelerates the average resolution time to an average of 24 hours. The most interesting part, in fact, is that it is suitable both for merchants and issuers. So yes, it’s mainly for resolution rather than prevention, but this innovative approach can bring peace of mind to retailers who face a bottleneck in that department – especially when you know that Visa is involved. 

Verifi Pros

• Specific chargeback tools for issuers: Verifi offers access to their Cardholder Dispute Resolution Network, designed to connect issuers directly with 15,000 merchants to resolve disputes.
  
• Visa-powered solution: You can trust that the card network has every incentive to help you reduce chargebacks. 

Verifi Cons

• Limited prevention features: Verifi relies on shared blacklists from Visa’s network to block suspicious transactions. The data may quickly become stale and result in false positives. 

Verifi Pricing

• Available upon request.

Choose Verifi If:

• The idea of working alongside, rather than against, the card issuer is appealing to you.

ChargebackGurus – Managed Chargeback Prevention and Resolution

With more than 15 years of experience in the online payment industry, ChargebackGurus understand how chargebacks happen, how to prevent them and, interestingly, how to recover lost revenue from past cases. 

ChargebackGurus makes bold claims – namely that you could win around 70% of your chargeback disputes and thwart 50% of friendly fraud chargeback attempts. How? Well, the prevention side is mostly covered by chargeback alerts based on your own risk rules. 

The recovery stage is perhaps more unique, as it is managed by experts who monitor and review orders in real-time. You will need to give the company access to your settlements, fees, and reserves, but it may be more than worth it for high-risk companies that have to reduce chargeback rates at any cost. 

ChargebackGurus Pros

• Managed chargeback solution: You’ll pay for the tools but also for the team’s expertise in monitoring and fighting chargebacks on your behalf.
• Root-cause analyzer: ChargebackGurus’ data analysis tool gathers 40+ data points to understand why chargebacks happen.
• Win-loss analysis: See real-time calculations of your ROI based on won or lost chargeback cases.

ChargebackGurus Cons

• Limited prevention tools: You get transaction alerts, but not much else. It may work to flag obviously fraudulent chargeback attempts, but you might miss out by not looking at alternative user and behavior data.

ChargebackGurus Pricing

• Not available online.

Choose ChargebackGurus If:

• You want a chance to recover lost revenue from previous cases of chargebacks.

MiDiGATOR – Single Integration for All Chargeback Concerns

MiDiGATOR was founded in 2013 by a collective of ecommerce merchants who were having difficulty navigating chargebacks in their own companies. They decided to collaborate to fill the gap in the market for a real-time solution. In Q2 2022, Equifax announced its acquisition of MiDiGATOR to fill out its own fraud prevention platforms.

MiDiGATOR is a tool designed to fully cover the process of the inevitable chargebacks that every ecommerce company faces. The software suite emphasizes ease of use in what can be a frustrating process for all parties involved, with a single portal to monitor and handle all disputes in real time, from the moment the dispute begins. 

This tool can help to avoid the chargeback altogether by automatically triggering a refund ahead of that costly process. This way, the customer gets their money back (or their order canceled) but the eshop doesn’t have to pay the extra fees associated with chargebacks. Also inside the interface are tools to view analytics as well a content editor to streamline the customer communication process.

MiDiGATOR Pros

• Complete chargeback management: MiDiGATOR offers fully customizable control over the chargeback process, from before the transaction takes place to when it becomes a dispute. Their software can be set to automate as much of that process as a company’s appetite allows, and can even prevent chargebacks by immediately triggering a refund instead.
• Single portal for all functions: One of the primary features of MiDiGATOR is its ability to consolidate all the data from the chargeback and bring it into a single integration, making it easy for customer service teams to learn and execute.
• Data analysis: The software develops insights from data points within the chargeback process to help with identifying strategies that are volatile for chargebacks, which can then be used to finetune the process to improve lifetime customer value.
• Dispute resolution tools: The platform keeps a dossier of data associated with a given dispute in case that evidence needs to be submitted to an appeals process, helping to mitigate losses to fraudulent claims.

MiDiGATOR Cons

• Doesn’t offer chargeback guarantee: As MiDiGATOR is a tool to help companies help themselves, as opposed to a guarantor, the contract does not offer money back on chargebacks that go all the way to the compensation stage, like some other vendors do.

MiDiGATOR Pricing

• Currently, MiDiGATOR does not publish its pricing online, and the model may change in lieu of the Equifax acquisition. Contact their sales team for a quote.

Choose MiDiGATOR If:

• You want a system that will attempt to prevent chargebacks by issuing refunds as soon as they are requested.

ChargebackOps – Human Chargebacks Experts at Your Disposal

ChargebackOps was founded in 2015 after CyberSource decided to discontinue its investment into chargeback management for its own product. Since then, it has focused on servicing Fortune 500 companies exclusively and boasts major partners in the sector like Ekata, Verifi, and CyberSource.

Rather than a dedicated software suite, ChargebackOps is more akin to a consultancy, offering on-site chargeback solutions to major ecommerce entities. Customers are assigned dedicated specialists who handle the company’s disputes with a proprietary application, functioning as an extension of an existing fraud team.

The on-site personnel also provide services like order screening, and provide analytics “by hand” to the company while handling 100% of the chargeback process.

This hands-on approach to chargeback management offers guaranteed attention to detail, as well as accountability for the service.

ChargebackOps Pros

• Dedicated staff: Instead of a software package, it provides a dedicated professional to the company to help mitigate their dispute losses.
• No integration needed: As the vendor provides a staff member who will use ChargebackOps’ software themselves and then report to the company as a member of its risk team, there is never any integration to do into an existing security stack.
• Human-level customization: The level of customization is only limited to how well the company can communicate its needs to ChargebackOps’ dedicated analyst. The analyst will be available to provide what is needed.

ChargebackOps Cons

• Enterprise businesses only: ChargebackOps is designed to be integrated into an existing risk team that is large enough to cover all the other bases. Small businesses would struggle to balance the cost of the service against its value in chargeback mitigation, and ChargebackOps wants to focus on Fortune 500.

ChargebackOps Pricing

• As the vendor offers a contract-based service, the price will be bespoke to each enterprise.

Choose ChargebackOps If:

• You want to enlist the help and insight of human chargeback experts.

Quavo – Cloud-Based Automation for Disputes

Quavo’s chargeback management product, QFD Automated Dispute Management Software is a cloud-based solution focusing on automation and compliance during the dispute process. With compliance being a large part of what QFD offers, the product is aimed primarily at online banks and other financial products.

QFD’s aim is to keep ROI high by lowering operational expenses through efficiency, while also mitigating fraud losses. The SaaS performs functions like filing claims, monitoring their progress through the dispute journey, and gathering transaction data to inform automated decisions.

For companies who further wish to outsource their chargeback investigation and appeal process, QFD also offers a team of Digital Resolution Experts to deliberate those tasks to, as an additional service.

Quavo Pros

• Guaranteed compliance: Quavo’s chargeback product prioritizes regulator requirements and, because of its SaaS cloud-based nature, is updated constantly and instantly.
• Automated resolution: The software comes with workflows out-of-the-box, so results can be seen as soon as it is deployed, reducing handle time and callbacks by up to 40%.
• Informed dispute management tools: When communicating with an aggrieved customer, QFD offers an easy framework for both customer and service team. The suite offers pre-built response templates, and the intake process adheres to regulations.

Quavo Cons

• Potentially long onboarding: According to the website, QFD’s SaaS integration can take from 12 weeks to months, depending on the scope of the integration.
• Automation tied to integration: In the FAQ, QFD’s level of automation depends on integration across many data points in an existing infrastructure, rather than out-of-box.

Quavo Pricing

• Quavo’s chargeback management tool is separate from ARIA, their fraud prevention suite. The pricing is currently not listed on the official website so, for a quote, potential customers should contact their sales team. 

Choose Quavo If:

• You are in fintech or other finance and looking to minimize loss from chargebacks.

Different Types of Chargeback Management Solutions

A key point to consider before diving into the right features is how exactly to manage your chargeback management solution. Here are a few options.

Software (On-Site or SaaS)

A growing number of companies choose to outsource their chargeback management platform to a third-party software company and then manage it themselves. The tool may be cloud-based or installed on-premise, but the idea is that the development and features of the software are outsourced, and you provide the manpower to run it. 

Fully Managed

Some chargeback management companies go the extra mile by selling you both the tools and the expertise. With this option, you are essentially outsourcing an entire chargeback management team.

Hybrid Solutions

Finally, some companies decide that neither SaaS nor fully-managed fits their business model, so they opt for a combination of the two. There is always the option to purchase the chargeback management tools you can understand and outsource specific tasks, such as dispute resolution, to another service. 

How to Choose Chargeback Management Software

As with any other kind of third-party software, there are key points to consider when it comes to chargeback management and related solutions to stop chargeback fraud:

• Features: Double-check that the software can do everything you need it to. Some solutions are better suited to fraud management, while others are better for managing disputes, for instance.
  
• Integration: How you deploy the software could play a huge role in your decision. See more about the different types of integrations available below.
  
• Support: Does the vendor offer extra help to get started? Is this support free or paid?
  
• Pricing: There tend to be two schools of thought here. Some vendors offer a flat monthly fee with a chargeback guarantee. Others charge a small percentage of every checked transaction. There are benefits to each model, but there is also a potential conflict of interest in chargeback guarantees.

Chargeback management software is designed to protect your business from fraud, process more payments with peace of mind, and ensure you are protected in case of a dispute. 

However, no two companies offer exactly the same features. We hope this post clears things up when you’re looking for a way to reduce chargeback rates, but also to understand what causes them and how to stop them from happening in the first place. 

FAQ