The Dispute Defense Hub

What Is a Return Item Chargeback and How Does It Work?

October 24, 2025 By James Parsons

Chargebacks are bad for business, but some can be worse than others. So, any time you head about a kind of chargeback you haven’t encountered before, you might start to worry. What is this kind of chargeback, and what do you need to do to keep it from putting your merchant account at risk? Of […]

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Why Are All Digital Goods Businesses “High Risk”?

October 12, 2025 By James Parsons

I’ve talked before about the perils of being considered a high-risk merchant, including the steep fees, risk of cancellation, and restrictions on business opportunities that can affect you.  For many businesses, though, there’s nothing you can do about it.  In fact, certain classes of business are labeled high risk, no matter what. One of those […]

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What Are the Benefits of Integrating 3D Secure (3DS)?

October 7, 2025 By James Parsons

When the internet was first starting to become a vector for commerce rather than just information, people quickly recognized the need to be able to handle payments remotely and digitally.  It also very quickly became obvious that there would be a need for an authentication protocol to validate transactions using credit cards, to prevent fraud […]

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What is a Good Rate Percentage for a High Risk MID?

October 2, 2025 By James Parsons

One of the most important considerations for a business is how resilient you are to fraud and abuse. Good businesses fold because they’re abused due to lax security all the time. While you have many tools available to you to fight fraud and abuse, you still need to use them properly. If you don’t, you’ll […]

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What Happens When Your Chargeback Ratio Hits 1%?

September 25, 2025 By James Parsons

It’s no secret that chargebacks are bad for a merchant. They’re an indication that something has gone wrong, and there has been a failure at some point along the way. Whether that means your system let a fraudulent transaction through, your customer service dropped the ball, or another issue, past a certain point it doesn’t […]

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How to Use Commerce Control Center (Business Track)

September 9, 2025 By James Parsons

There are a lot of merchants out there, including myself, who have run into the Commerce Control Center and wondered what it is and what it does. In fact, there’s a decent chance you were using it already, under a different name: Business Track. What is this platform, what does it do, and how do […]

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How to Avoid False Positives in Authorize.net AFDS

September 4, 2025 By James Parsons

Authorize.net is one of the largest payment gateways in the world, owned and operated by Visa. Most merchants across the country and many around the world are using it to process ACH and credit card purchases, and take advantage of a variety of other services. One of those key services is AFDS, or the Advanced […]

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The Difference Between a Pre-Authorization Hold vs Capture

August 23, 2025 By James Parsons

Payment processing is, ideally, invisible. The companies authorizing, processing, and managing payments should be settled in the background, functioning to keep the monetary world running smoothly. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work out that way. That means, as a merchant, you should have some understanding of how the payment processing works. That way, you can know […]

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Can a Pre-Authorization Hold Become a Chargeback?

August 13, 2025 By James Parsons

Dealing with chargebacks can be an anxiety-inducing part of running a business, especially if your business operates on thin margins. When a few chargebacks can make or break profits for the month, it’s important to know how they work and how to minimize them. Unfortunately, it can be difficult knowing all of the different ways […]

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Will My Processor Refund My Chargeback Fees if I Win?

August 6, 2025 By James Parsons

The chargeback process is something that virtually every business will need to deal with at some point. It’s simply an unfortunate fact of commerce; sometimes, people aren’t going to be satisfied with a product but will be outside of a refund window, and they’ll file a dispute. Sometimes, credit card information is stolen and the […]

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What is “Friendly Fraud” or First-Party Fraud?

July 28, 2025 By James Parsons

There are a million different challenges to tackle in business, all to get people to trust you enough, to like your product enough, to give you money. Surely that’s the end of it, right? Unfortunately, not quite. As anyone who has sold anything for long enough can attest, there will always be some attrition. Sometimes […]

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