Dispute withdrawals

Learn what to do when a cardholder withdraws their dispute.

The most effective dispute strategy is to reduce the number of disputes you receive in the first place. For the best results, work directly with your customer to resolve the issue if you do receive a dispute.

Every card network has some provision in its dispute system for the cardholder to retract a dispute after filing it. Settling the dispute amicably with your customer and convincing them to withdraw it is the best way to win it.

Withdrawn disputes

A withdrawn dispute is one that your customer has asked their card issuer to cancel. It isn’t necessarily a won dispute, because the dispute might still resolve as a loss if you haven’t submitted evidence.

A withdrawn dispute is otherwise no different from any other dispute:

It doesn’t resolve as a win or loss more quickly than other disputes.
It doesn’t show up differently from any other dispute in the Dashboard or API.
It still counts against your dispute rate with the card network.

Cardholders can only fully withdraw financial disputes – that is, a chargeback, where your account balance has been debited. They can’t withdraw an early fraud warning or an enquiry, which don’t have any financial impact. The cardholder might decline to escalate these, but can’t undo them.

Pursue a dispute withdrawal

Although a dispute withdrawal is a good way to turn a dispute into a win and resolve a negative experience for your customer, it also requires some effort. You need to weigh the amount of effort against how much it helps your dispute win rate.

For disputes with a high likelihood of winning, you can generally submit evidence to fight it, without contacting your customer. For low value disputes, you can go ahead and accept the dispute if you don’t want to invest time and resources to fight it.

Talk to your customer

Contact your customer to try to work through the problem with them. If you can reach a resolution, ask them to contact their card issuer and withdraw the dispute. The process for this varies by issuer.

If your customer agrees to withdraw the dispute, you can ask them to provide confirmation of the withdrawal, such as a confirmation email from their bank or a screenshot of their mobile banking statement that shows they were re-billed for the charge. This evidence isn’t required for your response to the issuer, but provide it if you can.

Warning

If resolving the issue with your customer involves agreeing to issue a refund, be aware that it might take weeks or even months before you can do so. Your customer withdrawing the dispute doesn’t necessarily accelerate their issuer’s dispute timeline. You can’t issue a refund on a disputed charge until your customer’s card issuer decides in your favour.

Submit evidence

Regardless of what happens between you and your customer, you still need to submit evidence if you want to win the dispute.

Always provide evidence for every dispute you hope to have resolved in your favour, even if your customer told you they’re withdrawing the dispute. Many card issuers treat failure to submit evidence as an acceptance of liability on your part. This means you can still lose the dispute if you don’t submit evidence, even if the customer withdrew the dispute with their issuer.

You can submit evidence for a dispute just one time, so you want to wait long enough for your conversation with the customer to play out, but not so long that you miss the deadline. The card network rules don’t allow you to submit evidence after the deadline.

If you can’t convince the customer to withdraw the dispute before the evidence deadline, that’s okay. You still need to file appropriate evidence to challenge the dispute reason.

Note

If you counter a dispute, a dispute countered fee applies, in addition to the dispute received fee. The cardholder’s bank reviews it and decides the dispute outcome. This can take up to 3 months. When Stripe receives the decision, you receive an email from us.

Stripe returns the dispute countered fee if you win the dispute. Unless otherwise stated in your Stripe contract, we never return the dispute received fee.

Regional considerations
Mexico
Japan

The dispute countered fee doesn’t apply to businesses in Mexico and Japan.

Dispute resolution

Generally, a withdrawn dispute doesn’t resolve any faster than other types of disputes. After your customer withdraws it and you submit evidence, expect the dispute to follow the normal dispute timeline.

Late dispute withdrawal

Every card network allows cardholders to withdraw a dispute after the response deadline, even long after a dispute is lost. However, some card issuers within the network might not support late withdrawal in every case. As with any dispute, the cardholder must contact their issuer to request a late withdrawal and determine if it’s allowed.

Late withdrawals often occur outside the networks’ dispute systems. Unlike the regular dispute lifecycle, they aren’t governed by network rules or regulations. As a result, when a customer withdraws an old, lost dispute, it’s difficult to set a realistic expectation for when you’ll see it reflected in your Stripe account. The cardholder’s issuer might take weeks or months to process this type of adjustment.