Elavon • Article • U.S. Payment Smart (January 2026)
2 min. Read

North America saw 114.4* million chargebacks last year. Many are preventable, and each one can cost 2 – 4x the original sale once labor, processor fees, inventory loss, fraud exposure, penalties and higher authorization rates are included.

Following card network and Payment Card Industry (PCI) rules is essential to reducing chargebacks and improving yourchances of winning disputes.

When disputes become more likely

Customer-initiated chargebacks increase – and become harder to fight – when you have:

• Confusing billing descriptors
• Weak process controls
• Missing or incorrect authorization data (EMV, AVS, CVV, required fields)
• Gaps in fraud-prevention or security requirements (PCI, EMV, card not present rules)
• Insufficient or incorrect dispute evidence

Two ways to reduce the prevalence of chargeback disputes:

1. Prioritize annual Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) validation.
   PCI DSS won’t eliminate chargebacks, but it significantly reduces their financial impact by strengthening payment security, fraud prevention and evidence quality.
   
   Regular reviews and timely revalidation are essential. If your validation has lapsed, your account manager can assist and share tools such as PCI Compliance Manager or fraud‑reduction programs.
    
2. Analyze chargeback reason codes.
   Reason codes categorize why a dispute occurred. Reviewing them can reveal recurring issues in compliance, product quality, service delivery, billing descriptors or fraud controls.

Payments Insider can help

Your Elavon Payments Insider portal lets you view, manage and respond to chargebacks. Your response supports the representment process when submitting evidence to show your compliance with card network rules.The portal displays all active disputes and provides tools to respond and upload required documentation. See our knowledge article for details.

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