Visa Chargeback Reason Codes: Every Dispute Condition and What Answers It

Every Visa chargeback arrives with a number: 10.4, 13.1, 12.6. That number is the dispute condition, and it decides what the cardholder must be claiming, whether you get a response stage at all, and which evidence Visa will accept. Answer a 13.1 with a fraud rebuttal and you lose a dispute you could have won. This guide covers every current Visa dispute condition in plain English, the two ways Visa processes them, and what actually answers each one. It is based on the Visa Core Rules and Visa Product and Service Rules edition dated 18 April 2026. Visa revises the rulebook regularly, and several of the rules below change for disputes processed from 24 October 2026, so check any code you rely on against the current edition.

How Visa organises dispute conditions

Visa groups every dispute into four categories. The first digits give the category and the digit after the point gives the specific condition:

• 10 — Fraud: the cardholder says they did not authorise or take part in the transaction.
• 11 — Authorization: the transaction was not properly authorised, was completed after a decline, or was cleared too late.
• 12 — Processing errors: the transaction was processed wrongly, in the wrong amount, currency, account or more than once.
• 13 — Consumer disputes: the cardholder took part but has a complaint about what they received, cancelled or were promised.

This structure dates from Visa Claims Resolution, the overhaul Visa described to merchants as consolidating 22 legacy reason codes into four dispute categories. Merchants and processors still call these reason codes, and the rulebook calls them dispute conditions. They mean the same thing.

Check older lists against the current rulebook. Visa's original Claims Resolution material listed 11.3 as No Authorization and a separate 12.1 for Late Presentment. The April 2026 rulebook has no 12.1: late presentment sits inside 11.3, now titled No Authorization/Late Presentment. A list that still shows 12.1 is out of date.

Two workflows: fraud and authorization vs errors and consumer disputes

The category also decides how the case runs. For categories 10 and 11 there is no dispute response stage. If you want to contest a fraud or authorization dispute, your acquirer's first move is a pre-arbitration attempt, which it must make within 30 calendar days of the dispute processing date. For categories 12 and 13 the acquirer can file a dispute response within 30 calendar days, and the issuer can then pursue pre-arbitration if the cardholder still disputes the charge. Either way, arbitration has to be filed within 10 calendar days of the pre-arbitration response. Processors commonly call the first path the allocation workflow and the second the collaboration workflow.

Those 30 days belong to your acquirer, not to you. Processors set their own, shorter deadlines so they have time to assemble and file the case. Qualpay's published merchant guidance, for example, gives merchants 16 days to accept or respond to a Visa dispute. Your processor agreement sets your real deadline, and it is usually much shorter than the network's.

One rule applies to every category. If you refunded the transaction before the dispute, the issuer must apply that credit or explain why it does not resolve the dispute. An unaddressed credit is grounds for a response under every consumer-dispute condition, so link each refund to the original sale in your gateway.

Category 10: Fraud

10.1 to 10.3: card-present fraud

10.1 (EMV Liability Shift Counterfeit Fraud) and 10.2 (EMV Liability Shift Non-Counterfeit Fraud) apply when a counterfeit, lost or stolen chip card is used at a terminal that did not properly support the chip or PIN. 10.3 (Other Fraud – Card-Present Environment) covers a key-entered transaction in a card-present environment that the cardholder denies making. Online merchants will rarely see any of the three.

10.4 Other Fraud – Card-Absent Environment

The condition most online and phone-order merchants see: the cardholder denies taking part in a card-not-present transaction. The issuer must report it to Visa as fraud before filing. A 10.4 dispute is invalid when:

• The transaction was authenticated with Visa Secure using EMV 3-D Secure, sent with ECI 5 and a CAVV in the authorization request.
• It was an attempted authentication: ECI 6 with a CAVV from the issuer's or Visa's attempt response, on a card that is not a non-reloadable prepaid card.
• The issuer has already filed more than 35 disputes on the same account number in the previous 120 days.
• The merchant can meet Visa's Compelling Evidence 3.0 test: the same card used in two earlier undisputed transactions, with matching device and identity data. Our guide to Compelling Evidence 3.0 covers the details, including the version of the rule that takes effect for disputes processed on or after 24 October 2026.

There is an important exception for some high-risk businesses. For US domestic e-commerce transactions, the rulebook says 10.4 applies regardless of the ECI value for merchants assigned MCC 4829 (wire transfers and money orders), 5967 (adult content and services), 6051 (non-financial institutions, including cryptocurrency and debt repayment), 6540 (stored-value card purchase and load), 7801 (government-licensed online casinos), 7802 (government-licensed horse and dog racing) and 7995 (betting). If your business uses one of those codes, 3-D Secure authentication does not by itself protect your US domestic e-commerce sales from a 10.4 dispute.

10.5 Visa Fraud Monitoring Program

The issuer disputes a transaction that Visa flagged through fraud monitoring. The time limit runs 120 days from the monitoring report, not from the sale, and 10.5 is the only condition an issuer may use on a transaction it has already disputed. The acquirer can contest it only on the grounds that the dispute is invalid or a credit was not addressed, so the fix is the fraud problem behind it, not evidence about one order.

Category 11: Authorization

11.1 Card Recovery Bulletin

A below-floor-limit transaction completed without authorization on an account listed in Visa's Card Recovery Bulletin. The April 2026 rulebook marks 11.1 as effective only for disputes processed through 23 October 2026.

11.2 Declined Authorization

The authorization request was declined or received a pick-up response, and the merchant completed the transaction anyway. The dispute is invalid if you later got an approval for the same purchase, but not if the earlier response was a pick-up code: 04, 07, 41 or 43. That makes your retry logic a chargeback question as well as an approval-rate question. Our guide to card retry rules explains which decline codes Visa lets you retry and how often.

11.3 No Authorization/Late Presentment

Either an authorization was required and not obtained, or it was obtained but the transaction was not cleared within Visa's processing timeframes. Merchants who capture long after checkout, such as on backorders, are exposed here.

Category 12: Processing errors

• 12.2 Incorrect Transaction Code: a credit processed as a debit, a debit processed as a credit, or a refund processed where a reversal or adjustment was required.
• 12.3 Incorrect Currency: the transaction currency differs from the one sent through VisaNet, or dynamic currency conversion was applied without the cardholder expressly agreeing to it.
• 12.4 Incorrect Account Number: the transaction was processed to the wrong payment credential.
• 12.5 Incorrect Amount: the amount is wrong, or an addition or transposition error occurred. The dispute is limited to the difference.
• 12.6 Duplicate Processing/Paid by Other Means: the same transaction was processed more than once on the same card, date and amount, or the cardholder paid for the same goods or services another way.
• 12.7 Invalid Data: the authorization used invalid or incorrect data, including an MCC in the authorization request that does not match the MCC in the clearing record.

For 12.6, the rulebook accepts two separate transaction receipts showing the charges were for different goods or services, or evidence that you did not receive another payment for the same order.

12.7 matters to merchants in registered high-risk categories: the MCC sent at authorization has to match the one sent at clearing, so miscoding is a dispute risk as well as a compliance problem.

Category 13: Consumer disputes

13.1 Merchandise/Services Not Received

The cardholder took part in the transaction but did not receive what they paid for because the merchant was unwilling or unable to provide it. The cardholder must first try to resolve the problem with you. A strong response shows the goods or services were received at the agreed place or by the agreed time. Check your proof of delivery carefully: the rulebook requires proof that contains the full delivery address and states that tracking with a partial address is not permitted. A carrier screenshot showing only the city and "delivered" does not meet the rule.

13.2 Cancelled Recurring Transaction

The cardholder withdrew permission to charge the card for a recurring transaction, or you were told the account was closed, and a charge was processed anyway. The condition is limited in several ways. It does not apply to unscheduled credential-on-file transactions, cardholder-initiated transactions, installment transactions outside Europe, or a transaction the cardholder calls fraudulent. For disputes processed on or after 18 April 2026, it is also invalid when the cardholder cancelled after the date of the transaction. A response can show that the cardholder asked to cancel from a later date and was served until then, or that they used the service after withdrawing permission and before the dispute was processed. A timestamped cancellation record is the evidence that decides most 13.2 cases.

13.3 Not as Described or Defective Merchandise/Services

The goods or services did not match the description on the receipt or other records at the time of purchase, arrived damaged or defective, or the cardholder disputes their quality. In the US and Canada, for card-absent sales, the merchant's verbal description or other documentation at the time of purchase also counts. To respond, provide evidence that what you delivered matched the description, together with a rebuttal of the cardholder's specific claims, or evidence that the cardholder did not try to return the goods. Keep the product page and order confirmation as they were at the time of purchase.

13.4 Counterfeit Merchandise

The goods were identified as counterfeit by the intellectual-property owner, a government agency such as customs, or a third-party expert.

13.5 Misrepresentation

The cardholder says the terms of sale were misrepresented. This condition matters most to high-risk merchants, because the rulebook names the situations it covers. They include card-absent purchases made through a trial, promotional period or introductory offer, or as a one-off purchase, where the cardholder was not clearly told about further charges. They also include timeshare resellers, and card-absent merchants offering debt consolidation, credit repair or counseling, mortgage modification, foreclosure relief or card interest-rate reduction. Tech support or software sold through inaccurate online ads, business opportunities that suggest the buyer will earn an income, outbound telemarketing merchants, investment services such as binary options or foreign exchange trading that refuse to let the cardholder withdraw available balances, and merchants who claim they can recover a cardholder's lost funds but fail to provide the service are covered too. If your business model appears on that list, your disclosures and checkout records are your defence.

13.6 Credit Not Processed

The cardholder received a credit or voided receipt that was never processed. Process promised refunds promptly, and show any credit the issuer did not account for.

13.7 Cancelled Merchandise/Services

The cardholder cancelled or returned the order, you did not issue a credit, and you either did not properly disclose a limited return or cancellation policy or disclosed one and did not apply it. Your response is the receipt or other record proving the policy was properly disclosed at the time of the transaction, and that the cardholder received it and did not cancel under its terms. A policy that appears only in a footer link nobody had to open is hard to prove as disclosed.

13.8 Original Credit Transaction Not Accepted and 13.9 Non-Receipt of Cash at an ATM

13.8 covers a push payment the recipient refused or local law prohibits, and 13.9 covers ATM cash that was not dispensed. Most merchants will never see either.

What your dispute mix tells you

One dispute tells you about one order. Your mix of conditions over a quarter tells you what to fix: 10.4 points to fraud screening and authentication, 13.1 to fulfilment and proof of delivery, 13.2 and 13.5 to subscription disclosure and cancellation, and 12.5 or 12.6 to checkout or gateway bugs. Our guide to chargeback time limits covers how long each condition stays open after the sale. PayKings works with merchants in the categories these rules single out. If your dispute mix is putting your account at risk, talk to us about processing built for your business model.