As of April 2018, Visa changed their rules and processes for payment disputes (also known as chargebacks). Visa refers to this new set of policies and operations as Visa Claims Resolution, or VCR. VCR changes help cardholders better understand the charges on their statements, which reduces the potential for an invalid chargeback to be filed.
So, what does this mean for me?
As a Square seller, your day-to-day business will be largely unaffected. Before the changes made by Visa took effect, we at Square updated our own dispute resolution practices to be compatible with VCR.
One major benefit of the new process is accelerated resolution. As the processes for payment disputes become more efficient, the average time it takes issuing banks to resolve them becomes significantly shorter.
Is there anything I need to do?
VCR has made dipping/inserting EMV (chip) cards rather than swiping them standard practice. If you don't use chip readers and swipe the cards instead, you will be held liable for the funds if a customer disputes the charge. Since about 90% of current cardholders use chip cards, it’s vital that you're able to process them—as non-chip transactions are much harder to defend in a dispute.
Our Contactless and Chip Reader securely processes EMV cards as well as contactless methods like Apple Pay.
We also strongly urge you to keep as much documentation related to your transactions as possible. Examples include itemized receipts, invoices, contracts, signed delivery confirmation and credit card authorization forms.
Should one of your customers dispute a payment with their bank, having thorough documentation allows us to challenge them more effectively on your behalf. We also recommend that you create a Square Secure Profile to allow us quicker access to documents needed to resolve disputes. You can do so by clicking here.
You can learn more about Visa Claims Resolution here.
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