On April 1, 2025, Visa made changes to dispute-related fees in the U.S. and Canada. While the fees are officially levied on acquirers, most acquirers pass on these costs to merchants.
Understanding how these fees work — and how delays in responding to chargebacks can translate directly into increased expense — is critical for businesses trying to protect their margins.
The specific fees being changes are Visa’s dispute acceptance fees and dispute response fees. Visa requires merchants to either accept or respond to each chargeback within 30 days of the dispute date. If they fail to do so, the dispute will expire, and an additional fee will be charged.
Even within the 30-day limit however, acquirers pay an increasing fee depending on how long it takes to accept or respond to a dispute. These fees are often passed on to merchants, since the merchant is typically the one choosing to accept or respond.
Previously, accepting a dispute within 20 days carried no fee for U.S. acquirers. However, the new fee structure reduces that to only 10 days. Most of the fees have also increased in cost.
Visa’s new fee structure applies to acquirers in both the U.S. and Canada. The tables below compare the new fees with those that previously applied in the U.S. All fees are charged in USD.
Visa Dispute Acceptance Fees |
||
| Time since dispute | Previous fee | New fee |
| 10 days or less | None | None |
| 11-15 days | None | $0.50 |
| 16-20 days | None | $1.00 |
| 21-25 days | $0.50 | $2.00 |
| 26-30 days | $0.75 | $3.00 |
| Expired | $1.00 | $7.00 |
| Expired: Pre-arbitration |
$1.00 | $15.00 |
Visa Dispute Response Fees |
||
| Time since dispute | Previous fee | New fee |
| 10 days or less | None | $1.05 |
| 11-15 days | None | $1.50 |
| 16-20 days | None | $2.00 |
| 20-25 days | $1.75 | $3.00 |
| 26-30 days | $2.15 | $4.00 |
Compared to the old model, the new fees increase sharply for slower responses. Merchants who pay these fees will be forced to evaluate whether it’s worth waiting to gather evidence — especially if the chargeback is likely valid or not worth contesting.
In addition, a $15.00 fee is now applied for failing to respond to a dispute in pre-arbitration before time runs out. This fee adds another layer of financial consequence for inaction.
For businesses dealing with hundreds or thousands of disputes each month, these fees can add up quickly. A merchant submitting 500 responses in the 26–30 day window, for example, would pay $2,000 in fees — nearly double what they would have paid for more timely responses.
In addition to these changes, Visa has also increased the fee for arbitration rulings. If a dispute goes to arbitration, the losing party will now pay $600 instead of $500.
The changes put new pressure on merchants to reevaluate how they handle disputes. Merchants must weigh the dispute amount against the cost of representation, the chances of success, and the escalating fees for delay. In many cases, it may be cheaper to accept a valid chargeback quickly than to spend time assembling documentation for a low-value dispute that will likely fail.
It also forces tighter coordination with acquirers. If the acquirer adds processing delays before submitting to Visa’s system, that time eats into the merchant’s fee window. Even submitting a response “on time” internally doesn’t help if the acquirer can’t push it through within the right deadline.
Merchants who partner with third-party vendors for dispute management will need to discuss how these fee changes affect their chargeback management strategy and whether response timelines need to be accelerated.
The first step is to talk to your acquirer or PSP about these changes. One important topic to discuss is how long it takes for your acquirer to submit your dispute response in VROL after they receive it. These details will help determine how quickly you need to accept or respond to disputes.
Next, audit your dispute process. If your team typically takes significant time to gather documentation or prioritizes disputes based on size rather than processing date, that strategy may now be costing you money. Review timestamps and track how long it takes for a dispute to move from notification to resolution.
Many merchants will benefit from automating parts of this process or outsourcing it to providers that specialize in chargeback management. The ability to assess the validity of a dispute and either accept it or respond to it quickly is now significantly more important than it once was.
Chargeback Gurus uses advanced AI and machine learning models built on over 10 years of data from millions of chargeback responses to estimate the probability of reversing a given chargeback through representment. Available evidence, issuer behavior, applicable fees, and more are all taken into account to determine whether a dispute should be accepted or contested.
Disputes with a very high or very low chance of revenue recovery can be accepted or responded to quickly to minimize fees, while high-value disputes that would benefit from additional evidence can be given more time. Data-driven strategies like these are part of what enables Chargeback Gurus to deliver maximum ROI for merchants.
Visa’s new dispute fee model changes how merchants need to approach chargebacks. Delays that were previously annoying are now expensive. Merchants that respond to disputes on a case-by-case basis without tracking timing will likely see increased costs. Those that build disciplined workflows, establish clear triage rules, and leverage technology will put themselves in a better financial position.