How many chargebacks are you allowed on Shopify?

Nobody tells you the number until you’re near it, which is a strange way to run a limit. Here’s where the lines actually sit.

The one that reaches you first is Shopify’s

Before Visa or Mastercard get involved, Shopify has its own program. It starts at 1.5 percent or higher over the last 90 days. A store that hits it can be enrolled automatically in a network dispute resolution program.

What that costs you isn’t a fine. It’s a 10 percent reserve held back from your Shopify Payments payouts, plus a fee on each dispute resolved through the program. For a store running on thin margins, money held back hurts more than money charged.

Getting out has its own number, and it’s lower than the one that got you in. Your rate has to drop below 1.00 percent and stay there for 30 straight days while you keep processing on Shopify Payments.

The counting is stricter than most people assume

This is the part that catches stores out, and it’s worth knowing before you’re anywhere near the line.

The rate Shopify watches includes disputes you win. Fighting a chargeback and winning gets your money back. It doesn’t take the dispute out of the count.

It’s also a rolling 90 day figure rather than a monthly one, so two bad weeks stay with you for three months. Shopify reports it in your admin as a rolling 90 day chargeback rate. That’s the number to watch, rather than any figure you work out yourself.

Above that, the card networks have their own lines

These are higher, and they’re fines rather than reserves. Shopify lists them on its monitoring programs page.

Mastercard runs the one most stores would meet first. Its standard program starts when you have both 100 to 299 disputes and a rate between 1.5 and 2.99 percent. Fines begin at 1,000 dollars in the second month and climb from there. A higher tier starts at 300 disputes and 3 percent.

Visa counts differently. Its program flags a store at 0.5 percent, and calls the rate excessive at 1.5 percent or 1,500 disputes.

Two things to take from that. Both networks need a count and a rate, so a small store with a terrible month is usually below the dispute count. And Shopify’s own threshold sits at or below both of them, which is why Shopify is the one you hear from.

Why one bad week moves the number so fast

A rate is a fraction, and the top of it moves far faster than the bottom.

Card testing is what puts a month’s worth of disputes into an afternoon. A bot runs stolen numbers through your checkout in small amounts. The ones that go through become real orders on real stolen cards. The cardholder disputes them when the statement arrives. Forty of those land in your 90 day window at once.

The signs of an attack are worth knowing for this reason alone. By the time the disputes arrive, the attack is six weeks behind you and the rate is already carrying them.

Worth separating from the money question, because they are different: what each chargeback costs you is a fee per dispute. What the rate costs you is a reserve on everything.

Where ours fits

Every threshold on this page is a ratio of disputes to orders. The honest way to improve a ratio is to stop feeding the top of it.

Halt sits one step before any of this. It refuses a repeat checkout at the payment step. A card testing attempt never becomes a charge, never becomes an order, and has nothing to dispute later. A chargeback it prevented isn’t a chargeback it won.

It isn’t a general fraud tool, and it doesn’t touch most of what fills a chargeback rate. A customer who forgot they bought something. A parcel that never arrived. A card used by somebody in the same house. None of that is Halt’s to stop. What it covers is the one source that arrives in bursts and moves a 90 day rate faster than anything else on the list.