The true cost of chargebacks: fees plus lost goods and revenue.
Each dispute is lost goods plus a fee, and a high rate raises fees on every future sale. Fraud screening pays for itself fast. Compare processor fees on the payment fee calculator.
Free chargeback cost calculator — dispute rate, order value and fees to the true monthly cost of chargebacks.
More than the disputed amount. You lose the revenue, usually the shipped goods, and pay a fixed dispute fee (often $15-25). At scale, a high chargeback rate also triggers card-network monitoring programs that raise your processing fees on all sales.
Card networks generally flag merchants above about 0.9-1% of transactions. Beyond that you can land in monitoring programs with fines and higher rates. Keeping the rate low protects not just individual sales but your whole pricing.