How long does a customer have to file a chargeback?
It depends on the card scheme and reason code. At Mastercard, cardholders generally have 120 days from the transaction, and up to 540 days for some non-delivery cases. Merchants then have 45 days to respond with evidence.
In detail
It depends on the card scheme and the reason code. At Mastercard, cardholders generally have 120 days from the transaction to file, and up to 540 days for some non-delivery cases, where the clock can start from the expected delivery date. Merchants then have 45 days to respond with evidence. Other schemes apply their own timeframes, which follow the same logic.
Why the windows are long
Chargeback rights protect cardholders who discover a problem late: a service that was never provided, an order that never arrived or a subscription that kept charging. For merchants, it means a sale is not fully safe from dispute until the window closes.
What merchants should do
- Keep transaction, authentication and delivery records for the full dispute window.
- Track response deadlines carefully: a missed deadline usually means losing the case.
- Answer with evidence that matches the reason code.
What it means for payment operators
Long dispute windows mean your merchants need payment records that stay accessible and searchable well after the sale. A platform that keeps transaction details, authentication results and order references together, and reconciles chargeback debits against the original payments, makes evidence easier to gather within the response deadline.