Chargeback Cost Calculator

About this calculator

A chargeback happens when a cardholder disputes a charge directly with their bank instead of asking the merchant for a refund — the bank reverses the payment and pulls the money back from the merchant automatically. Unlike an ordinary refund, a chargeback almost always comes with a separate dispute fee charged by the payment processor or card network to cover the cost of investigating the claim, and that fee applies whether the merchant wins or loses the dispute.

For a physical product, the real cost goes beyond the refunded sale: the merchant typically never gets the shipped item back, so the product cost is lost on top of the revenue. This calculator adds the three pieces together — the refunded sale amount, the unrecovered product cost, and the chargeback fee — to show sellers, especially on marketplaces and card-not-present e-commerce, the true all-in cost of a single disputed transaction.