Answering a Flutterwave chargeback
How a Nigerian business decides whether to accept or contest a Flutterwave chargeback, what evidence Flutterwave asks for, and how to keep it ready.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Running a business businesses in Nigeria
The e-mail from Flutterwave arrives weeks after the sale. A customer's bank has disputed a payment, the money has been taken back out of your balance, and you are being asked what you want to do about it. For a small online business, a single chargeback can wipe out a day's margin. Several in a month say something in the way you sell needs fixing.
There are only two answers to a chargeback: accept it, or contest it with proof. Choosing well, and quickly, depends on having the evidence to hand before the e-mail ever arrives. This article follows Flutterwave's own documentation on how chargebacks work and what it expects from a merchant.
Two choices: accept and refund, or refute with proof of value
Flutterwave's documentation says a merchant facing a chargeback can accept it and return the customer's money, or refute it by providing evidence of value from the transaction. "Value" is the key word: you are showing that the customer got what they paid for.
The same documentation advises accepting where the customer did not get the expected value. That is sensible advice, not just politeness. If the order never shipped, the service was not delivered or the wrong item went out, contesting wastes time and damages your standing with the provider. Accept, refund, and fix whatever went wrong.
Contest when you can show delivery and the customer's acceptance: a signed delivery note, a courier's tracking record, an e-mail confirming the service was received, a download log for a digital product.
The disputed amount leaves your balance first
Flutterwave's documentation says that when a customer's bank raises a chargeback, the disputed amount is withheld from the merchant's balance and the chargeback has the status "initiated". A "reversed" status means the withheld amount has been restored.
So the money is gone from your available funds while the dispute runs, whatever you decide. For your books, that means the next settlement from Flutterwave will be smaller than the sales behind it. In Achekam, payouts from each payment gateway are recorded against that gateway's clearing account with its fees, by hand or from Flutterwave's own payout lists. When a payout is short because of a chargeback, note the chargeback reference against it so the clearing account can be explained at month end. The wider subject of reading settlements is covered in Flutterwave settlements.
One evidence file, labelled and in an accepted format
Flutterwave is specific about how evidence arrives. Its documentation says chargeback evidence should be combined into a single file labelled with the chargeback_id, in JPEG, JPG, PNG or PDF format and less than 8MB.
That rules out sending a handful of attachments in a chain of e-mails. Before you reply, put everything into one PDF, in a sensible order:
- The invoice for the sale, showing the customer, date, items and amount.
- The payment record: reference, date, amount.
- Proof of delivery or performance: courier tracking, signed delivery note, service sign-off, access logs.
- Communication with the customer that shows they received what they bought or did not complain at the time.
- Your terms, if they bear on the dispute, such as a no-refund policy for custom work that the customer accepted.
Name the file with the chargeback_id, and check its size before you upload it.
When evidence wins, and when it does not
Flutterwave's documentation says that if the merchant's evidence is accepted, the issuing bank is debited by the card schemes and the credit is passed on to the merchant's settlement. Otherwise, the chargeback is accepted, meaning the customer keeps the refund.
Evidence wins when it answers the customer's actual complaint. If the customer says "item not received", a courier record showing delivery to their address answers it. If they say "not as described", a delivery record proves nothing; you need the product description they agreed to and evidence of what was sent.
Bank transfer disputes need an answer too
Chargebacks are not only for cards. Flutterwave's documentation covers bank transfer reversals: when a customer disputes a bank transfer payment and the merchant does not respond to Flutterwave's e-mail notification, the dispute proceeds under a court order and the customer is settled.
Silence is therefore the worst choice. Make sure Flutterwave's notification e-mails go to an inbox somebody reads every day, not to the developer who set up the account and has since moved on. The full chargeback process is described on Flutterwave's chargebacks page, which explains how a merchant is notified and how to accept or contest a chargeback with evidence.
Keeping the evidence ready before the dispute
Assembling proof weeks after a sale is slow and often impossible. Build the habit at the time of sale instead.
- Invoices. In Achekam an issued invoice can be downloaded as a PDF on the business's letterhead and e-mailed from the invoice, with or without a pay link. That PDF is the first page of any evidence file.
- Delivery proof and correspondence. Achekam's Document Centre is a folder-based store where a business uploads files or whole folders, tags, searches and archives them, and a new version keeps the earlier ones. A folder per month with each order's delivery proof, tagged with the invoice number, turns a chargeback from a search into a download.
- Refunds. If you decide to accept and refund, note that Achekam does not send a refund of an online invoice payment through the gateway: it is made in the gateway's own dashboard and recorded in the books by a person.
Similar disputes arise with other providers; see Paystack reversed transactions.
Treat every chargeback as information. Two disputes about the same product or courier are a pattern, and fixing the pattern is cheaper than winning disputes one at a time.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
