How to handle the chargeback claim if the sales receipt is lost

Today, we are living in a world where people prefer to carry card over cash to pay. This use of cards for paying is also considered as one of the safest way for buyers that give them the authority to question the authenticity of the product or transaction and also to ask for money back if they don’t like the merchandise.

But, thing that is not changed with this new method of collecting the payment through cards is the billing/invoice process. A business have to give the sales receipt of the sold product and for the merchant’s safety they need to keep a copy of the receipt and one addition in this process is creating a copy for bank to get funded against the processed transaction from the card.

In businesses, the receipts are only physical document that can prove that transaction is valid to get funded. As discussed above it’s the merchant’s responsibility to provide the appropriate and correct copy of receipt to the bank. If the details on the receipts misprints due to paper quality, color, fading of ink becomes invisible that can be or the receipt tear apart. This causes the lost of correct data. In this case, the card holder’s bank with their right to question the transaction can ask merchant to again submit the transaction details.

To submit the exact and appropriate details to prove the validity a merchant have a few remedies that can be practiced:

1. If merchant have the transaction proofs in details that proofs the validity of the transaction, they should send it to bank within time.
2. If merchant have the copy of transaction that too is not able to give the detailed information then the merchant should accept the chargeback and pay for it.

To prevent this error to happen regularly, a merchant can take few precautionary measures:

1. Merchant should have sufficient copies of the sales receipts that can save the time whenever a merchant gets the retrieval request.
2. Always keep the printer carbon ribbon filled and use less carbon so that the prints should not destroys the text written.
3. Always give print on white paper to the customer and keep the colored paper as file.
4. Company’s logo should be available on all the receipt prints, this prove the authenticity.
5. In card present situation of transaction, A copy of signed sales receipt should be kept as the proof, this helps to prove that the transaction was done with card holder’s will.