What are Chargeback Simulations, and How Can You Use Them to Ease Customer Frustration?

Highnote customers are innovators who pride themselves on using every touchpoint with their users to extend their brand and enhance the customer experience. That’s why we decided early on to prioritize simulations -- workflows created and observed in a test environment -- so customers can understand how various circumstances would impact a transaction lifecycle. Now, we’re proud to announce the next stage in our evolution: Chargeback Simulations. But what exactly are Chargeback Simulations, how do they work, and how can your company use them to your advantage?

What are Chargeback Simulations?

Let’s start by breaking this down into its parts. You’re probably already familiar with what a chargeback is. But if not, here's a quick primer: When a cardholder believes they did not receive the goods and services they paid for or there was unauthorized activity on their account, they may dispute the amount of a posted transaction. If an investigation by the card network reveals that the transaction was made in error, a cardholder may receive a chargeback, refunding the transaction amount. So, in essence, a chargeback is a refund on a transaction made in error – either due to fraud or a failure of the good or service to be provided.

By the time a customer has reached this point of their journey, they’re typically already unhappy or, at the very least, unsatisfied. On top of that, card networks, such as Visa and Mastercard, have strict rules and timelines for responding to and investigating disputes. It can be challenging to keep track of these rules and monitor activity on a payment card or financial account for potential fraud. The last thing a card provider should add to this equation is an untested, uncustomized workflow that could contain bugs or errors.

That’s where Chargeback Simulations come in. The requirement seems simple enough: of course you should be able to test what happens in a payments workflow before pushing it out into the “wild” with a real cardholder’s real money. Surprisingly, this is a feature that barely exists on modern payment platforms. We knew that this status quo wouldn’t work for our customers. So, while Highnote creates and manages dispute and chargeback cases for your card product in the live environment, our test environment allows you to simulate the creation and resolution of dispute and chargeback cases before they ever impact a live customer.

How Do Chargeback Simulations Work?

Using our APIs, your team can simulate the transaction activity and ledger movement that would occur in the live environment, including:

• Creating a dispute
• Creating a chargeback case
• Issuing provisional credits
• Issuing a dispute credit
• Updating a dispute case
• Resolving a chargeback case

To try them out, head to our documentation, copy the provided mutation query, input the requested variables, and run the code.

Why Should You Use Chargeback Simulations

Leveraging our extensive experience and years of data gathering, we've developed a simulation tool that prioritizes your ability to keep cardholders informed throughout the process. This grants you control over notifications, emails, and account workflows, allowing you to shape a customized experience that aligns with your brand. In times of customer frustration, having a brand perceived as visible, invested in satisfaction, and unwilling to simply outsource the challenges of managing a card program can make all the difference.

Interested in learning more? Talk to us!