Disputed payments

You will be notified of disputed payments via email using the address provided when you registered with your payment account. Disputed charges will not have a status of Disputed within Cognito Forms. If you receive an email saying one of your transactions was disputed by a user, please refer to the documentation for your payment processor:

Ways to Avoid Disputes

In general, these steps help avoid disputes because they help your business be more transparent with your customers. However, taking these steps also helps protect your customers from fraudulent charges, and helps your business be more protected if there is a dispute.

1) Show as much information as possible

The more information you show on your form, the clearer it is to your customers what each charge means. For example, if you select Show Line Items, it allows customers to see every item they’re being charged for, rather than just a single total. This way, customers can verify their choices before checkout, which means they’ll be less likely to purchase something they didn’t intend to buy.

Additionally, it helps to be clear with your field and fee labels. For example, if you’re charging $5.00 for delivery, be sure to label the fee as Delivery Fee under your Payment Settings. Be upfront with your customers about what each charge means and they’ll feel more comfortable.

2) Map your billing fields

Stripe/Square only: Under your Payment Settings, select Map Billing Fields to pull a customer’s name, email, address and phone number from the corresponding fields on your form. This helps to verify a person’s identity when they initiate a charge and can be useful in proving the validity of the payment. We recommend requiring these fields to ensure you get all the information you need.

You can also configure Stripe to validate a card’s zip code and street address using mapped billing field data. This will automatically decline payments when the billing information doesn’t match. (Square conducts zip code verification without any need for setup on your part.)

3) Email receipts to your customers

By automatically emailing receipts to customers as soon as they make a payment, you’re giving customers something to refer back to when they receive their bank statement. Under your Submission Settings, you can select Include Receipt in your email notification options to collect addresses from an Email field on your form. We recommend requiring this field to ensure every single customer gets a receipt.

4) Keep information consistent

Your business or organization information is important to your customers as well. Be sure that your Cognito Forms organization name matches your account name within PayPal/Stripe/Square, as well as the Statement descriptor that appears on customers’ bank statements. That way, there is no confusion for your customers if they forget later that they made a purchase through your Cognito Form.

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