Shopify chargebacks: the fee, the money and your payouts

Short answer: when a customer’s bank opens a chargeback on a Shopify Payments order, the disputed amount and a chargeback fee are taken from you straight away, out of your next available payout. If you win, the disputed amount comes back in your next payout after the decision. Whether the fee comes back too is something Shopify’s own pages describe differently.

Our guide to why a payout is less than your sales covers chargebacks in one section, as one of nine reasons. This guide goes further.

A chargeback is not an inquiry

A customer who questions a charge with their bank can set off one of two things, and they cost you differently:

• A chargeback. The disputed amount and a chargeback fee are taken at once, while the dispute is decided.
• An inquiry. No money moves while it is looked at. If it is closed in your favour, nothing is taken. If it is closed in the customer’s favour, it might turn into a full chargeback, and then the amount and the fee are taken.

So an inquiry on its own should not change a payout. A chargeback will.

What is taken, and when

Shopify says the amount of a chargeback is deducted from your next available payout. If your balance cannot cover it, what happens depends on where your store is: in a list of countries that includes the US, the UK, Canada and Australia, Shopify debits your bank account outside the usual payout schedule; elsewhere it comes out of later payouts until it is covered. Our payout guide has more on a negative balance.

The chargeback fee

Shopify publishes the fee for each country where it offers Shopify Payments. A few of them, as of 6 October 2026:

• United States: $15 USD.
• United Kingdom: £10 GBP.
• Canada: $15 CAD or $15 USD.
• Other European countries: €15 EUR in many European countries, but some also list the fee in their own currency, for example Denmark, Poland and Sweden. Ireland is €15 plus 23% VAT, and Gibraltar is £15 GBP.

Fees can change, and the full table for every country is on Shopify’s page about responding to chargebacks, linked under Sources.

How a chargeback can end

• You win. The disputed amount is returned, in your next payout after the decision.
• You partly win. Shopify says some of the disputed amount is returned. It does not say what happens to the fee in that case.
• The customer wins. You lose the disputed amount and the fee.
• You accept it. If you agree the chargeback is valid and accept it, the amount goes back to the customer and the fee is not refunded to you.
• It is resolved automatically. If your store is enrolled in a network dispute resolution programme, disputes are resolved automatically, with the money reimbursed to the customer before they become formal chargebacks, and with no chance to send evidence. Shopify says that outcome is final and cannot be appealed or reversed through Shopify.

The clock, as of 6 October 2026: you usually have 7 to 21 days to send evidence, and Shopify says the card company’s review can take up to 75 days after you submit. An inquiry usually takes 65 to 75 days.

Does the fee come back if you win?

Shopify’s pages do not agree. Its overview of chargebacks says that if you win, Shopify “might refund the chargeback fee” depending on your country or region. Its page on responding to chargebacks and its page on managing them in the admin both say the fee is returned with the disputed amount. No Shopify page we found names the countries or regions where it is not.

So do not assume either way. After a win, look at your next payout for the fee coming back, and if it does not, ask Shopify Support for your store.

Three things that make it messier

• A won dispute can be disputed again. Shopify says the customer’s bank can dispute the same transaction a second time after you win, with a new deadline. Winning the first round does not guarantee you keep the money.
• One order can carry several chargebacks. If an order has more than one transaction, for example because it was edited to add an item, each transaction can be disputed separately.
• Small exchange rate adjustments. When the customer’s card is from another country, the chargeback amount is subject to exchange rates, and you might see small adjustments for rate changes. Shopify says these are separate from the fee.

A worked example

Illustrative numbers, made up for this guide, in US dollars. These are the money movements of one dispute that you win, not the rows of a real export.

The first two lines land in one payout and the last two in a later one, so each payout on its own looks wrong and only the two together come to zero. If the fee had not been returned, you would be $15.00 down overall. If you had only partly won and got $50.00 of the $80.00 back, you would be $30.00 down on the order plus whatever happened to the fee.

Finding it in your payout export

Shopify does not publish what a chargeback row looks like in the export: not its Type word, not which column the fee sits in, and not whether the fee is a row of its own. So do not expect one fixed layout. Look instead for the Type words Shopify lists that name a chargeback or a dispute:

• chargeback_fee and chargeback_fee_refund
• chargeback_hold and chargeback_hold_release
• dispute_reversal and dispute_withdrawal
• dispute, which is in Shopify’s older REST list of types but not its newer GraphQL list

Shopify publishes these names without saying what each one means, so read them alongside the dates and amounts in your own file. Its Shopify Payments activity report, under Finance and then Documents, has a Disputes group that Shopify says covers chargebacks, dispute holds, dispute fees and related adjustments, which is a useful cross-check for a month. Our guide to the payout export covers the rest of the columns.

When it is worth a look

• A dispute you won with no money back in the payout after the decision.
• Money taken for an inquiry that never became a chargeback. Shopify says nothing is taken during an inquiry.
• A fee that did not come back after a win. Given that Shopify’s pages differ, it is a fair question for Shopify Support.
• The same order disputed twice. Check whether it is a second dispute on the same transaction or a separate transaction on the same order.
• A small extra amount on a foreign card dispute, which may be an exchange rate adjustment rather than a second fee.

How PayoutCheck shows it

PayoutCheck reads a row as part of a dispute when its Type is one of the dispute words it knows (such as chargeback, dispute, dispute_reversal and dispute_withdrawal) or any Type containing “chargeback” or “dispute”. It reads chargeback_fee and chargeback_fee_refund as dispute fees.

• It adds up each order’s dispute rows and fees, so a dispute and its reversal cancel out rather than counting twice.
• An order still down money is listed under Needs action, with the disputed amount and the fees, and is not counted as a discrepancy: Shopify has already taken the money and says so. The summary says whether the file shows no reversal for it, or a partial one.
• An order whose money came back is listed as a dispute reversed in your favour, and the report notes any dispute fee that was not returned with it.
• Dispute fees are left out of the fee comparison, so one chargeback does not make an ordinary order look overcharged. In the reconciliation they sit on the fees line.
• A chargeback hold is read as money held back, and its release as money returned, under reserves.

What it cannot see. PayoutCheck only knows what is in the file you upload. A reversal in a later payout needs that later export. And because Shopify does not publish the chargeback row layout, a dispute that your file labels with a word PayoutCheck does not read as a dispute, such as a plain adjustment, is counted as an adjustment and this check does not see it.

Questions

Sources

• Chargebacks and inquiries: help.shopify.com
• Responding to chargebacks and inquiries, with the chargeback fee for every country: help.shopify.com
• Managing chargebacks in the Shopify admin: help.shopify.com
• Resolving a chargeback or inquiry: help.shopify.com
• Shopify Payments activity report: help.shopify.com
• ShopifyPaymentsTransactionType, the list of Type values (GraphQL Admin API): shopify.dev
• Balance transactions, with the older list of types (REST Admin API): shopify.dev

This guide describes Shopify’s own published documentation as of 6 October 2026, which can change. It is not accounting, tax or legal advice, and PayoutCheck is not affiliated with Shopify.