Processing of Transaction Receipts

Merchants should establish a process for handling sales receipts to ensure their proper processing, in order to minimize customer disputes and chargebacks. The following best practices should be included in this process:

• Merchants should make sure that transactions are entered into their point-of-sale or virtual terminals only once and are deposited only once. Duplicate transactions are very likely to result in chargebacks if merchants:
  • Enter the same transaction more than once.
  • Deposit both the merchant copy and bank copy of a sales receipt with their merchant processing bank.
  • Deposit the same transaction with more than one merchant processing bank.
• Merchants should make sure that whenever incorrect or duplicate sales receipts are detected, they are promptly voided and that transactions are processed only once.
• Merchants should deposit sales receipts with their merchant processing bank as quickly as possible, preferably within one to five days of the transaction date. Merchants should not hold on to them.
• Merchants should deposit credit receipts with their merchant processing bank as quickly as possible, preferably the same day the credit transaction is generated.
• For card-not-present transactions, merchants should not deposit sales receipts with their merchant processing bank until the merchandise has been shipped. If customers see a transaction on their monthly credit card statement before they receive the merchandise, they may contact their card issuers to dispute the charge. Similarly, if delivery is delayed on a card-present transaction, merchants should not deposit the sales receipt until the merchandise has been shipped.
• If a customer requests cancellation of a transaction that is billed periodically (monthly, quarterly, or annually), the merchant should cancel the transaction immediately or as specified by the customer. Following the cancellation, the merchant should inform the customer in writing that the service, subscription, or membership has been canceled and state the effective date of the cancellation.