Commonly asked questions about Rapid Dispute Resolution:
RDR (Rapid Dispute Resolution) is provided by Verifi, a Visa Company, that enables merchants to automate dispute resolutions with pre-defined rule sets. This rules-driven decisioning triggers a credit to cardholders for qualified disputes. It is meant to reduce the amount of time and resources expended by the merchant in disputes, expedite the refund process, and improve customer experience for Visa cardholders. RDR is incorporated within Visa issuers’ dispute management platform, Visa Resolve Online (VROL). Get the full picture in our comprehensive article on RDR here.
RDR was designed to benefit all stakeholders in a transaction.
- The customer gets a credit immediately.
- The issuing bank has a happy customer.
- The acquiring bank has a compliant merchant account.
- The merchant is freed up from a typically cumbersome manual process
RDR is hands-free dispute resolution. Prior to RDR, merchants would have to evaluate and refund transaction disputes manually, or have those funds taken from them by a chargeback, and incur fees and penalties. Once the RDR decisioning executes, the acquirer is automatically notified to move customer credit funds to the issuer for qualified disputes, and the dispute is not counted against the merchant’s dispute ratio.
Previously, cardholders would have to wait two to five days, and sometimes longer, to get a refund from a dispute. With RDR, once the issuer enters the dispute into Visa Resolve Online (VROL) and it qualifies under the merchant’s pre-set rules, a credit is delivered to the cardholder immediately.
Yes! By refunding a transaction automatically, the dispute can not become a chargeback. Also, disputes credited by RDR do not count against the merchant’s disputes-to-sales ratio.
RDR manages Visa transactions only. Legacy Verifi alerts are routed through their Cardholder Dispute Resolution Network™ (CDRN®), and sometimes come from disputes on networks other than Visa. To resolve these legacy alerts, the merchant goes into their payment gateway to refund each alert manually. RDR is triggered before a CDRN alert is issued, and credits the cardholder directly through your merchant bank. If RDR is not triggered, the dispute then routes to CDRN.
Ethoca typically manages Mastercard transactions. RDR does not cover Visa disputes routed through Ethoca because RDR credits are triggered through Visa Resolve Online (VROL).
ChargebackHelp includes RDR within its RESOLVE module. ChargebackHelp also handles the integration and maintains the connection so the merchant doesn’t have to.
Merchants with deeper processing history and previous exposure to disputes will have a better idea which disputes to target for RDR. ChargebackHelp will set triggers based on that history. For newer merchants, a default configuration can be provided, usually for transactions under a specified amount. From there, ChargebackHelp will work with the merchant to fine-tune rules and triggers over time. We typically recommend merchants at least set their rules by dollar amount of transactions.
Merchants can set up to ten rules, each with up to seven attributes, specific to the BIN/CAID identifiers of a given merchant account. The seven attributes are
- Issuer BIN
- Transaction Date
- Transaction Amount
- Transaction Currency Code
- Purchase Identifier
- Dispute Category
- Dispute Condition Code
If a disputed transaction matches one or more attribute values, then a credit is authorized from the acquirer to the cardholder automatically. A ruleset example could be as simple as any transaction below a certain amount is refunded. Complexity can also be added, for example a transaction of a certain amount, in a specific currency, for all transactions stemming from a single issuing bank.
BIN/CAID is a combination of numbers that Visa uses together to identify merchant accounts (MIDs) in VROL. BIN is the Bank Identification Number of the acquiring bank handling the transaction. CAID is the Card Acceptor ID that identifies a store location or transaction point.
RDR intercepts disputes off Visa Resolve Online (VROL) and executes its decisioning. VROL routes unqualified disputes to the merchant through Verifi CDRN. Refunds for these disputes must be executed in the merchant payment gateway, manually. Or, merchants can let the alert chargeback, and then fight the chargeback through representment.
RDR is a product provided by Verifi – a Visa company. It can only catch disputes coming through Visa Resolve Online (VROL). So disputes for AMEX or other card transactions are not covered by RDR.
After April 2021, RDR works with any transaction made over the Visa network. This includes not only credit cards, but debit and pre-paid cards as well.