What is a chargeback in plain words?

It is a dispute over a card transaction raised through the payment scheme rather than through the seller. The scheme decides under its own rules, so the seller's agreement is not needed.

How long is there to raise a dispute?

It is counted in days and starts from the transaction date or the expected delivery date. Correspondence with the seller does not pause it.

Section of the glossary

Payments and refunds: the glossary of Ilia Zavialov

Eight terms that decide whether you still have any route left after the money has gone. The order is not alphabetical but from the most common to the rarest.

English version for the United Kingdom.

Chargeback

Also: payment dispute

Disputing a card transaction through the payment scheme rather than through the seller.

The claim is filed with your own bank, and the decision is taken by the payment scheme under its own rules. That is why a chargeback works even when the seller has stopped answering: their agreement is not required.

Its defining property is the deadline. It starts running from the transaction date or the expected delivery date and is counted in days rather than months. A claim filed after the deadline is not considered on its merits.

Escrow

Also: conditional holding

An arrangement where a third party holds the money and releases it once a condition is met.

The value of escrow is not in the intermediary but in the wording of the condition: what counts as performance and which evidence the intermediary accepts.

Practical consequence: any offer to leave escrow and pay directly removes the single mechanism escrow was taken for.

Finality of payment

Also: irreversibility

The property by which, after a certain moment, a transfer cannot be undone by anything.

That moment differs by route: for a card it arrives when the dispute window closes, for a transfer to a private person when the funds are credited, for cryptocurrency when the transaction is confirmed on the network.

Every check is worth doing before that moment. After it, what changes is not the difficulty of recovery but its possibility.

Recall

Also: payment recall

An attempt to return a bank transfer through the sending bank before the money is spent.

A recall is not a right of the payer: it is carried out with the cooperation of the receiving bank and only while the funds are still in the account.

After deliberate fraud the money leaves the account within minutes, so a recall succeeds rarely and only when raised in the first hours.

Payment details

Also: beneficiary data

The account holder name, the account number and the country of the receiving bank.

Comparing the account holder name with the organisation you actually agreed with closes an entire category of losses. A mismatch here matters more than any explanation.

Details that arrive in a message are taken not from the message but from the contract or the account portal: substituting details inside a thread is a separate and very productive scheme.

Advance payment

Also: prepayment

A payment made before the goods or the service are received.

An advance moves the risk entirely onto the payer: your side of the deal is performed, the other side is not. That does not make an advance unacceptable; it makes it a deliberate choice.

If an advance is unavoidable, the route matters: a card and a platform leave at least one path open, a direct transfer leaves none.

Recovery scam

Also: advance-fee recovery

An offer to recover money already lost, in exchange for a payment up front.

Approaches arrive soon after a public loss, because victims are easy to find through open discussions and through the payment chain itself.

Tracing a payment is genuine work that produces a report on the route of the funds, and it does not change who controls them. Any advance payment for a promised recovery becomes a second loss on top of the first.

Dispute window

Also: claim deadline

The period during which a claim about a transaction is still accepted for consideration.

The window starts running at once and is not paused while you correspond with the seller. Waiting «a little longer» is the most common reason the option is lost.

So the claim is filed at the first missed delivery date rather than when it becomes obvious the seller has gone. Withdrawing a claim is easier than restoring a missed deadline.

What remains possible after a payment, by route
Route	Refund mechanism	Deadline
Card	Chargeback under the scheme rules	Days, counted from the transaction
Platform with escrow	Held until the condition is met	Set by the platform
Transfer to a company	Recall with the bank's cooperation	Hours
Transfer to a private person	Practically nothing	None
Cryptocurrency	Nothing after confirmation	None

Questions and answers

What is a chargeback in plain words?: It is a dispute over a card transaction raised through the payment scheme rather than through the seller. The scheme decides under its own rules, so the seller's agreement is not needed.
How long is there to raise a dispute?: It is counted in days and starts from the transaction date or the expected delivery date. Correspondence with the seller does not pause it.