What is Visa Compelling Evidence 3.0?

The Visa Compelling Evidence 3.0 (CE 3.0) update introduces new rules that help merchants combat first-party misuse (friendly fraud) by weighting a cardholder’s non-fraud prior transactions with the merchant as evidence of likely legitimacy of the disputed transaction.

When do the new rules apply?

Disputes with Visa reason code 10.4 (Card absent fraud) are eligible to submit prior non-fraud transaction history as evidence of current transaction legitimacy. Qualifying prior transactions must fall within 120 – 365 calendar days prior to the disputed transaction processing date.

What information do I need to provide?

The new rules dictate that if a clear link between the merchant and the cardholder can be identified, the issuing bank is much more likely to rule the dispute in favor of the business. Visa’s qualifying criteria to demonstrate the link is as follows:

For all disputes with Visa reason code 10.4, merchants can increase their odds of winning by providing two prior transactions with the same cardholder where:

• No fraud activity has been reported
• The same payment credential was used
• Processing occurred more than 119 calendar days and fewer than 366 calendar days prior to the disputed transaction processing date

For transactions that meet this criteria, merchants must provide:

1. Product descriptions for the disputed charge and the two chosen transactions
2. The device ID, device fingerprint or the IP address of the customer
3. Proof that one or more of the following match across both non-fraud transactions and the disputed transaction:
   • Customer email
   • Delivery address
   • Device ID / device fingerprint
   • IP address

How can I find two prior transactions that fit the criteria?

Stripe does this for you. Upon receiving a qualifying dispute, Stripe automatically queries your past transaction history to identify if you have two prior transactions that meet the criteria. If you do, Stripe reflects the eligibility in the dispute notification email and in a banner on the dispute’s details page in the Dashboard, encouraging you to counter the dispute.

How do I submit the required evidence?

Throughout the evidence submission form, we’ve identified the relevant fields required for the CE 3.0 program with the Required for Visa CE 3.0 badge and auto-filled many of them on your behalf. You must provide the correct information for any empty required fields, but you needn’t edit any auto-filled responses because it might affect the eligibility of the transactions we’ve matched for you. We don’t expose every CE 3.0 relevant field, such as customer email address and shipping address, in the evidence collection form, but we do make sure every evidence response includes all required data.

NOTE: To increase the odds of Stripe identifying prior transactions with the appropriate fields, consider updating your Stripe integration to increase the incidence with which you share CE 3.0 qualifying data, like IP address, customer email, and shipping address.

Can I submit Visa CE 3.0 evidence using the API?

Yes, you can use the enhanced evidence object. You can read more about this here.

How did I lose a CE 3.0 eligible dispute?

Submitting evidence under CE 3.0 guidelines does not guarantee an auto-win, issuing banks still have discretion as to wether a dispute is ruled in favor of a merchant. If you do not fill in all fields that are labelled as required for CE 3.0 in the Stripe dashboard, it will no longer be eligible. In rare cases, issuers will send a delayed TC40 (fraud report) on the prior transactions used as evidence. This disqualifies them from being used as evidence under CE 3.0 and can cause issuers to reject the dispute.