Disputes are decided entirely by the entity who issued the cardholder's card. In some cases that's the card network itself (as with American Express) and in some cases that's an issuing bank (as with Mastercard or Visa).
The card network (such as Visa, Mastercard, or American Express) defines the dispute process -- the "rules of the road" for how disputes work. The issuer decides whether any given dispute is won or lost. In some cases (as with American Express) these are the same entity.
Stripe facilitates your participation in the dispute process by helping you select the best possible evidence for the dispute reason in the dashboard, and transmitting your evidence to the card network, but Stripe does not make any decision about your dispute.
No. The issuer's decision is final and cannot be appealed or challenged. Some card networks feature a dispute lifecycle phase called "arbitration" in which a loss can be appealed (for a substantial card network fee), but Stripe does not currently support this.
It may still be possible to have your customer withdraw the dispute, even after the dispute is closed. You can read more about withdrawn disputes here:
The best strategy with disputes is to focus on prevention:
But once you have received a dispute, the best approach is to respond with strong evidence:
Whether you win or lose a dispute makes no difference. It is the dispute itself that is counted by the card networks in your dispute metrics. The outcome of the dispute doesn't affect that. You can read more about how disputes are measured here:
See: When a customer disputes a payment, when will they receive the funds back?
You can find a high level overview in our documentation here: