Restaurants Can Fight the Bite of Chargebacks (Infographic)

Like any business, you may occasionally have to deal with an unhappy customer. Traditionally, this has meant that the manager comes out and apologizes to the guest, then offers a discount or a comped meal.

This system has worked well enough in the past. However, a lot has changed in the last four or five years. Widespread adoption of branded apps, online ordering and delivery, accelerated by the Covid crisis, has forced restaurants to deal with an issue that they’ve mostly avoided until now: chargebacks.

Historically, restaurant chargebacks typically happened when a guest found something wrong on their credit card statement, such as being double charged or having an unauthorized tip added to the bill. Instead of calling the restaurant, the customer called the bank and had the payment reversed. The merchant then loses the dollar value of the meal, and has to pay fees and other costs resulting from the chargeback.

Until recently, chargebacks in the restaurant business were…