Alerts API Overview

The Chargeflow Alerts API provides merchants with access to pre-chargeback alerts, allowing early visibility into potential disputes before they escalate into full chargebacks. Pre-chargeback alerts are generated by card networks and are made available to you via endpoints and webhook notifications in real time. The API gives you tools to retrieve alerts, check their status and metadata, and monitor their lifecycle through to outcome (whether prevented, escalated, or otherwise resolved).

Pre-Chargeback Alerts Process Flow

1. Consumer makes a purchase.
2. Consumer makes an inquiry or disputes the purchase with their card issuer.
3. Chargeflow receives a pre-chargeback alert: an early notification about the case.
4. Chargeflow associates the alert to a merchant, and matches it to a transaction/order.
5. Chargeflow resolves the case by automatically refunding the transaction/order.
6. Chargeflow determines the outcome and updates the card issuer. The case is resolved without escalation to a chargeback.

Integration Models

The Alerts API can be integrated in two different ways, depending on how much control you want to have over the refund process:

1. Chargeflow Alerts (most common)

In this model, Chargeflow automates the handling of alerts (including transaction matching and refunds where applicable).

• Merchants and platforms act as passive consumers of the API. You can build additional automations based on the webhooks, such as automated consumer tagging, automated subscription cancallation and more.
• The Alerts API and webhooks serve as an informational layer, allowing you to:
  • Retrieve alerts and outcomes via the API.
  • Embed alert data into your own dashboards, reports, or customer portals.
  • Receive event notifications for alert creation or outcome updates, without needing to perform any manual actions.
• This option requires minimal development effort, since Chargeflow executes the mitigation flow end-to-end.

2. Merchant-Managed Handling

In this model, Chargeflow provides the alerts, but refund actions are executed by the merchant or platform.

• Chargeflow delivers alerts via the alerts.created webhook.
• If transaction linking is required, you may also subscribe to the alerts.transaction.linked webhook.
• Upon receiving an alert, your system is responsible for:
  1. Locating and validating the corresponding transaction.
  2. Performing the refund (or other mitigation) within your payment processor or order management system.
  3. Updating Chargeflow with the final outcome using the Alert Outcome Update endpoint (POST /alerts/{id}/outcome). This ensures Chargeflow can report back to the issuer correctly so the chargeback will be prevented.

This option gives the merchant or platform full control over refunds and operational logic, but requires additional implementation and monitoring to ensure outcomes are updated reliably.

Available Endpoints

Available Webhooks