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Transaction lifecycle
The five stages a transaction can move through - from checkout to dispute outcome - and which Chargeflow product acts at each stage.
You want to know where in a transaction's life Chargeflow can act for you. Every transaction that ends in a dispute passes through the same five stages, and each Chargeflow product owns exactly one window on that timeline.
The five stages
| # | Stage | What happens | Who acts |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Checkout & auth | The cardholder pays; the issuer authorizes the charge. | Your PSP |
| 2 | Pre-fulfillment | The order is placed but not yet shipped or delivered - the last moment a risky order can be stopped for free. | Prevent |
| 3 | Pre-chargeback window | The cardholder complains to their issuer; there is a short window to resolve before a formal chargeback posts. | Alerts |
| 4 | Chargeback filed | The issuer posts the chargeback; funds are provisionally reversed and the response clock starts. | Automation |
| 5 | Dispute outcome | The issuer rules for the merchant or the cardholder; Chargeflow reports the result. | Automation |
Connect is horizontal: it embeds stages 4-5 into your own platform for your merchants.
Reading the timeline
- Earlier is cheaper. A risky order caught at stage 2 costs nothing; an alert resolved at stage 3 costs a refund; a chargeback fought at stage 4 costs a fee and weeks of waiting, win or lose.
- The windows are short and network-defined. The pre-chargeback alert window is short - act on alerts as they arrive (see Alerts model); the representment window varies by network and reason code. The canonical figures live in Network timelines.
- Every transition emits an event. Chargeflow surfaces stage transitions as webhooks (
dispute.created,alerts.created, and so on) so your systems can react in real time. See Webhooks.
Going deeper
The mechanics of stages 4-5 - the parties, the provisional reversal, representment, arbitration - are covered once, canonically, in the concepts section:
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