Stripe Chargeback Protection costs 0.4 percent of every charge it protects, on top of normal processing fees, and it only reimburses fraud disputes (the cardholder says they did not make the purchase) on payments taken through Stripe Checkout. PayPal sells the same idea for 0.40 percent, or 0.60 percent for a version that also skips the paperwork. Shopify Protect is free but limited to Shop Pay orders. Fraud guarantee vendors such as Signifyd and Riskified quote privately, and ClearSale starts at $250 a month.
That makes chargeback insurance a volume bet, not a dispute bet. You pay on every approved sale, including the 99 percent that never turn into a chargeback, and you get paid back only on one reason code family. On an $80 average order, Stripe's program pays for itself only if more than about 1 in 300 of your orders comes back as a fraud chargeback. Below that, you are paying for peace of mind.
We read every figure below off the provider's own terms, fee schedule or pricing page on September 29, 2026. Where a vendor publishes nothing, we say that rather than repeat a number from a blog. This guide is for the person who signs off on payments cost at a US ecommerce or subscription business: a finance lead, an ops manager or a founder who just saw a fraud spike and a banner offering to make it go away for a fraction of a percent.
How much does Stripe Chargeback Protection cost?
Stripe announced Chargeback Protection at 0.4 percent of each protected charge in 2019, and that is still the rate dispute firms report for US accounts. Stripe's own terms do not print a number. They say the fee is "communicated to you via email or in" the Dashboard, so read the figure from your account before you run the math below. On standard US card pricing of 2.9 percent plus 30 cents, the protected rate works out to 3.3 percent plus 30 cents.
The fee applies to every protected charge, disputed or not. At $100,000 a month in Checkout sales, that is $400 a month, or $4,800 a year, whatever your dispute count turns out to be.
What does Stripe Chargeback Protection cover?
It covers fraud disputes only. The Chargeback Protection Terms define a covered dispute as one "for which the cardholder asserts that she or he did not authorize the disputed Charge", and they spell out what is excluded: disputes claiming a good or service "was unwanted, defective or not delivered." On a covered dispute, Stripe does not hold you responsible for the charge amount, the chargeback fee, or card network fines tied to that charge.
Five other conditions in the same terms change the value of the product, and none of them appear on the sales banner:
- Checkout only. The terms define a protected charge as a card payment your customer submits through Stripe Checkout. Payments taken through other integrations fall outside that definition, so check how your checkout is built before you enroll.
- All or nothing routing. You agree to send all your charges through Checkout, and you may not route only the risky ones into the protected flow. Stripe can hold you responsible if it decides you did.
- An override ends the protection. If Stripe flags a charge above its risk threshold and you tell it to proceed anyway, that charge is no longer protected.
- A protection limit. Stripe may set a maximum amount it will cover. Several dispute firms report the US limit as $25,000 a year. The terms only say the limit is described on Stripe's site or notified to you, so confirm yours.
- An evaluation period. After enrolling, Stripe may hold reimbursements until you pass its internal risk review. If you fail it, the terms end and held amounts are not paid out.
One more line matters for anyone near a card network threshold. The terms state that for card network monitoring, "all of your chargebacks will be attributed to you (including chargebacks on Protected Charges)." Insurance moves the money. It does not move your dispute ratio.
Chargeback insurance providers and what they publish
Chargeback insurance is sold under three names: processor protection programs (Stripe, PayPal, Braintree), platform programs (Shopify Protect) and fraud guarantee vendors (Signifyd, Riskified, ClearSale, Wyllo, Forter). They all work the same way underneath. Someone else makes the approve or decline decision on each order, and in exchange takes the loss on the fraud chargebacks from orders it approved.
| Provider | Published price (checked 2026-09-29) | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Stripe Chargeback Protection | 0.4% of each protected charge (2019 launch rate, now shown in the Dashboard) | Fraud disputes on Stripe Checkout card payments, plus the chargeback fee and network fines. Subject to a protection limit |
| PayPal Chargeback Protection | 0.40% per transaction | "Unauthorized" and "item not received" card chargebacks on Advanced Credit and Debit Card checkout, up to a loss cap. You must submit evidence |
| PayPal Effortless Chargeback Protection | 0.60% per transaction | Same two reason codes. No evidence needed on fraud cases, proof of delivery still needed on item not received |
| Braintree (PayPal) | Sells the same two tools. Rate by contract | Fraud and item not received. "Not As Described" chargebacks are excluded |
| Shopify Protect | $0, included with Shopify Payments | Fraudulent and unrecognized chargebacks on eligible Shop Pay orders only |
| ClearSale | Guarantee plans from $250 per month | Chargeback protection on approved orders. ClearSale now describes itself as part of Experian |
| Signifyd | None. Custom quote form | Sells a "Complete Chargeback Protection" tier that guarantees fraud and non-fraud chargebacks |
| Riskified | None. The pricing page blocks automated access, and the Shopify app says additional charges apply | Chargeback guarantee on approved orders |
| Wyllo (formerly NoFraud) | None. A pricing calculator, a demo form and a two-week free trial | Guarantee on approved orders |
| Forter | None. The pricing URL routes to a sales form | Enterprise fraud decisions with a guarantee |
| Square | No protection program. $0 dispute fee | Nothing to buy. Square's older free chargeback protection has been discontinued |
Two patterns stand out. First, the only published rates come from the processors, and they cluster at 0.40 percent, with a 0.60 percent premium tier for less paperwork. Second, the guarantee vendors that cover more than fraud (Signifyd's non-fraud tier is the clearest example) are exactly the ones that will not put a number on a web page. Expect those quotes to be higher than 0.4 percent, and get them in writing per reason code.
Is Stripe Chargeback Protection worth it?
It is worth it when fraud chargebacks run above roughly 0.3 to 0.4 percent of your orders and you already sell through Stripe Checkout. Below that, the premium costs more than the losses it covers. The break-even point is simple arithmetic: the 0.4 percent you pay on every order, divided by what one fraud chargeback costs you (the order amount plus Stripe's $15 dispute fee).
| Average order value | Stripe break-even (0.4% fee, $15 dispute fee) | PayPal Effortless break-even (0.60% fee, $20 card chargeback fee) |
|---|---|---|
| $30 | 1 fraud chargeback per 375 orders (0.27%) | 1 per 278 orders (0.36%) |
| $80 | 1 per 297 orders (0.34%) | 1 per 208 orders (0.48%) |
| $250 | 1 per 265 orders (0.38%) | 1 per 180 orders (0.56%) |
| $1,500 | 1 per 253 orders (0.40%) | 1 per 169 orders (0.59%) |
Notice that the break-even rate barely moves with order size. A bigger ticket means a bigger reimbursement, but also a bigger premium on every order. What moves the answer is your fraud rate, and that is a number you can pull from your own dispute history in ten minutes. Filter the last 90 days of disputes to fraud reason codes (Visa 10.4, Mastercard 4837 and 4863, "fraudulent" in the Stripe Dashboard) and divide by orders.
Here is what a year looks like at an $80 average order on Stripe, using three fraud chargeback rates:
| Monthly Checkout sales | Annual premium at 0.4% | Covered losses at 0.1% fraud | At 0.3% fraud | At 0.6% fraud |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $50,000 | $2,400 | $712 | $2,138 | $4,275 |
| $100,000 | $4,800 | $1,425 | $4,275 | $8,550 |
| $250,000 | $12,000 | $3,562 | $10,688 | $21,375 |
| $500,000 | $24,000 | $7,125 | $21,375 | $42,750, or $25,000 if a $25,000 limit applies |
The last row is the one to show your CFO. If your account carries the $25,000 annual limit that dispute firms report, then above about $520,000 a month in protected sales the premium alone exceeds the most Stripe could ever pay back in a year. At that size, a guarantee vendor quote or an in-house fraud team is almost always the better buy.
The table leaves out two real benefits that do not show up in a spreadsheet. Stripe also absorbs network fines tied to protected charges, and your team stops spending hours on fraud evidence packets. If a person on your team spends 30 minutes per fraud dispute, add that time to the covered losses column before you decide.
Does PayPal have chargeback protection?
Yes. PayPal sells Chargeback Protection at 0.40 percent per transaction and Effortless Chargeback Protection at 0.60 percent, both listed on its US merchant fee page (last updated September 1, 2026). Both require a business account with Advanced Credit and Debit Card checkout, and both cover "unauthorized" and "item not received" chargebacks up to a loss cap PayPal does not publish on the help page.
The coverage is broader than Stripe's because it includes item not received, which is where a lot of friendly fraud hides. The trade-off is control. With either tool on, PayPal makes the decision on each card transaction, and its developer docs say there is "no option to process a payment" once it declines one. The 0.20 percent step up to Effortless buys you out of submitting evidence on fraud cases. It does not remove the proof of delivery requirement on item not received.
Does Shopify cover chargebacks?
Only through Shopify Protect, which is free and covers fraudulent and unrecognized chargebacks on eligible Shop Pay orders. Orders paid with a regular card form, PayPal or another gateway are outside it. For a Shopify merchant, the practical question is what share of your orders already go through Shop Pay, because that share is insured at no cost, and a paid guarantee app would be charging you again on it.
How much does chargeback insurance cost from a guarantee vendor?
Guarantee vendors price as a percentage of each approved order, set by your vertical, order volume and average ticket, and only ClearSale publishes a floor ($250 a month). Signifyd, Riskified, Wyllo and Forter all require a quote. The pricing model is worth understanding before the call: you pay on approved orders, nothing on declined ones, so a vendor that declines more costs less on paper and more in lost sales.
Ask for these five things in writing, because they decide the real cost more than the headline rate:
- Which reason codes are guaranteed. Fraud only, or also item not received and not as described. A fraud only guarantee at 0.5 percent is not cheaper than a full guarantee at 0.9 percent if half your disputes are "not received".
- The decline rate on a sample of your past orders. Every declined good order is revenue you gave up to make the guarantee cheaper for the vendor.
- Whether you can override a decline, and what that does to coverage. On Stripe, overriding ends protection on that charge. Most vendors work the same way.
- An annual cap or monthly minimum. A cap turns insurance into a fixed-size coupon once you grow.
- Who fights the dispute and who keeps a win. Stripe's terms say that if it wins a covered dispute, you are not entitled to the recovered money. That is fair, since it already paid you, but it means you cannot stack a representment service on top.
Cheaper ways to get the same protection
Before paying 0.4 percent on everything, check three things you may already have.
3D Secure on risky orders. When a card payment is authenticated with 3D Secure, fraud liability normally shifts to the card issuer. Stripe's documentation is careful to say the shift is expected but "isn't guaranteed for any specific payment or dispute." It costs some conversion at checkout, so most merchants apply it only to orders their fraud rules flag, which gets much of the benefit for a fraction of the friction.
Your processor's fraud screening. Stripe includes Radar Lite at no extra charge on standard pricing and now sells Radar Standard, Plus and Pro as monthly plans. Better screening lowers the fraud rate, which is the number that decides whether insurance is worth it in the first place.
Alerts for the disputes that are not fraud. Insurance does nothing for "product not as described" or subscription cancellations, which are often the bulk of a subscription merchant's disputes. For those, the choice is between refunding early through alerts and fighting through representment. We lined up what those services charge, from 15 to 30 percent success fees to $29 Ethoca alerts, in our guide to chargeback management pricing and representment cost.
What insurance does not fix
Every covered chargeback still counts against you. Visa's acquirer monitoring program now flags US merchants as excessive at a 1.5 percent ratio with at least 1,500 fraud and dispute events a month, and Stripe's terms say plainly that protected charges are included in that tracking. If you are close to a threshold, insurance keeps the money whole while the ratio keeps climbing, and the reserve or the rate increase comes anyway. The ratio is lowered only by preventing fraud or refunding before the dispute is filed.
The other gap is accounting. A reimbursed fraud chargeback shows up as a debit and a later credit in your payouts, often in different weeks, with the protection fee netted from every settlement. Finance teams that reconcile from the processor's monthly PDF statement usually turn the PDF statement into a spreadsheet first, so the premium and the reimbursements can be totaled against each other. That total, premium paid versus losses reimbursed, is the only honest test of whether the program is working, and it is worth running every quarter.
If a customer disputes a charge that should have been a refund, the fix is upstream in how refunds and credits are issued, which we cover in chargeback vs refund vs dispute and, for B2B billing, in credit note vs refund.
Frequently asked questions
How much is chargeback insurance?
Processor programs charge 0.40 percent of each protected transaction (Stripe, PayPal), or 0.60 percent for PayPal's Effortless version. Shopify Protect is free on Shop Pay orders. Guarantee vendors charge a negotiated percentage of approved orders, and ClearSale's plans start at $250 a month. You pay on every covered sale, not per dispute.
Does Stripe Chargeback Protection cover friendly fraud?
Only when the cardholder files it as unauthorized. Stripe decides coverage by reason code, and its terms exclude disputes claiming the product was unwanted, defective or not delivered. A customer who received the order and files "product not received" or "not as described" is not covered, even if you consider it friendly fraud.
Does Stripe Chargeback Protection cover the dispute fee?
Yes, on covered disputes. The terms say Stripe will not hold you responsible for the charge amount, the associated chargeback fees, or card network fines caused by a protected charge, up to the protection limit. Disputes outside the fraud definition still carry the normal $15 dispute fee.
Is chargeback insurance worth it for a subscription business?
Usually not. Subscription disputes skew toward "cancelled recurring" and "not recognized" claims from real customers, which fraud only programs exclude. Pull a quarter of your disputes by reason code first. If fraud is under half of them, spend the money on cancellation clarity, billing descriptors and pre-dispute alerts instead.
The short version
Stripe Chargeback Protection costs 0.4 percent of every Checkout charge and reimburses fraud disputes only, subject to a protection limit. PayPal charges 0.40 or 0.60 percent and also covers item not received. Shopify Protect is free on Shop Pay. Guarantee vendors quote privately, ClearSale from $250 a month. Each program pays for itself only when fraud chargebacks exceed roughly 1 in 300 orders, and none of them lowers the dispute ratio the card networks watch.