Visa's dispute rules give cardholders up to 120 days to file a chargeback in most situations. That's the headline number — but it comes with important fine print about when those 120 days begin, and a hard outer limit on how far back a dispute can reach.
The 120-day window is Visa's own network rule. It sits on top of any legal protections you may have (like the US 60-day federal rule), and your bank's cardholder agreement may add its own terms inside it. When several clocks run at once, the safest strategy is always the same: file before the earliest deadline.
For most disputes — an unauthorized charge, a duplicate billing, a subscription that kept charging — the 120 days start on the transaction date.
But there's a major exception: goods or services you never received. In that case Visa's rules start the window at the expected delivery date instead. This matters enormously for pre-orders, furniture with long lead times, travel booked months ahead, or courses that never started. If you paid in March for something due in September that never arrived, your window runs from September — not March.
The same logic applies to services that were supposed to happen on a specific date: the clock starts when the service was meant to be delivered.
There is a hard outer boundary: a Visa dispute window generally cannot start more than 540 days after the original transaction. So if you paid for something with a delivery date two years out, the network rules won't stretch indefinitely. This cap is one reason to act early rather than assuming a distant delivery date protects you.
Not every dispute category gets the full 120 days. Certain fraud-related reason codes can carry shorter filing windows — this is one of the least-known traps in the system. If your card details were stolen and used without your permission, don't wait for any deadline: report it to your issuer immediately. For fraud, speed beats strategy every time — your bank can also freeze the card and issue a new number, which stops further damage regardless of the dispute outcome.
If your card was issued in the United States, you have a second, separate protection: the Fair Credit Billing Act gives you 60 days from the date your statement was sent to dispute a billing error in writing. (For debit cards, the Electronic Fund Transfer Act's Reg E sets a similar 60-day statement-based rule.)
This is a different clock from Visa's 120 days, counted from a different starting point, with its own requirement (written notice). Missing the 60-day written notice can cost you the federal protection even if you're inside Visa's 120-day window. Our guide to the 60-day vs 120-day rules walks through how the two interact.
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