Glossary
Chargeback
A card payment reversed by the cardholder's bank after a dispute: the casino loses the deposit and pays a fee. Affiliate terms usually let the operator claw back commission already paid on that player.
Also called: CB, card dispute, payment dispute, payment reversal.
The player tells their bank they didn't authorize the deposit, and the bank pulls the money back through the card scheme. Some disputes are genuine: a stolen card, a hacked account. Others come from players who lost and want their money back, usually called friendly fraud. The casino often learns about it late, because card scheme rules give cardholders months to dispute, which can be longer than a typical hold.
The clause to find is the clawback, sometimes called reversal or adjustment. On CPA it lets the operator deduct a commission already paid when the qualifying deposit is charged back, usually from your next payout. On RevShare, chargebacks are subtracted from the revenue your share is calculated on, and with negative carryover one bad month can eat into the next.
Ask how long the clawback window is, whether it takes back the whole CPA or only part of it, and whether chargebacks show per player in your reports. A cluster of chargebacks from one source is the pattern that gets traffic investigated for fraud.
Related terms: Hold, Fraud, Negative carryover, Net gaming revenue, PSP.