How chargebacks work during public holidays and weekends

At Paystack, our chargeback resolution timelines differ based on the location of our merchants. For merchants in Nigeria, the timeline to respond to chargebacks is 16 hours, while our merchants in Ghana, South Africa, and Kenya have 48 hours for resolution.

At the weekend, however, merchants have longer than these timelines to resolve their chargebacks, because the timeline for chargebacks only counts on business days. If a chargeback is logged on a Friday; at 11:59 pm on the same day, the 16 or 48 hours (depending on your merchant country) timeline pauses and then resumes counting down at 12:00 am on Monday morning. This gives you ample time to review, gather evidence, and respond effectively to any disputes that may have been raised. This would give you time to engage with your customers, seek additional information, or provide necessary clarifications, if necessary.

Some of our banking partners (Mastercard, Visa, and Interswitch) may still process chargebacks on public holidays, so we advise that you remain alert to dispute notifications that you may receive via email and on your dashboard. The disputes email set on your integration should be an email that is closely monitored so that you do not miss any important chargeback notifications.

For a chargeback logged on a public holiday falling between Monday and Thursday, you will have the standard timeline for resolution. However, if the chargeback gets logged on a Friday, you will have all of the weekend to resolve it.