What a chargeback is
A chargeback is the process by which a cardholder's issuing bank reverses a card transaction and returns the funds to the cardholder, debiting the merchant. It is distinct from a refund: a refund is a payment the merchant chooses to send back, while a chargeback is imposed on the merchant by the card networks after the customer raises a dispute with their bank — for a transaction they did not recognise, goods that never arrived, an item that was not as described, or a charge they claim was unauthorised.
The reversal runs on the card rails, not on the merchant's side. The issuer credits the cardholder, the funds are clawed back from the merchant's acquirer, and the merchant typically also pays a per-dispute fee. The merchant can contest the chargeback by submitting evidence, but the outcome is decided through the card network's dispute rules, and a high chargeback rate can put a merchant's payment processing at risk. This ability to reverse a settled card payment, sometimes weeks or months after the fact, is what makes chargebacks a structural cost and risk of accepting cards.
Why crypto payments have no chargebacks
A confirmed on-chain payment is final. Once a transaction is included in a block and reaches the network's settlement guarantee, no bank or third party can reverse it — there is no issuer to claw the funds back and no dispute channel that can move coins out of the recipient's address. The closest on-chain event to an involuntary reversal is a chain reorganization, which can briefly undo a very recent transaction before it is final, but that is a temporary settlement state, not a customer-initiated dispute. Waiting for confirmations is what removes that risk; after finality the payment cannot be pulled back.
This changes the merchant's risk profile. With cards, a payment that looked complete can be reversed long after fulfilment, so fraud and dispute risk sit with the merchant. With crypto, settlement risk is concentrated up front — the question is whether a deposit is confirmed and final, not whether it might be reversed later. The trade-off is that finality cuts both ways: because the network will not reverse a payment, sending money back to a customer is a deliberate, merchant-initiated action rather than something a bank can force. That action is a refund, which is a separate outbound payment, not a chargeback.
What this means on halfin
halfin settles crypto payments on-chain, so there is no card-style chargeback to defend against. A deposit is credited reorg-aware: the invoice reflects that a payment is confirming, and is only marked paid once the transaction has reached the per-chain confirmation threshold that stands in for finality on that network. Crediting only sticks once the deposit is deep enough to rely on, so a transaction undone by a reorganization before it is final does not leave a paid invoice behind. Once an invoice is paid, that settlement is final and cannot be reversed by the customer or their bank.
Returning money to a customer is therefore an explicit merchant decision rather than an externally forced reversal. halfin handles that through refunds and payouts — outbound transfers the merchant initiates — not through any dispute mechanism that can move funds without the merchant's action. For an online business, this removes chargeback fraud and dispute fees from the accept-payment path, while shifting attention to confirming finality before treating a payment as money in hand.