The short answer: in most cases you can dispute a credit card charge going back roughly 120 days from the transaction date. That's the window the four major card networks — Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover — publish in their dispute rules. But "most cases" hides several important exceptions that can make your real deadline shorter or dramatically longer.
Card-network dispute rules generally let cardholders file for up to 120 days from the transaction date. Your bank processes the dispute through the network, so this is the window your issuer works within for the vast majority of cases: fraud, wrong amounts, duplicate charges, subscriptions that kept billing, and goods that arrived nothing like described.
A few caveats keep this honest:
If your card was issued in the United States, a second, tighter clock runs at the same time. The Fair Credit Billing Act (FCBA, 15 USC §1666) gives you 60 days from the date your statement was sent to dispute a billing error in writing.
This matters because the federal window is usually the binding one — and it has a strict written-notice requirement. A phone call to your bank starts the process, but the federal protection is triggered by written notice (a secure message in your banking app usually counts). Miss the 60 days, or dispute only by phone, and you may lose this layer of protection even while the 120-day network window is still open.
For debit cards, the equivalent federal rule is the Electronic Fund Transfer Act (Reg E, 15 USC §1693f), with a similar 60-day-from-statement written-notice structure.
Enter your transaction date once. We'll check every window that applies to you and highlight the binding deadline.
Here's the exception that extends how far back you can go. For goods or services that never arrived, card-network rules start the 120-day window at the expected delivery date — not the day you paid.
Example: you pre-order furniture in January with delivery promised in June, and it never shows up. Your window likely runs ~120 days from June, not January. Network rules cap this: the expected delivery date can't be more than 540 days after the transaction. So in extreme cases the lookback can stretch well past a year — but only for non-receipt disputes with a documented expected delivery date.
The biggest lookback of all belongs to UK credit card holders. Under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974, purchases of £100–£30,000 made on credit can be claimed against the card provider for up to 6 years from the breach of contract or misrepresentation.
This is a completely separate legal route from a chargeback — it's a claim against your lender, not a network dispute. The bar is higher (it must be a breach of contract or misrepresentation, and the price thresholds must be met), but when it applies, the time limit dwarfs every other window on this page.
Putting it together, here's a rough map of lookback limits:
If you're past the network window, don't assume all is lost — check whether a late-delivery start date, a UK Section 75 claim, or a discretionary late review by your issuer could still apply. And whatever your situation, confirm the exact deadline with your issuer: these are published rules, but your cardholder agreement has the final word.
In most cases, up to about 120 days from the transaction date under card-network rules. US federal law adds a separate 60-day-from-statement window for written disputes. Exceptions — like UK Section 75 claims at up to 6 years — can extend the lookback significantly.
Usually the transaction date. For goods or services never received, it starts at the expected delivery date instead — capped at 540 days from the original transaction.
Through standard card-network rules, usually not — the ~120-day window will likely have closed. Possible exceptions include UK Section 75 claims (up to 6 years on qualifying purchases) or a discretionary late review by your issuer. Confirm with your bank.
The ~120-day card-network window generally applies to debit too. But US federal debit protection (Reg E) has its own 60-day-from-statement written-notice rule, and debit disputes tend to be stricter in practice — file early.
No — the FCBA's 60-day rule is US federal law for US-issued credit cards. Outside the US, the card-network ~120-day window is typically the main clock, alongside local protections like the UK's Section 75.
