Submitting a Dispute Response Through the Payments Portal

Modified on Tue, 22 Jul at 10:29 AM

As a merchant, you can respond to retrieval and (most) first chargeback disputes directly in the Actionstep Payments Portal. To successfully respond to a dispute, you must enter your email contact information, add an optional note, and upload supporting documentation & evidence directly to the Portal.


For pre-arbitration disputes, and any first chargeback response that fails to upload to the Portal, please send your representment directly to our Support team. Please include the Case ID or Transaction ID in your message.  



To submit a dispute response:

  1. In Actionstep, go to Admin > Actionstep Payments.
  2. Click Open Payments Portal.
  3. Enter your sign-in details. Your sign-in credentials to the Payment Portal will be different from your normal Actionstep credentials. You are taken to the Payments Portal dashboard.
    On the left-side menu, select Disputes under Payments.
  4. On the Disputes page, select the dispute that you would like to respond to. You can only respond to disputes that have the Open status.
    NOTE:  You can use the tabs along the top of the page to filter disputes by status. By default, the Open tab is selected, and you can respond to any open disputes that appear. You can also use the search box to locate the correct dispute by searching for the transaction ID or cardholder’s name, or you can use the search box filters to find the dispute using a variety of different options.
  5. When you view the dispute you want to respond to, you will be redirected to that specific dispute’s profile page. 
  6. At the top of the page, choose the icon for the response action you’d like to take:
    • Accept Liability: A merchant can voluntarily concede to a dispute by accepting liability. When a merchant clicks the Accept Liability button, they are prompted to enter the dollar amount they are conceding to the cardholder. By default, the full disputed amount will be populated, but a merchant can also concede a partial amount and submit a representment for the remaining disputed funds. At this point, the disputed funds (that had previously been deducted from the merchant's available balance) are credited to the cardholder, and the dispute status will update to Closed.
    • Representment - Respond with Compelling Evidence: If a merchant chooses to challenge a dispute, they have the option to respond with a representment and upload compelling evidence in their defense. To submit a representment, the merchant should select Respond located at the top of the dispute’s Portal profile.
  7. In the Respond popup, enter your email address in the Contact field, enter optional text to send to the issuing bank in the Note field, and upload your compelling evidence by clicking the add icon next to the Attach Document field.


NOTE:  You can upload as many supporting documents as you need as long as no individual document exceeds 2 MB and the total upload size doesn't exceed 10 MB. 

Once you have uploaded your representment in its entirety, select Submit Response to send it to the cardholder’s issuing bank.


Once you have submitted your representment, you cannot modify or add to it in any way. Therefore, you can upload documents to your response and click Save For Later if you still need add or modify documents before formally submitting the representment.

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