How Long Do I Have to Dispute a Payment?

There is no single deadline. Chargeback is usually 120 days, Section 75 gives you up to six years, an unauthorised payment must be reported within 13 months, and a scam transfer within 13 months. The clock that matters is the one attached to the route you are actually using.

The part that catches people out: the deadlines run from different starting points. Chargeback counts from the transaction or from when you expected the goods, whichever is later. Section 75 counts from the breach, not the purchase. Get the start date wrong and a claim that looks expired often is not.

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Every deadline in one place

Claim	Deadline	Counts from
Unauthorised payment	13 months	The date it debited
Chargeback	Usually 120 days	Transaction, or expected delivery
Section 75	6 years (5 in Scotland)	The breach of contract
APP scam reimbursement	13 months	The payment
Direct Debit Guarantee	No fixed statutory limit	—
Complaint to the firm	They get 8 weeks to respond	Your complaint
Financial Ombudsman	6 months	Their final response

Unauthorised payments: 13 months, but report today

The Payment Services Regulations 2017 give you 13 months from the debit date to notify your bank of a payment you did not authorise.

Do not treat that as your window. The regulations also require you to report without undue delay, and your liability before you report is capped at £35 — after you report, it is nil. Every day you wait is a day the cap is still live and more payments can leave.

Once you have told them, the bank must refund by the end of the next working day. They investigate afterwards, not before.

Chargeback: usually 120 days, and the start date is the useful bit

Chargeback is a card scheme rule rather than a legal right, so the deadline comes from Visa, Mastercard or Amex rather than from statute. In practice it is 120 days.

What people miss is where it starts. For goods or services you never received, the 120 days runs from the date you expected delivery, not the date you paid. Order something in January for March delivery that never arrives, and your window runs from March.

For an ongoing service that stopped — a gym that closed, a subscription that went dark — it runs from when the service stopped being provided.

There is an outer limit of around 540 days for some claim types, but do not plan around it.

Section 75: six years, and it is the strongest clock you have

Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 has no short window. You have six years from the breach of contract in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and five years in Scotland.

That is a completely different order of magnitude from chargeback, and it is why the route matters more than the speed. If you paid by credit card for something costing between £100 and £30,000, a claim that is far too late for chargeback can still be perfectly live under Section 75.

The six years runs from when the contract was breached — when the goods failed, when the company did not deliver — not from the day you handed over the card.

Scam transfers: 13 months

If you were tricked into transferring money to a fraudster, the mandatory reimbursement rules that took effect on 7 October 2024 give you 13 months from the payment to claim.

The firm must reimburse within five working days of your claim. The cap is £85,000, and firms may apply an excess of up to £100.

The Direct Debit Guarantee has the loosest clock

If a direct debit was taken in error — wrong amount, wrong date, or one you had cancelled — the Direct Debit Guarantee entitles you to an immediate full refund from your bank.

There is no statutory time limit written into the Guarantee itself. Banks commonly apply 13 months in practice, and the further back you go the more likely you are to be asked to take it up with the company instead. Claim early and it is close to automatic.

After the deadline: what still works

A missed deadline on one route does not end the matter.

• Chargeback expired? If it was a credit card and the item was over £100, Section 75 probably has years left on it.
• Section 75 doesn't apply? If the amount is under £100 or you paid by debit card, chargeback may still be open depending on the start date.
• Both gone? The company still owes you under consumer law. The Consumer Rights Act 2015 gives you rights against the retailer directly, and the general limitation period for a contract claim is six years.

The complaint clocks are separate

These run in addition to the claim deadlines, and people miss them because they assume the fight is over when the bank says no.

The firm gets eight weeks to give you a final response. If they miss it, or you get the answer sooner and disagree, you can go to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

You have six months from the final response to take it to the Ombudsman. That one is strict, and it is the most commonly missed deadline in the whole process — people spend four months arguing with the bank, then find the Ombudsman window closed while they were doing it.

There are also outer limits: generally six years from the event, or three years from when you knew (or should have known) you had cause to complain, whichever is later.

The Ombudsman is free, and its decisions bind the firm if you accept them.

What to do today if you are near a deadline

Put the claim in writing now, even if it is incomplete. A dated complaint stops the clock in a way a phone call does not.

State the route explicitly — "chargeback", "Section 75", "unauthorised transaction under the PSRs" — because that determines which deadline the bank applies to you. A vague request for a refund can be logged as a general query and quietly time out.