Disputes and chargebacks in the settlement report

When a customer disputes a payment, the dispute surfaces in the settlement report as one or more balance transactions. How it appears depends on whether the dispute hold policy is enabled: the default reporting when it is not, or the hold → confirm → release lifecycle when it is (available on FRAMEWORK_2026, which Klarna is rolling out). This page maps each step of a dispute to the settlement transaction type and detailed_type it produces.

For the full catalog of transaction types and report formats, see Settlement report types. For how disputes work end to end — states, reasons, fees, and deadlines — see the disputes documentation.

Amounts follow the report's sign convention: positive values are credits to the Acquiring Partner, negative values are debits.

When the hold policy is not enabled, a chargeback is created only once Klarna resolves the dispute in the customer's favor. Opening a dispute doesn't produce a settlement transaction on its own.

With the hold policy enabled (FRAMEWORK_2026), Klarna withholds the disputed amount as soon as the dispute is opened, then resolves it. The lifecycle has three steps — hold, confirm, and release — that mirror the dispute's progress.

Because the disputed amount is already withheld at the hold step, the confirm step carries a zero amount — it signals that the dispute was resolved against the Acquiring Partner without moving money again.

In the settlement totals, held amounts are summed in chargeback_amount and released amounts are summed in a new chargeback_release_amount field. The zero-amount confirm step doesn't affect any total.

The dispute fee is charged when the dispute is closed, regardless of the outcome, and is non-refundable. For the full dispute fee rules and lifecycle, see the disputes documentation.

When a dispute involves a currency exchange, a rate movement may add a currency-conversion delta transaction that adjusts the settled amount by the difference; when the rate doesn't move, no delta is emitted. Two independent cases can trigger it:

The delta's direction reflects which way the rate moved:

If a dispute decision is appealed, Klarna adds an appeal fee, reported as FEE / APPEAL_FEE (debit). It's separate from the dispute fee and only appears when an appeal is raised. The appeal fee applies on FRAMEWORK_2026 with the hold policy and isn't active yet.

Separately from the dispute outcome, Klarna may issue a correction when it acknowledges an error on its side — for example, reversing a chargeback that shouldn't have been raised, or correcting a fee. Corrections credit the Acquiring Partner and are distinct from a chargeback release, which happens when a dispute is resolved in the Acquiring Partner's favor.

Whether the hold policy is enabled (available on FRAMEWORK_2026) is a per-Partner setting, and the correction report types differ accordingly.

With the hold policy the chargeback correction sits under CHARGEBACK_REVERSAL, so all credits are grouped there.