Stone · Pagar.me
Cutting chargeback tickets 43.5% with self-serve disputes
ClientStone · Pagar.me
RoleProduct Designer
Timeline2022-2023
What I owned
– End-to-end design of the chargeback experience– Support ticket analysis and competitive benchmarking– Designed dispute, tracking, and batch submission flows– Usability testing with high-impact merchants– Defined the metrics tracked after launch– Delivered against the Pagar.me design system and accessibility standards
In short
I led the design of the chargeback management experience for Pagar.me, Stone’s online payment platform, with support from fellow product designer Amadeus Schaaf, turning a manual, email-based dispute process into a self-service dashboard where merchants track, contest, and win back chargebacks.- The hard call
- Instead of polishing the email process, I replaced it with guided disputes inside the dashboard, built for merchants contesting at scale.
43.5%
Fewer chargeback support tickets18%
More disputes submittedR$2.8M+
Additional revenue disputed per yearPagar.me, chargebacks, and why merchants lose money twice
Context
Pagar.me is Stone’s online payment platform, processing transactions for thousands of Brazilian merchants. When a buyer disputes a purchase with their card issuer, the merchant receives a chargeback: the sale is contested and the money is held until the dispute is resolved.Merchants can fight back by submitting documentation that proves the sale was legitimate, a process called re-presentation. Handled well, it protects revenue and reputation. Handled badly, it means losing sales that were never fraudulent in the first place.
Chargebacks were growing 40% a year, and merchants were giving up
Problem
Chargebacks were rising around 40% per year, yet only 10% were ever disputed, and support received more than 900 chargeback requests every month. The reason was the process: the only way to contest a chargeback was by email, manual and opaque, so most merchants simply absorbed the loss.
Merchants wanted to fight chargebacks, the process just wasn’t worth it
Research insight
We started with the support tickets themselves, analyzing hundreds of monthly requests, then benchmarked five market leaders including Stripe, Adyen, and PayPal. The appetite to dispute existed. The experience punished it. Three pains kept surfacing:
ManagementManaging chargebacks was confusing.
ProcedureThe dispute procedure was unclear.
ProgressThere was no way to track progress.
The decisions that turned email threads into a dashboard
Decision 01
I centralized every chargeback in one place
Chargebacks lived in email threads and spreadsheets. A dedicated section brought the full dispute list, key metrics, filters, and export into one view.Decision 02
I made the dispute lifecycle impossible to lose track of
Transparency was a top pain. Every chargeback got a detail page with transaction data, deadlines, and a step-by-step tracker from notification to final decision.Decision 03
I replaced email disputes with guided submission
Email was where most merchants gave up. Guided in-product submission, with clear instructions and file validation, replaced the bureaucratic back-and-forth.Decision 04
I designed for merchants disputing at scale
High-volume merchants contest dozens at once. Batch submission uploads documentation for multiple disputes in one flow, with per-file matching and validation.I tested with the merchants who suffered most
Validation
We ran usability tests with the merchants most impacted by chargebacks in the previous year, walking through real-life dispute scenarios. Their feedback shaped the final flows before anything shipped.
Fewer support tickets, more disputes filed
Outcomes
We shipped the new experience in stages, and within a year the numbers turned: chargeback support tickets fell 43.5% while submitted disputes grew 18%. Merchants needed less help, fought more chargebacks, and around R$2.8M in annual sales that used to be written off went back into dispute.Pricing, risk rules, and merchant mix all moved in the same window, so the experience is one factor among several. What the numbers show clearly is the direction: less support needed, more disputes filed.
Merchants always wanted to fight chargebacks. We made it worth their time.
