Chargeback

A chargeback is the formal way to get your money back on a card payment gone wrong — a double charge, an item that never arrived, a merchant you can’t reach. You raise it with your card issuer, who pushes the dispute back through the network (Visa, Mastercard) to the merchant’s bank, and if your case holds up the charge is reversed.

Why it matters: a chargeback is protection a card gives you that a raw crypto cashback transfer doesn’t — but with crypto cards, who actually handles your dispute depends on the issuer, not the brand on the card. Two quieter catches: spending crypto on a card is often a separate taxable event, so a reversal can still leave you with a tax footprint; and cashback earned on a purchase is usually clawed back if you charge it back.

For example: ether.fi Cash spells this out — its cashback is “clawed back on refunds/chargebacks,” and a refund settles at that day’s FX rate, so the amount returned may not match what you paid. The dispute itself goes through ether.fi’s card issuer, Third National (a money transmitter, not a bank), rather than the protocol — so check who handles disputes before you count on getting your money back.