Visa gives merchants 30 calendar days from the dispute processing date to respond to a chargeback. The deadline that matters in practice is the one set by your payment company (Stripe, Shopify Payments and the like), the company that processes your card payments, and it is much shorter.
Payment companies need time to pass replies on to the card brand (Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Discover), so their cut-offs fall well inside the 30 days. Adyen has had a 9-day window for US and Canadian merchants since 21 July 2025. Chase Paymentech has a day-24 cut-off for Collaboration cases and day-18 for Allocation. On the dispute categories most relevant to small online merchants, Stripe expects replies with at least a week of buffer in hand. A reply that misses the payment company's cut-off never reaches the card brand.
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Most missed deadlines come from a slow inbox. The notification arrives in a busy week, sits in a finance inbox, gets noticed on day 5, and reaches the person who handles disputes on day 8. By then the window has closed and the case is lost without anyone arguing it.
Plan around the first week. When a notification arrives, put the payment company's cut-off on the calendar your team watches. Pull the order record the same day, decide by day 2 whether to contest or refund, and have the reply drafted by day 4. This takes no special tools or extra staff. A merchant who first reads the notice on day 5 has already used a third of the working window.