Chargebacks can be initiated by the cardholder up to 120 days from the purchase date or from the date the cardholder was to receive services or merchandise.
The date can also go by the last contact date of the merchant.
Retrieval requests can be made 18 months from the transaction date. A retrieval is a consumer or issuer requesting the sales receipt. Therefore merchants need to keep their reciepts / records for 2 years. For this reason, electronic signature capture is highly recommended if merchants experience occasional chargebacks. The issuer can create a chargeback for non-response of retrieval.
For virtual terminal merchants it is highly recommended that merchants use AVS for more protection. Merchandise must be shipped to the positive AVS. This should help mitigate the reversal opportunity.