The question we get most often is whether the bank can claw the money back. With iDEAL the answer is no, and that is not the bank being unhelpful but a property of the payment method.
iDEAL has no chargeback. A chargeback is a reversal within a card scheme, and iDEAL is not a card but a transfer you approved yourself. What does work depends on how you paid. Credit card, SEPA direct debit and PayPal each have their own reversal route, with their own deadlines that come from a contract and not from statute.
With a credit card payment you authorise a third party to collect money from you. If something goes wrong, that process can be reversed within the rules of the card scheme. That is a chargeback.
With iDEAL you make the transfer yourself, approved in your own banking environment. There is no third party that collected anything and therefore nothing to reverse. The payment was executed exactly as you instructed. That a retailer then fails to deliver is a dispute between you and that retailer, not between you and your bank.
In cases of fraud banks can sometimes make a recall request to the receiving bank, but that is a request without enforceability and it succeeds only if the money is still there. Do not count on it.
| Paid with | Reversal possible | What it rests on |
|---|---|---|
| iDEAL | No | A push payment you authorised yourself. Only the route via the retailer itself. |
| Bank transfer | No | Same reason. Recovery only with the recipient's cooperation. |
| SEPA direct debit | Yes | Reversal without giving reasons within eight weeks; for an unauthorised debit a considerably longer period applies. Governed by the direct debit scheme. |
| Credit card | Yes | Chargeback within Visa or Mastercard rules. Deadlines usually run in months and start at the transaction or at the expected delivery date. |
| PayPal | Yes | PayPal buyer protection, a contractual scheme with its own notification period. Not a statutory right. |
| Klarna, pay later | Partly | You can dispute the payment for as long as the invoice is outstanding. Pay too quickly and you lose that leverage. |
The deadlines in the right-hand column come from the terms of card schemes and payment service providers, not from statute. They can change and differ per issuer. Always check the current terms of your own bank or card issuer.
The route then runs through the contract, and that is not weaker but it is slower. You paid and received nothing, or received something else. That gives you a claim against the retailer, based on article 7:9(4) for non-delivery, on article 6:230r(1) where a refund after withdrawal fails to arrive, or on article 7:17 for non-conformity.
That claim is just as hard as a chargeback and has two advantages: it does not lapse after a few months, and it also covers interest and costs. The drawback is that somebody has to enforce it.
Anyone who files a chargeback while simultaneously telling the retailer they will wait a little longer for delivery weakens both routes. Pick one, record in writing which one you picked, and stick to it until it is finished.
Then the route via the retailer is the only one that works. We run it on your behalf, and we retain something only if it succeeds.