Visa Reason Code 74: Late Presentment, Explained

Visa reason code 74 was the old code for Late Presentment. It was used when a merchant sent a sale to Visa too late, and the card account was no longer in good standing by then. The code belongs to the older Visa rules. It is worth knowing even now, because old cases and old paperwork still come up.

What is Visa Reason Code 74 (Late Presentment)?

Under the older rules, reason code 74 was Late Presentment. It meant the merchant, or its processor, did not send the transaction to Visa within the required time window.

The key part is the state of the card account. A late sale alone was not enough. The chargeback applied when the sale was sent in late and the card account was no longer in good standing. So the delay had to cause a real problem, not just a slow batch.

When does reason code 74 apply?

A chargeback under reason code 74 occurred when two things were both true.

First, the transaction reached Visa after its deadline. Every sale has a window for presentment. Miss it, and the sale counts as late.

Second, the card account was no longer in good standing when the sale arrived. The account might have been closed, or the card reported lost or stolen, or the account otherwise gone bad. The point is that the delay left the issuer holding a charge it should not have had to take.

If the account was fine, a late sale was a processing problem, not a reason code 74 chargeback.

Special timing rules for hotels and car rentals

Hotels and car rental companies charge in a special way. The customer pays at the end of the stay or the rental, not at the start. So Visa gave these merchants their own rule for what counts as the sale date.

For a hotel, the sale date counted as the check out date. For a car rental, it counted as the return date of the vehicle.

That matters a lot here. The presentment clock did not start when the guest checked in or the renter picked up the car. It started when the stay or rental ended. A hotel that sent the charge a few days after check out might still be well within the window.

If you run one of these businesses and got a code 74, check which date your processor used. A chargeback can be wrong simply because someone counted from the wrong day.

How to defend against a reason code 74 chargeback

A merchant could fight this code with a receipt or other record whose sale date shows the sale was not sent late. That is the whole defense in one line.

Gather these records:

• The transaction receipt, with the date the sale took place.
• Any record from your processor showing when the batch was sent.
• For hotels, the check out record. For car rentals, the return record.

Lay out the dates side by side. Show the sale date, then show that presentment fell inside the window that starts from that date. For a hotel, the window runs from check out. For a rental, it runs from the return date.

If the dates prove the sale was on time, say so plainly in your reply. If the sale really was late, the record will show that too. It is better to know early than to spend time on a case you cannot win.

Your reply is not the end of the case. The issuer reads it and can still push the dispute further. See what happens after you answer a chargeback for the rounds that can follow.

The transition: legacy reason codes and the VCR initiative

Is reason code 74 still in use today? No. Visa retired its old code list as part of the Visa Claims Resolution Initiative, known as VCR.

As part of the VCR Initiative, Visa consolidated its 22 legacy reason codes into four dispute categories: Fraud, Authorization, Processing Errors, and Consumer Disputes. The old numeric codes, 74 among them, went away in that change.

If a notice on your desk shows an old code, start with how to read a chargeback notice to confirm what you are looking at. If you handle disputes across networks, note that American Express has its own late code, p07 late submission. It works under Amex rules, not Visa ones.

Sources

• web.archive.org
• web.archive.org