How to Cancel a Payment Made With a Credit Card

Credit card payments can simplify your life and eliminate the amount of cash you have to carry or the hassle of remembering due dates for bills. However, there may be times when something comes up, and you need to cancel a credit card payment. How you cancel a payment depends on the situation at hand.

Online banking with your credit card account can enable you to set up scheduled payments to pay recurring bills. If you need to cancel a payment you’ve scheduled with a credit card, log in to your account and navigate to the area where you can schedule payments or make adjustments to existing payments. Select the payment in question and cancel it by clicking the appropriate menu item. You can either reschedule it for a different date, or you can remove it from your payment schedule completely. Confirm the change after you finish it to make sure you didn’t make any mistakes.

The Fair Credit Billing Act gives consumers protection from billing errors that might occur with a credit card account. If you ever find unauthorized charges or mistakes in the date or amount of a charge, you can dispute the charge to have it cancelled. Under the law, you have to contact the creditor by letter within 60 days of the first inaccurate bill you received to dispute a charge. The creditor has to respond and investigate. The creditor will either remove the charge if it was wrong, or the creditor will respond with a written explanation of why and how you owe the money.

If you want to cancel a payment you made because the goods or the services you received were faulty, you also have recourse under the FCBA. Generally, purchases above $50 and made in your state of residence or within 100 miles of your billing address have protection under the FCBA. Many merchants waive this requirement, though, and will work to resolve issues that don't meet these criteria. You still need to contact the merchant to try to resolve the problem with your purchase.

If you can’t reach a resolution with the merchant, contact your credit card issuer for help with getting your payment cancelled. Write a letter to the credit card company, describing the problem with the goods or service. Identify the closing date of the bill that shows the disputed charge and the disputed charge amount in your letter. Describe the problem and the reason you want to cancel the payment. Make a copy of the letter you sent to the merchant and enclose it with your letter. Send the letter to the credit card company via certified mail with a return receipt requested. The credit card company will investigate and make a decision about cancelling or upholding the payment.