Guide

The file limits that quietly reject Shopify chargeback evidence

Verified against Shopify's documentation, August 2026.

Chargeback evidence on Shopify Payments is submitted through four upload slots, and the slots enforce rules that the form barely surfaces. Merchants routinely discover them the hard way: an upload that fails at 11pm on deadline day, or a "full evidence packet" that silently never fit. Here is the complete list.

The limits

Accepted formats: PDF, JPEG, or PNG — nothing else
PDFs must be PDF/A compliant (the archival profile, not just any PDF)
Each PDF must be fewer than 50 pages
Each file must be 2 MB or less
All files combined must be 4 MB or less

The 4 MB combined ceiling is the one that changes how you work. It means "upload everything" is not a strategy — a single phone photo can be 3 MB before compression. You are working inside a budget, and the budget forces selection.

What's banned outright

Shopify's documentation is explicit that the following are not accepted as evidence:

Audio files — a recorded phone call with the customer cannot be submitted
Video files — packing-bench footage, doorbell cameras, none of it uploads
External links — a Dropbox or Drive link to "the full evidence" is functionally the same as submitting nothing; the bank's analyst will not click it
Requests to be contacted — "call us for more details" is ignored

The workaround for audio and video is a transcript or timestamped screenshots, assembled into a PDF. The workaround for a link is putting the actual document inside the file budget. There is no workaround for "contact us."

The fax detail

Shopify recommends high-contrast images that stay legible in black and white — because a fair number of issuing banks still receive chargeback evidence by fax. A screenshot with light-grey text on a white background can arrive at the analyst's desk as a blank page. If a document matters, check what it looks like without color.

Fitting a case into 4 MB

Select by reason code, not by volume. A fraud dispute turns on "the cardholder placed this order" (AVS match, order history, device and IP consistency). An item-not-received dispute turns on delivery. A not-as-described dispute turns on the product page and your communication thread. Evidence that answers a different reason code spends budget without buying anything.
Compress images before the deadline, not during it. Screenshots re-exported at reasonable resolution rarely need more than a few hundred kilobytes each.
One document per claim beats ten documents per claim. The strongest single email — the customer confirming delivery, the refund confirmation — carries more weight than the same email buried in a 40-page export.
Check the PDF/A requirement. Most office suites can export PDF/A directly ("archival" or "ISO 19005" in the export options). A non-compliant PDF is a rejected upload.

Two deadline behaviors worth knowing

First: if you never touch the dispute, Shopify still files a response on the due date, assembled from the order data it can see. What that automatic response contains — and the merchant-side slots it leaves blank — is covered in what Shopify submits for you when the deadline passes.

Second: you can submit earlier than the due date, but per Shopify's documentation, once you submit early you can't make any further edits. If you're still waiting on a carrier's proof-of-delivery scan, save your evidence and let the deadline handle submission — that keeps the case editable until the last day.

Related guides

Disclosure: Evidkit builds merchant-side chargeback tooling, so dispute forms are what we stare at all day. Everything above was verified against Shopify's own documentation in August 2026 — no product required to act on any of it. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Shopify.