Chargeback ratio checker: your dispute ratio against Visa and Mastercard thresholds

The short answer: Mastercard puts a merchant in its Excessive Chargeback Merchant (ECM) tier at 100 chargebacks and a 1.5% ratio in the same month, and in the High Excessive tier (HECM) at 300 chargebacks and 3%. Visa's excessive line in the US, Canada, Europe and Asia Pacific is 150 basis points (1.5%), counted on fraud reports plus disputes, once that count reaches 1,500 a month. Most processors start worrying near 0.9%. Check your own numbers below.

This is an estimate. It uses your chargebacks and transactions only. Visa's published ratio also counts fraud reports and divides by settled card-not-present transactions, and Mastercard divides by the previous month's sales, so your processor's figure can differ from this one.

How chargeback ratio is calculated

Divide the chargebacks you received in a period by the transactions you processed in it. Card networks quote the result in basis points, where 100 basis points equal 1%. So 180 chargebacks on 20,000 transactions is 0.9%, or 90 basis points.

Each network then adjusts that simple formula. Visa's Acquirer Monitoring Program fact sheet defines the VAMP ratio as fraud reports (TC40) plus disputes (TC15), divided by settled transactions (TC05), and it covers card-not-present sales only. Some disputes resolved through pre-dispute tools or Compelling Evidence 3.0 are left out, depending on when the data arrives. Mastercard divides this month's chargebacks by last month's sales, as both JPMorgan's excessive chargeback FAQ and Braintree's program summary describe it. That lag makes a fast-growing month look worse than it is, which is why the calculator has an optional field for last month's count.

A dispute you win can still sit in the ratio your processor watches. Sellers in payment forums keep reporting that disputes they won still counted against them, so plan as if every chargeback that arrives is counted.

Visa: the VAMP thresholds this checker uses

Visa folded its old dispute and fraud monitoring programs into the Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program, effective 1 April 2025, with an advisory period that ran to 30 September 2025.

Visa names a merchant as excessive only when both of these are true:

• A VAMP ratio of 150 basis points or more in Asia Pacific, Canada, Europe and the United States, in force since 1 April 2026 according to the fact sheet. Latin America and the Central Europe, Middle East and Africa region have separate rules, which this checker leaves out.
• At least 1,500 fraud reports plus disputes in the month. Visa's program update calls this the minimum VAMP count and says it exists to keep normal business swings out of the program.

The count matters more than most sellers expect. A store with 400 chargebacks on 20,000 orders has a 2% ratio, yet it is well under 1,500 events, so Visa's published rule does not put it in the excessive tier. Its acquirer can still act on its own terms.

Before VAMP, Visa's dispute program applied at a dispute-to-sales ratio above 0.90% with more than 100 disputes in a month, as JPMorgan's 2022 monitoring programs FAQ put it. That rule is retired. The calculator still shows it as the acquirer warning line, because it is where many processors and high-risk providers still draw their own limit.

Mastercard: ECM and HECM thresholds

Mastercard's program needs both numbers at once. JPMorgan's FAQ states that a merchant ID "must exceed both number of chargebacks and chargeback basis points thresholds to be noncompliant," and Braintree's Mastercard program page dates that dual rule to October 2019. Both are acquirers' summaries of Mastercard's rules.

Mastercard's own merchant guidance on disputes warns that a high ratio may bring higher fees and a frozen merchant account. That risk applies whether or not you win the individual cases.

Worked examples: three months, three outcomes

The first month has enough chargebacks for Mastercard's count, but 0.9% is far from the 1.5% ratio, so it stays out of ECM. On Visa it is 60 basis points under the excessive line and nowhere near 1,500 events. It does sit exactly on the old 0.90% acquirer level, which is where a processor's risk team usually starts asking for a chargeback plan.

The second row is a smaller store with a worse rate. Its 100 chargebacks reach Mastercard's count while the 1.25% ratio still misses the tier, and Visa's line is 25 basis points away. Ten more chargebacks on the same volume would not change the network picture, but they would push it past both parts of the retired 0.90% and 100-dispute rule.

The third month crosses both of Mastercard's ECM conditions. Its 160 basis points also clear Visa's ratio, but 240 events is far below the 1,500 minimum, so Visa's published rule would not name it excessive. That gap between networks is the main reason to check both.

What is a good chargeback ratio?

My take: if you sell supplements, trial offers or anything else on cold paid traffic, keep every merchant account under 0.9% and act on the first month that creeps toward it. The network programs start at 1.5%, but processors set reserves, raise fees and close accounts well before that, and the 0.90% line from the old Visa rules is still the one high-risk providers quote. Our guide to high-risk merchant account providers covers how reserves and underwriting react to a rising rate.

Spreading volume across more accounts lowers each account's count but does nothing for the underlying rate. The MID capacity planner turns sales, a per-account cap and that ratio into an account count. Order-management platforms built for rebilling offers watch this per account. The Sticky.io review covers its VAMP-aware monitoring and MID health alerts, and the Konnektive review covers the CRM many direct-response brands run beside it. To bring the rate itself down, our guide to chargeback management software compares Ethoca and Verifi alerts and the providers that resell them. The Chargeflow review is the self-serve vendor in that set, with the public per-use fees and the invoice complaints beside them.

Limits of this calculator

It leaves out three things a processor's report includes. Fraud reports (TC40) add to Visa's count and ratio, and only your acquirer can see them. Pre-dispute exclusions can lower the Visa number. Card-present sales are left out of VAMP's denominator, so if you also sell in person, enter your online transactions only. Processor-specific limits at Stripe, Shopify Payments or a high-risk acquirer are set in your contract, and some are tighter than any network rule. Read the monitoring clause before the first campaign scales.

If you are still choosing where to process, our guide to merchant of record vs payment processor explains who carries the chargebacks in each model, and the checkout cost calculator shows what each platform charges at your monthly revenue. More tools and rankings are on the Best of hub, and how we research explains where our figures come from.