Glossary
Chargeback ratio
The chargeback ratio is the number of chargebacks a merchant receives in a month divided by its number of transactions, counted per acquirer and per scheme. Visa and Mastercard run monitoring programmes with thresholds around one percent and a minimum count of disputes; a merchant above them pays fines each month it stays there and eventually loses its acquiring. The ratio is the single number high-risk payment businesses watch most.
How the schemes count
Visa compares the chargebacks received in a month with the transactions of the same month; Mastercard compares them with the transactions of the previous month, which makes a falling volume look worse. Both count per merchant identifier at the acquirer, so a merchant spread across two acquirers has two ratios. Fraud-coded chargebacks are counted in a separate programme with its own thresholds.
What drives it down
Clear descriptors on the cardholder’s statement, fast refunds before a dispute is filed, 3-D Secure where it shifts liability, velocity limits per card, and routing that keeps the riskiest traffic on the acquirer whose contract allows it, so a surge in one vertical does not drag a whole merchant account into a programme.
On the platform
Tranzify records the disputes acquirers report against the payments and shows chargebacks per terminal, merchant and period in the reports, so the client sees the ratio building up before the scheme’s letter arrives and moves traffic or limits a merchant in time.
Updated: 2026-11-08