Card schemes monitor chargeback ratio monthly. Crossing roughly 0.9% of transaction count puts a merchant into a remediation programme; sustained breaches lead to fines and termination. In high-risk verticals the ratio is not a reporting metric — it is your licence to keep processing.
Prevent before you dispute
The cheapest chargeback is the refund you issued first. Clear billing descriptors that match your public brand, a visible cancellation path, order confirmation emails and responsive support in the customer's language typically remove 20-40% of disputes before they reach the issuer.
Descriptor mismatch alone accounts for a large share of "unrecognised transaction" claims — the customer genuinely does not know who charged them.
Use alerts and deflection networks
Ethoca and Verifi-style alerts let you refund a disputed transaction within the alert window, so it never becomes a chargeback and never counts toward your ratio. For subscription and digital-goods merchants, alert coverage is usually the highest-ROI risk investment available.
Fight only what you can win
Representment costs staff time. Prioritise cases with delivery proof, IP and device match, AVS/CVV results, and signed terms acceptance. Track win rate by reason code and stop contesting categories where you consistently lose; the ratio improvement comes from prevention, not from heroic dispute volume.
Instrument everything
Daily dashboards by reason code, product, geography and traffic source turn chargebacks from a monthly surprise into a controllable operational signal. Most spikes trace back to one campaign, one affiliate or one product page.
Talk to our payment team about your markets.
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