Your Business Is in a Card Scheme Monitoring Program
Being placed in Visa's or Mastercard's monitoring program means your fraud or chargebacks have passed the card schemes' limits. It is serious but recoverable: you pay fees while you are in it, and you get out by bringing your ratio below the limit and keeping it there. Act quickly, because staying in the program is what usually ends with the account being closed.
Last reviewed October 2026
The two programs and their limits
- Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program (VAMP): fraud reports plus disputes, divided by settled transactions. Excessive from 1.5% with at least 1,500 cases in a month in the US, Canada, Europe and Asia Pacific, and 2.2% in Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
- Mastercard Excessive Chargeback Program: chargebacks this month divided by transactions last month. Excessive from 1.5% with at least 100 chargebacks, and high excessive from 3% with at least 300.
Try it with your own numbers
Chargeback ratio calculatorWork out the same figure for your own month before reading on.
What it costs
Visa charges a fee for each dispute and fraud report while a merchant is above its limit, USD 8 under the rules that took effect in 2025, and Mastercard charges program fees that rise the longer a merchant stays in. Acquirers pass these on to you, and often add their own measures on top: a reserve, delayed settlement or lower limits.
Try it with your own numbers
Rolling reserve calculatorSee what that percentage and hold period would tie up on your own volume.
How long it lasts
You leave a program when your ratio stays below the limit. Mastercard requires several consecutive months under it. A first breach at Visa can come with a short grace period before fees apply. The longer you stay above the limit, the higher the fees and the greater the risk that your acquirer closes the account, which can lead to a listing on Mastercard's MATCH list.
Your plan to get out
- Work out your ratio exactly the way each scheme does, and track it weekly.
- Find the cause: an unclear descriptor, slow delivery, renewals customers forgot, or real fraud.
- Refund quickly where a case is weak, before it becomes a dispute.
- Use the card schemes' pre-dispute alerts: disputes resolved that way do not count towards Visa's ratio.
- Tighten fraud rules and 3-D Secure on the segments where the losses come from.
- Send your acquirer a written plan with dates. It shows you are acting, and acquirers weigh that heavily.
How Ecompayer helps
Ecompayer is not a payment provider and cannot take you out of a card scheme program. If your current provider restricts or closes your account, we match you with a provider that accepts your history, so you can keep processing while you bring the ratio down.
- Add your business, volumes and chargeback figures once.
- We match you with a provider that accepts your profile.
- Your account is prepared so you can keep taking payments.
Check your own situation
Whether this is a blocker depends on your own business, not on the situation described above. Answer four questions to start checking which payment routes may fit.
Four questions about your business
Industry, company country, customer markets and estimated monthly volume, that is all we need to begin.
Related industries
Subscriptions
For recurring billing the provider decision is mostly about retry logic, card-lifecycle tooling and authentication. Those three drive more revenue than the headline processing rate.
Nutraceuticals
Supplement acceptance turns on marketing claims and billing model. A straightforward one-off retail catalogue is a very different case from a free-trial-to-continuity offer.
iGaming
iGaming acceptance is decided almost entirely by licensing and player geography. A provider that boards a Curaçao-licensed casino is rarely the same one that boards a UKGC-licensed brand, so the first step is matching your licence and markets to an acquirer's gambling programme.
Related merchant problems
Chargeback rate too high
Visa flags a merchant once fraud and disputes reach 1.5% of settled transactions in most regions, and Mastercard at 1.5% of transactions with at least 100 chargebacks in a month. Above those lines come fines, reserves and in the end a closed account. The good news: most chargebacks have a small number of causes, and the fastest fixes work within weeks.
Merchant account terminated
A termination stops your card payments and follows you into your next application. Whether it becomes a lasting problem depends mostly on one thing: whether your acquirer also put you on Mastercard's MATCH list or Visa's terminated merchant list. Find that out first, then build a file that answers the next underwriter's questions before they ask them.
Payment provider is holding your funds
When a payment provider holds your money, it is almost always protecting itself against refunds and chargebacks it might have to cover. That does not make it less painful, but it means the way out is usually evidence, not argument. Find out exactly why the funds are held and until when, send what the provider needs, and make sure you can keep taking payments in the meantime.
Related guides
Chargeback ratio
Your chargeback ratio is the number of disputes in a month divided by a month of transactions, shown as a percentage. Mastercard flags merchants from 1.5% of chargebacks and Visa from 1.5% of fraud plus disputes in most regions, both with minimum counts, and most acquirers act before that. It is the number that decides whether you keep your account, so know exactly how your provider calculates it.
High-risk payment processing fees
There is no single price for high-risk payment processing. What you pay is made up of processing fees, chargeback and scheme fees, currency and payout costs, and the cash held back in a reserve. High-risk businesses pay more than ordinary online shops because the acquirer carries more risk, but two offers for the same business can still differ a lot. The way to compare them is the effective rate on your own volume, plus the cash a reserve ties up.
Check which payment routes may fit your business
Answer a short set of questions about your business and we will check your profile against the requirements providers have given us. No approval is decided here.
Check my payment optionsNothing is shared with a provider until you submit your onboarding pack. Approval is always the provider's decision.