Card Network Thresholds

Card-network monitoring programs are how Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover police the dispute rates of merchants on their networks. Crossing a program threshold means warnings, fees, increased scrutiny from your processor, and — at the extreme — account termination. This page documents the lines TrustLens checks your ratios against, what each program does, and how to read the per-brand status.

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Why These Programs Exist #

Card networks subsidize disputes. When a cardholder wins a chargeback, the merchant pays the network, the cardholder gets their money back, and the network absorbs administrative cost. Networks tolerate this at low rates because disputes are part of doing business. At high rates, networks treat the merchant as either fraudulent or operationally negligent — and the programs exist to push those merchants either toward compliance or off the network.

Once you’re in a program, getting out is slow. Most programs require sustained ratio improvement over 3+ months before you graduate.

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The Lines TrustLens Uses #

Network	Program	Line	Compared with
Visa	VAMP	1.5%	Your Visa ratio
Mastercard	ECP	1.5%	Your Mastercard ratio
Amex	Excessive Disputes	1.0%	Your Amex ratio
Discover	Excessive Disputes	1.0%	Your Discover ratio

Each brand is compared only with its own network’s line. Orders paid with an “Other” brand count toward the blended ratio shown on the Pro Chargeback Monitor but are not compared with any line.

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Visa: VAMP #

VAMP — Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program #

Since 1 June 2025, VAMP has replaced Visa’s older Dispute Monitoring Program (VDMP) and Fraud Monitoring Program (VFMP) with a single ratio:

VAMP ratio = (fraud reports (TC40) + disputes (TC15)) / settled card-not-present transactions

Region	Merchant “Excessive” line	Monthly minimum
US, Canada, Europe, Asia Pacific	1.5% from 1 April 2026 (2.2% before)	1,500 fraud reports + disputes
Latin America & Caribbean	1.5%	1,500 fraud reports + disputes
CEMEA	2.2%	150 fraud reports + disputes and USD 75,000

VAMP also monitors acquirers across their whole merchant portfolio, at 0.5% and 0.7%. That is one reason processors often act on a merchant before it reaches its own line.

TrustLens compares your Visa ratio with the 1.5% line. A CEMEA store, where the line is 2.2%, can change it with the trustlens/chargeback_thresholds filter (see Changing the Lines below).

TrustLens’s Visa figure is a floor. VAMP counts fraud reports (TC40) that card issuers send to your processor when a cardholder reports a fraudulent charge, whether or not it becomes a dispute. Those reports never reach WooCommerce, so TrustLens sees disputes only. Visa’s own ratio for your store can be higher than the one TrustLens shows — especially after a card-testing attack, when stolen cards that were successfully charged produce fraud reports.

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Mastercard: ECP #

ECP — Excessive Chargeback Program #

Tier	Threshold	Consequence
Excessive Chargeback Merchant (ECM)	≥ 1.50% with ≥ 100 disputes	Monthly fees, remediation
High Excessive Chargeback Merchant (HECM)	≥ 3.00% with ≥ 300 disputes	Heavy fees, processor scrutiny

TrustLens compares your Mastercard ratio with the 1.5% ECM line. A store with a Mastercard-heavy customer base should watch this line as closely as Visa’s.

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American Express #

Amex doesn’t publish formal program tiers like Visa and Mastercard, but operates an “Excessive Disputes Program” with a typical threshold around 1.0%. Amex tends to enforce more rapidly than Visa or Mastercard — first-instance scrutiny can begin earlier.

Amex also weighs dispute outcomes more aggressively. A high lost-dispute rate (versus pending or won) accelerates scrutiny.

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Discover #

Discover’s published threshold is approximately 1.0%, similar to Amex. Discover represents a smaller share of US e-commerce dispute volume than Visa or Mastercard, so Discover-specific risk tends to be most relevant for stores with significant Discover transaction shares.

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How TrustLens Tracks Per-Brand #

On the free version, TrustLens checks each brand’s ratio for the current calendar month and shows a dashboard alert once any brand is over its line (see Chargeback Ratio Alert).

Pro’s Chargeback Monitor shows a Network program progress row for each line with:

• The program name and its line
• A progress bar showing how far your ratio is toward the line
• Your current calendar-month ratio for that brand
• A tag: OK, the percentage of the line reached once you pass the warning level (default 70%), Over, or No data when the brand has no card orders this month

Brand attribution comes from the order, not the dispute: TrustLens records the card brand when a Stripe or WooPayments payment completes. For a manually entered dispute you can choose the brand; choosing Unknown leaves the order without a brand, and disputes on orders without a brand are not counted in any ratio.

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The Trailing-30-Day Window (Pro) #

Card networks evaluate calendar months, but processors often watch rolling windows. Alongside the calendar-month figure, the Pro Chargeback Monitor shows your blended ratio for the trailing 30 days.

Why both matter: a calendar-month view resets every 30–31 days, which can hide a creeping problem. A merchant whose Visa ratio sits at 1.4% every month never crosses the 1.5% VAMP line on the calendar view, but is running just under the line all the time — and that pattern is the one most likely to concern a processor.

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The Minimum Count #

Program tiers require both a ratio and a minimum count before a merchant is enrolled — 1,500 fraud reports and disputes a month for Visa VAMP in most regions, and 100 disputes for Mastercard ECP. This matters for small stores:

Store Size	Likelihood of Program Entry
< 1,000 card orders/month	Low — even at a 5% ratio, the count stays far below the minimums
1,000–10,000 card orders/month	Moderate — dispute counts can clear Mastercard’s 100-dispute floor
10,000+ card orders/month	High — every percentage point of ratio is a hundred or more cases

TrustLens doesn’t apply these minimums: it compares the ratio alone, so a small store can cross a line in TrustLens without being anywhere near enrolment. Even below the minimums, a ratio over 1% is abnormal and signals to your processor that something is wrong. Processors will often act before networks do.

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What TrustLens Tracks vs What Networks Track #

The ratios TrustLens computes are based on the dispute data flowing into the plugin. There are edge cases where TrustLens’s view differs from your processor’s view:

• Fraud reports. Visa VAMP counts TC40 fraud reports as well as disputes. TrustLens sees disputes only, so its Visa ratio is a floor.
• Denominator. Networks divide by settled transactions. TrustLens divides by card orders in Processing, Completed, or Refunded status that have a recorded card brand.
• Webhook delays. If Stripe or WooPayments webhook delivery is delayed, your TrustLens ratio may briefly trail the actual ratio.
• Manual entry lag. If you delay logging disputes for PayPal / offline gateways, the ratio is artificially low until you catch up. A dispute counts in the month it was recorded in TrustLens.
• Dispute outcomes. A won dispute still counts toward the network’s ratio for the month it was filed. TrustLens follows the same convention: every recorded dispute counts, whatever its outcome.
• Multi-currency stores. TrustLens counts disputes and orders by number, not by value. VAMP’s CEMEA minimum is expressed in US dollars.

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Changing the Lines #

The lines can be changed in code with the trustlens/chargeback_thresholds filter. Each entry has a brand, a ratio between 0 and 1, and a label; the keys are visa_vamp, mc_ecp, amex, and discover. For a CEMEA store:

add_filter( 'trustlens/chargeback_thresholds', function ( $lines ) {
    $lines['visa_vamp']['ratio'] = 0.022; // 2.2%
    return $lines;
} );

Entries without a brand or with a ratio of zero or less are ignored, so a broken filter can’t stop the monitor. The changed lines apply everywhere the ratio is checked: the free dashboard alert, the Pro Chargeback Monitor, and Pro email alerts.

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Reading the Per-Brand View #

On the Pro Chargeback Monitor page, the per-brand rows tell you exactly where to focus. Common patterns:

• One brand much higher than others. Usually a sign that the disputes are coming from a specific gateway or customer cohort. Investigate by gateway.
• All brands rising together. Operational issue — fulfillment problems, product issues, refund policy disputes.
• Amex disproportionately high. Often indicates friendly-fraud-prone customer base; Amex cardholders dispute at higher rates and often win.
• Visa disputes rising after a card-testing attack. Stolen cards that were successfully charged during an attack come back as fraud disputes weeks later — and as fraud reports that TrustLens can’t see but VAMP counts. Tighten Card-Testing Defense and assume Visa’s own ratio is higher than TrustLens’s.