How to read a chargeback rate

You are looking at a single percentage and trying to decide whether the merchant account survives the month. That percentage is only as meaningful as the two numbers inside it, and the two networks build it on different sales months.

Stripe's monitoring guide states the split plainly. Visa divides disputes and fraud by the payments captured in the same calendar month. Mastercard divides this month's chargebacks by the payments captured last month. Both assign a dispute to the month the network received it, including disputes on older sales.

A slow month after a busy one is the trap in Mastercard's version. The numerator is fresh and the denominator is last month's volume, so the percentage rises while your ads are already off. Visa's version can do the opposite: a dispute wave from older sales lands on this month's smaller capture total and the ratio spikes for the same reason.

Three more things sit inside the Visa number and outside a plain "chargebacks divided by orders" export.

• Early fraud warnings from Visa's TC40 reports are in the count, with or without a dispute from the buyer.
• A fraudulent payment that shows up as both a fraud report and a dispute is counted twice.
• Disputes resolved through a pre-dispute product, and fraud that qualified for Compelling Evidence 3.0, are left out.

A later win stays in the month the dispute was filed. Stripe says the programs ignore who wins, because they would otherwise wait months for every case to finish. A dispute you later reverse was still filed in the month they counted.

Mastercard's excessive program has two tiers, ECM and HECM. Stripe says you enter only when both the count and the ratio pass the threshold. The ratio uses last month's captured payments, as the table's sales base column shows. A chargeback belongs to the month it was raised, including chargebacks on sales captured in that same month.

You leave only after three months in a row below the threshold. If you leave HECM and still qualify for ECM, you move down a tier and stay in the program. Stripe also says a chargeback still counts when a refund was meant to head it off, when liability had shifted, and when you won.

That is a different percentage from the one in your Shopify or tracker export, which usually divides this month's disputes by this month's orders and mixes the card brands together. Pull Visa and Mastercard apart before you compare either one with the table.

Export Visa disputes and early fraud warnings for the month, and divide by Visa payments captured in that month. Do the same for Mastercard with last month's captures in the denominator. Then read each statement descriptor on its own.

One honest limit: Stripe says some disputes it handles for you never appear in the Dashboard, and the networks still include them. A calm Dashboard and a network letter can both be right. If the descriptor, the MID or a double-counted charge is the cause, Stripe tells you to contact support with that specific mismatch.

While the account is still open, three habits change next month's dispute total: a descriptor the buyer recognises, rebill terms beside the pay button, and a refund before the customer files a dispute with their bank. Spreading sales so each account stays below the threshold is what acquirers treat as evasion, and the guide to multi-MID routing explains why.