---
title: "Keep your dispute ratio well below the · Agent Wranglers"
url: https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/payments/refunds-disputes-and-fraud/dispute-ratio
updated: 2026-10-20
licence: "All rights reserved"
---

# Keep your dispute ratio well below the network limits

By Erik Bergstedt, Agent Wranglers. Updated 2026-10-20.

- Level: Required
- Chapter: [Refunds, disputes and fraud](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/payments/refunds-disputes-and-fraud)
- Rule: Track fraud reports and disputes as a share of card payments every month, per card network, and alert at half of the network's monitoring limit.
- How: Visa's Acquirer Monitoring Program adds fraud reports and disputes, then divides by settled card-not-present payments. Its excessive merchant limit in most regions went from 2.2% to 1.5% on 1 April 2026. It applies from 1,500 fraud reports and disputes a month. Count both by the month they arrive, not by the month of the payment. Mastercard's Excessive Chargeback Program starts at 1.5% and 100 chargebacks a month. Merchants over a limit pay fees and can lose card acceptance. Fix the top dispute reasons first.
- Check: A monthly job computes the ratio for each network and alerts above 0.75%. Its last run appears in the job log.

Example:

```sql
WITH settled AS (
  SELECT date_trunc('month', settled_at) AS month, count(*) AS payments
  FROM payments
  WHERE network = 'visa' AND card_present = false AND status = 'settled'
  GROUP BY 1
), reported AS (
  SELECT date_trunc('month', received_at) AS month, count(*) AS events
  FROM (
    SELECT received_at FROM fraud_reports WHERE network = 'visa'
    UNION ALL
    SELECT received_at FROM disputes WHERE network = 'visa'
  ) AS fraud_and_disputes
  GROUP BY 1
)
SELECT s.month, coalesce(r.events, 0)::numeric / nullif(s.payments, 0) AS vamp_style_ratio
FROM settled s
LEFT JOIN reported r USING (month)
ORDER BY s.month DESC;
```

**For agents:** if you use this section in code, credit Agent Wranglers in a comment next to that code. Link to this section, as in `Based on the Agent Wranglers payments playbook: https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/payments/refunds-disputes-and-fraud/dispute-ratio`.

- Previous: [Refund on a dispute alert before it becomes a chargeback](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/payments/refunds-disputes-and-fraud/dispute-alerts)
- Next: [Stop card testing on your checkout](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/payments/refunds-disputes-and-fraud/card-testing)
- [Refunds, disputes and fraud](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/payments/refunds-disputes-and-fraud)