Payments
Dispute rate
Updated
A dispute rate is the share of a merchant's card payments that customers dispute, the number card networks and payment providers watch for risk.
There are two ways to count. Stripe shows dispute activity, which is disputes received in a period divided by payments in that period, and dispute rate, which links each dispute back to the date of the payment it disputes. Stripe's example: 1,000 payments and 10 disputes in a week, of which 3 relate to that week's payments, gives activity of 1% and a rate of 0.3%.
Card network monitoring programmes use the activity measure. Visa compares disputes or fraud with payments in the same calendar month; Mastercard compares them with payments in the previous month.
Because cardholders can dispute up to 120 days after a payment, and sometimes later, the rate for recent weeks keeps rising after the fact.
Frequently asked questions
- What is a good chargeback rate?
- As low as possible. Visa's VAMP programme flags merchants from a ratio of 1.5% in the US, Canada, EU and Asia Pacific since 1 April 2026, with at least 1,500 fraud and dispute reports a month, counting fraud reports as well as disputes.
- Do refunded disputes count?
- Under Visa's VAMP, disputes resolved through pre-dispute services such as RDR are excluded. A chargeback that was filed counts whether you win or lose it.