Your dispute-to-sales ratio compares the number of monthly payment disputes you receive to your total monthly volume of sales. Your dispute ratio is carefully monitored by your processor, acquirer, and card brands. If your ratio is too high, you could be placed in a monitoring program which involves penalties up to and including account termination.

There are a variety of reasons why your ratio might be higher than expected or increase unexpectedly. A high ratio may indicate poor customer experience, inadequate fraud prevention, or unclear billing practices.

AltoPay provides detailed, real-time reporting to help you continuously monitor your ratio. Our customer support team also monitors various risk metrics and can reach out if your trendline changes significantly. It’s important to catch influxes early, identify the underlying cause for disputes, and solve problems at their source.

NOTE: The dispute-to-sales ratio was exclusively used by Visa and was technically retired when Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program (VAMP) launched in April 2025. Now, Visa monitors on the VAMP ratio instead. The rest of the payments industry uses the term chargeback-to-transaction ratio.