Mastercard's Excessive Chargeback Program.
The thresholds, the fees, the way out.

How the chargeback ratio is calculated.

Everything in the ECP hangs on one number: the chargeback-to-transaction ratio (CTR), expressed in basis points (one basis point = 0.01%). Mastercard calculates it per merchant ID, per calendar month, as:

A worked illustration, with round numbers: say you processed 20,000 Mastercard sales in May, and in June you receive 320 Mastercard chargebacks. Your June CTR is 320 ÷ 20,000 = 1.6%, or 160 basis points. That clears the ECM ratio threshold (150 bps) and the ECM count threshold (100 chargebacks) — so this MID would be identified as an ECM for June. It would not be an HECM, because HECM requires both 300+ chargebacks and 300+ basis points, and 160 bps is below that line.

The two-part test matters in the other direction too. A small merchant with 40 chargebacks against 1,000 sales is at a painful 400 basis points — but with fewer than 100 chargebacks, it isn't in the program. A large merchant with 5,000 chargebacks against a million sales is at just 50 bps — also out. Both the count and the ratio must cross the line in the same month.^1,2,3

One important nuance: shrinking your sales volume makes the ratio worse, not better, because this month's chargebacks land on top of a smaller prior-month denominator. Merchants who react to a chargeback spike by pausing ads often accelerate their own entry into the program. The lever that works is reducing disputes, not reducing sales.

ECM and HECM: the two thresholds.

Thresholds as published in acquirer program guides and payment-industry documentation, observed September 3, 2026.^1,2,3 Mastercard publishes the authoritative, current definitions in its rules; your acquirer can confirm the schedule that applies to your account.

Identification is automatic and monthly: Mastercard reviews every MID's numbers each month, places qualifying merchants in the appropriate tier, and notifies the acquirer — the bank that processes your cards — not you directly.^1,2 Your acquirer or payment provider then tells you, which is why most merchants first hear about the ECP from a processor email rather than from Mastercard.

What happens once you're in.

The first violation month is effectively a warning: you're identified, your acquirer is notified, and no assessment applies. From the second month above threshold, the assessments begin — and they escalate steeply with time in the program, not with chargeback volume. Per the program schedule published in acquirer guides (amounts in USD/EUR):^1,2

Schedule as published in acquirer program guides, observed September 3, 2026.^1,2 Mastercard can revise these amounts; treat your acquirer's notice as the operative figures for your account.

Three details worth understanding precisely:

• The month counter doesn't reset on one clean month. In the program guide's own example, a merchant flagged in January (month 1), clean in February, and flagged again in March is assessed at month 2 in March. Only three consecutive clean months reset the counter.¹
• The issuer recovery assessment scales with volume. From month 4 onward, $5 per chargeback beyond the first 300 is added. A month with 500 chargebacks adds $1,000 (200 × $5) on top of the tier assessment.^1,2
• The assessments land on your acquirer — then on you. Mastercard levies the acquirer; acquirer agreements almost universally pass the cost through to the merchant. The larger risk isn't the fee itself: an acquirer staring at escalating monthly assessments will often terminate the account instead, which can mean placement on the MATCH list and real difficulty getting processing anywhere else.^2,3

Expect your acquirer to ask for a remediation plan early — what's driving the disputes, and what you're changing. Taking that seriously in months 1–3, while the assessments are still small, is what separates merchants who exit cleanly from merchants who lose their processing.

How to exit: three clean months.

The exit rule is simple: your MID must stay below the ECM threshold for three consecutive calendar months — under 100 chargebacks, or under 150 basis points, each month. Mastercard then resets your status and removes the MID automatically; a future violation starts over at month 1.^1,2

Getting there is dispute-reduction work, and the honest version is that none of it is exotic — it's operational discipline applied quickly:

• Fix your billing descriptor first. A large share of disputes are customers who simply don't recognize the charge. Your descriptor should carry your brand name as customers know it, plus a phone number or URL. This is the cheapest fix with the fastest payback.
• Refund before it becomes a dispute. A refund costs you the sale; a chargeback costs the sale, a fee, and a tick on your CTR. During remediation, loosen your refund policy and answer support fast — every dispute you convert into a refund is one fewer chargeback in the numerator.
• Turn on dispute alerts. Alert networks (Ethoca, which is Mastercard-owned, and Verifi on the Visa side) notify you of disputes before they become chargebacks, giving you a window to refund instead. There's a per-alert cost, but during an ECP remediation the math usually favors it. We cover the tooling landscape in our guide to chargeback prevention software.
• Make cancellation easy. If you bill subscriptions, hard-to-cancel flows manufacture chargebacks. A self-serve cancel button, clear trial terms, and a reminder before rebilling all cut disputes at the source — see our guide to subscription payment gateways for how billing setup affects dispute rates.
• Keep delivery evidence. Tracking numbers, delivery confirmations, and signed-for shipments both deter "item not received" disputes and win representments when you fight the ones worth fighting.
• Find the root cause. Segment your chargebacks by product, campaign, and traffic source. Chargeback spikes are rarely evenly distributed — one offer, one affiliate, or one upsell flow is usually doing disproportionate damage, and pausing it moves the ratio faster than anything else.

Where your billing stack fits in.
Prevention is an ops problem.

Most merchants who end up in the ECP didn't have a fraud problem — they had an operations problem: charges customers didn't recognize, subscriptions they couldn't cancel, refunds that came too slowly, and no visibility into which MID's ratio was creeping up. That's the layer Admoji is built for.

To be straightforward about what that means: Admoji is not a compliance service — it doesn't negotiate with Mastercard, and no software can remove a MID from the program except by getting the numbers down. What it does is give you the billing and checkout infrastructure that keeps the numbers down:

• Real-time chargeback ratio monitoring per MID — you see a ratio trending toward 150 bps weeks before your acquirer's letter, not after it.
• Dispute date intelligence and root-cause analysis — chargebacks tied to the campaigns, products, and transactions that produced them, so you can find and fix the source.
• An evidence-driven response builder — representments backed by real transaction data rather than templates, for the disputes worth fighting.
• Clean subscription operations — self-serve cancellation, clear rebilling, and fast refunds built into the customer flow, cutting disputes before they exist.
• Net revenue reporting — refunds and chargebacks subtracted automatically per campaign, so the offer quietly generating disputes shows up in your numbers, not just your acquirer's.

Pricing is published: $79/mo + 0.35% of volume, with a 14-day free trial and no credit card required.⁶ If you're staring at an ECP notice today, start with the descriptor, the refunds, and the alerts above. If you want the ratio monitored so you never get that notice again, that's what the platform is for.

Common questions.