PayShyld
Sign in Create an account
For high-risk e-commerce and subscription merchants

Stay under the 1.5% line1 without a dispute team.

PayShyld refunds Ethoca and Visa CDRN alerts inside the network window, manages your Visa RDR rules, fights the chargebacks that still land on a success fee, and projects your VAMP and ECM ratios for every MID. Built for subscription, nutra, travel, gaming, dating and digital-goods merchants running several MIDs across several acquirers.

Create an account Sign in

Start in sandbox mode: run alerts, RDR events and chargebacks against simulated issuers before anything touches a real transaction or is billed.

  • Ethoca Alerts
  • Visa CDRN
  • Visa RDR
  • Visa · Mastercard · Amex · Discover reason codes
  • NMI
  • Authorize.net
  • Sticky.io
  • Konnektive
  • Stripe
The pressure

The thresholds got tighter, the windows did not get longer.

High-risk MIDs live close to the card networks' monitoring programs. Breaching them means fines, reserves, termination and a MATCH listing, and the alert windows that let you avoid a chargeback are measured in hours.

1.5% Visa VAMP "excessive" merchant threshold

In force since 1 April 2026 for the US, Canada, Europe and Asia-Pacific, with a minimum of 1,500 counted events.1 Processors report a fee of about $8 per counted event.2

100 & 1.5% Mastercard Excessive Chargeback Merchant trigger

Monthly assessments escalate from $1,000 to $100,000 the longer a merchant stays in the program; the High ECM tier (300 chargebacks and 3%) runs to $200,000.3

24–72 h Window to refund and answer an alert

CDRN allows 72 hours from delivery.4 Ethoca windows are documented at 24 to 72 hours depending on the source; an unanswered alert is deemed refunded and billed anyway.5,6

~20% Share of represented chargebacks merchants win

Issuers win about 75% of represented cases according to Mastercard and Datos Insights.7 Chargebacks911's 2026 field report puts average net recovery at 10.7%.8

A refund does not erase the fraud report

Resolving an RDR or CDRN case removes the dispute record (TC15) from VAMP, but the issuer's fraud report (TC40) still counts.10 On Mastercard, Ethoca-resolved disputes do not count toward dispute rates.11 Ratio management has to model both, per network, per MID.

The downside is not just a fine

Beyond program fees come reserves, account termination and a MATCH listing that stays for five years.13 Merchants with several MIDs across several acquirers have to watch each one against the lowest threshold that applies, including the acquirer's own internal limit.

The volume keeps rising

Mastercard and Datos Insights project 286 million chargebacks in 2026 at a cost of $36.9 billion.9 Mastercard reports that Ethoca alerts prevented more than 39 million chargebacks in 2025.15

Evidence is the bottleneck

In the same 2026 field report, 29% of merchants name evidence collection as their biggest obstacle and 23.5% pull it from five or more systems.8 Small teams cannot do that by hand inside processor deadlines.

Four services, one platform

Prevent what can be prevented. Recover what cannot.

Every part of the dispute lifecycle in one tenant, from the pre-dispute alert to the won representment, with the ratio you are managed against always on screen.

Ethoca · Visa CDRN

Pre-dispute alerts, resolved before they become chargebacks

Alerts are delivered through our wholesale alert partners, matched to the order in your gateway or CRM, and resolved by rules you set, inside the network window.

  • Matched by ARN, then transaction reference, then card last 4 + amount + date. No single confident match sends the alert to an analyst queue instead of guessing.
  • Actions per rule: full or partial refund, cancel the subscription, add the customer to your blocklist, or hold for your decision with a timed fallback.
  • Duplicate detection when Ethoca and CDRN both fire on one transaction; already-refunded transactions are reported with the correct outcome.
  • Outcome reported to the network with the right code and refund reference. An SLA monitor escalates alerts nearing their deadline to your team, then to ours.

Refunds run through your own gateway or CRM · idempotent · verified by read-back

Verifi Rapid Dispute Resolution

Visa RDR, configured, versioned and reconciled

RDR accepts qualifying Visa pre-disputes at the network, so they never arrive as chargebacks. PayShyld manages the rules, ingests the outcomes and keeps your books straight.

  • Rule builder with presets: Ratio protection, Accept all, Balanced, or custom rules by amount per currency, reason category or code, and BIN range.
  • Every change is a new version with author, timestamp and diff, and a sync status against the rule set active at Verifi.
  • Break-even calculator shows the amount below which accepting a dispute costs less than fighting it.
  • Outcome 103 (accepted) triggers post-resolution actions such as cancelling the subscription; 957 (no rule matched) pre-links the incoming chargeback. A double-refund guard flags any refund your system issues for the same transaction.

Per-merchant or per-MID rule sets · versioned, with sync status against Verifi

Representment on a success fee

Chargebacks fought with evidence that cites its source

Chargebacks that still land are ingested, evidenced, drafted and submitted. You pay a percentage only of the amount actually recovered on a won case.

  • Intake from acquirer dispute reports (CSV/XLSX), email notifications, processor APIs or manual entry.
  • Reason-code library for Visa, Mastercard, Amex and Discover, each code mapped to the evidence it requires.
  • Evidence collected automatically from your connected systems; every item records its source system, record ID and retrieval time.
  • Template or AI-assisted drafting with a citation validator: every factual sentence must cite an exhibit, and a human approves before anything is submitted.
  • PDF packet built within each processor's size and page limits; submitted by API, by an analyst into the acquirer portal, or by you with a confirmation reference.
  • An explainable representment-strength score per case, and outcome tracking through pre-arbitration.

Won case later reversed → the success fee is credited back in full

Visa VAMP · Mastercard ECM / HECM

Know where every MID stands, this month and next

Month-to-date and projected ratios per MID and per network, measured against the lowest threshold that applies to you, whether it is the network's or your acquirer's.

  • VAMP computed as fraud reports plus disputes over settled card-not-present count; ECM against the prior month's sales count, as the networks define them.
  • Warnings at 60%, 80% and 100% of threshold, each with recommended actions: tighten RDR acceptance, enroll uncovered MIDs, adjust refund policy.
  • Alert- and RDR-resolved disputes are excluded and fraud reports retained, so the figure you see is the one the network counts. Where fraud-report data is missing, the monitor says so and labels the figure a lower bound.
  • Coverage view shows which MIDs and descriptors still lack active alert enrollment.

Settled counts from connectors or your processor statements

How it works

From account to live alerts, in four steps you can watch.

Onboarding is a guided wizard, enrollment is tracked per MID and per network product, and nothing goes live until its first real notification has been received and matched.

  1. Create an account

    Sign up with email verification and two-factor authentication. Start in sandbox mode with simulated issuers, or go straight into onboarding.

  2. Onboarding wizard

    Eight guided steps, saved as you go.

    Company · KYB documents · acquirers, MIDs, descriptors and BIN/CAID (CSV import for many MIDs) · connectors · alert products per MID · RDR rules · automation rules · agreement & billing

  3. Review & enrollment

    After our review, each MID and descriptor is enrolled in Ethoca, CDRN and RDR through the alert partner. You see every enrollment move from submitted to pending to active, and coverage % on your dashboard.

  4. Live

    An enrollment is verified when its first alert or RDR notification is received and matched. Alerts, RDR events, ratio gauges and your queue are live; representment runs on whatever chargebacks still arrive.

Alert flow An alert from Ethoca or Visa CDRN is delivered by the wholesale alert partner, matched to the merchant's order, decided by the merchant's automation rule, executed in the merchant's gateway or CRM, and the outcome is reported to the network inside the window. An SLA monitor escalates alerts nearing their deadline. Network Cardholder disputes a charge → Ethoca or Visa CDRN alert 1 Alert delivered by the wholesale alert partner Raw payload stored · response deadline computed Duplicate check across Ethoca and CDRN 2 Matched to your order ARN → transaction ref → last 4 + amount + date No single confident match → analyst queue 3 Your automation rule decides Refund, full or partial · cancel subscription Blocklist · or hold for your decision, timed fallback 4 Action executed in your gateway or CRM Idempotent request · status read back to verify Failure → retried, then escalated to an analyst 5 Outcome reported to the network In the window, with refund amount and reference No chargeback is filed SLA monitor, every minute Alerts nearing their deadline escalate to your team, then to our analysts
Alert flow: the five states every Ethoca or CDRN alert passes through, with the SLA monitor running alongside.
Alert lifecycle

An alert becomes a refund, a cancelled subscription and a reported outcome, inside the window.

Every step is recorded in the alert's audit trail: the rule and version that matched, each request to your gateway and its response, the outcome payload and the network's acknowledgement.

  1. Delivery and deadlineThe raw payload is stored before anything else happens. The response deadline comes from the partner's expiry or a per-network default, and every timer runs against it with a safety margin.
  2. MatchingYour connected gateways and CRMs are queried by ARN, then transaction reference, then card last 4 + amount + date. Candidates are scored; only one confident match is accepted automatically.
  3. Your rulesOrdered, first-match-wins rules on source, type, amount, MID, product, subscription status, customer history and more. Vertical defaults are suggested at onboarding, and every change to the rule set is versioned.
  4. Execution and reportingRefunds and cancellations run in your systems with an idempotency key and are verified by reading the status back. The outcome is then reported with the correct code, including the already-refunded cases.
  5. Manual modeMerchants without a refund-capable connector get the alert in their queue with one-click "I refunded it" or "Not refunding", reminders as the window closes, and an analyst escalation before it expires.
Representment flow A chargeback is ingested from an acquirer report, email notice, processor API or manual entry; triaged by reason code and processor due date; evidence is collected from connected systems; a response is drafted with a citation validator; the merchant approves and a PDF packet is built; the case is submitted by API, by an analyst or by the merchant; and the outcome is tracked, with the success fee charged only on recovered amounts. Acquirer / processor A chargeback is filed against one of your MIDs 1 Ingested Acquirer report (CSV / XLSX) · email notice Processor API · manual entry 2 Triaged Reason code → evidence checklist · due-date queue Linked to a prior alert or RDR on the transaction 3 Evidence collected From your systems · source and record ID per item Every file scanned for card numbers and redacted 4 Response drafted, template or AI-assisted Every factual sentence must cite an exhibit Citation validator · representment-strength score 5 You approve Letter and exhibits side by side · packet built within the processor's size and page limits 6 Submitted By API · by our analyst in the portal · or by you Confirmation reference and time recorded 7 Outcome tracked Won → success fee on the recovered amount Lost → optional pre-arbitration · reversal → fee credited
Representment flow: seven states from ingestion to outcome. Nothing is submitted without human approval.
Representment lifecycle

Every claim in the response points at an exhibit. Every exhibit says where it came from.

Representment is where the success fee is earned, so the process is built for auditability: provenance on every evidence item, a validator that rejects uncited sentences, and a human approval before any submission.

  1. Deadline engineWork is driven by the processor's due date, not the network's longer window, minus an internal buffer. Queues are ordered by time remaining.
  2. Triage with contextIf an alert was already refunded and a chargeback still arrives, the case is flagged "credit already issued", which is itself the defence for credit-not-processed codes. A fight recommendation weighs the expected value of the case against the fee and your effort.
  3. Evidence with provenanceOrder record, customer details, AVS/CVV and 3-D Secure results, policy acceptance, subscription history, delivery confirmation, support conversations and prior undisputed transactions, each with source system, record ID and retrieval timestamp.
  4. Drafting under guardrailsInputs are redacted of card numbers and personal data. The model may write narrative only, never documents or data. Prompt and model versions are stored with the draft.
  5. Approval policy, your choiceRequire your approval on every case, let our analysts approve, or auto-approve below an amount when all required evidence is present.
Integrations

Connects to the gateways and CRMs high-risk merchants actually use.

Access is granted with credentials you create in your own accounts and can revoke at any time. PayShyld never asks you to move processing.

Payment gateways

Transaction lookup · refund · void · subscription cancellation

  • NMI
  • Authorize.net

Subscription CRMs

Orders, customers, subscriptions · refund · cancel · blocklist

  • Sticky.io
  • Konnektive
  • CheckoutChamp

Payment service provider

Charges, subscriptions and disputes · refund · dispute evidence submission

  • Stripe (restricted API key)

Files

Acquirer dispute reports · settled transaction counts · MIDs in bulk

  • CSV import
  • XLSX import

Acquirer and processor portals

Chargeback notices, case documents, outcomes · assisted submission

  • Dedicated mailbox added as a portal user

Alert networks

Delivered and enrolled through wholesale alert partners

  • Ethoca Alerts
  • Visa CDRN
  • Visa RDR

Credentials you create

API keys generated in your own gateway, CRM or PSP account, with the minimum permissions listed in our setup guide. They are stored in an encrypted vault, never shown again, and you can revoke them at any time.

No platform registrations

PayShyld does not register as a partner app with your PSP or card scheme. Your go-live does not wait for a third party's approval, and you stay in control of the access.

A portal user for acquirers without an API

PayShyld generates a dedicated mailbox per processor; you add it as a portal user with dispute view-and-respond rights only. It receives chargeback notices and one-time passcodes, and our analysts use it for assisted submission and outcome checks.

Security & compliance

Built to hold dispute data for many merchants without ever holding a card number.

The platform is designed to stay outside card-data and money-transmission scope by construction, not by policy. Here is what that means in practice.

No full card numbers

Only the BIN and last four digits are stored, in one truncation format. Every input and every uploaded file is scanned, including by OCR, and anything that looks like a card number is redacted or blocked before storage.

Two-factor authentication, mandatory

Every user enrolls an authenticator app or security key. Sessions time out when idle and can be listed and revoked.

Tenant isolation at the database level

Every row carries its tenant, enforced by database row-level security on each query, with per-tenant encryption keys for sensitive fields and files.

Append-only, hash-chained audit log

Every state change, refund, outcome, submission, approval and AI prompt is written to a tamper-evident log you can search and export.

Encrypted credential vault

Gateway, CRM, PSP and portal credentials live in a secrets vault with envelope encryption. They are never displayed after entry, not even to our staff.

Role-based access

Owner, Admin, Ops, Finance, Developer and Read-only roles, optionally scoped to groups of MIDs. Our staff's access to your account is read-only by default and audited; write access is time-boxed and visible to you.

AI with guardrails

Drafting receives redacted inputs only, must cite an exhibit for every factual sentence, is logged with its prompt and model version, and never submits anything without a human approval.

Sandbox mode

Try every screen with simulated issuers: alerts arrive, rules fire, RDR events post, chargebacks are drafted. Nothing is sent to a card network, nothing is billed.

Outside card-data and money-transmission scope, by design

PayShyld never stores, processes or transmits full card numbers; the PCI Security Standards Council treats properly truncated numbers as not cardholder data.14 PayShyld never takes custody of funds: refunds run through your gateway, recovered chargebacks are credited by your acquirer to you, and our fees are invoiced separately. Your own obligations as a merchant are unchanged.

Read the full security position
Pricing model

Usage you can audit, a success fee only on money you got back.

Rates are set in your contract. The structure is the same for everyone, and every billable event is visible in your usage ledger before it reaches an invoice.

Component Basis Charged when
Platform fee Monthly subscription, plan-based Monthly, in advance
Alert fee Per Ethoca or CDRN alert received When the alert is received
RDR fee Per Visa pre-dispute accepted through your RDR rules (outcome 103) When the acceptance is received
Success fee A percentage of the amount recovered on a won representment, with an optional per-case cap and minimum When the case is won and the funds are confirmed credited to you
Clawback A credit note for the full success fee If a won case is later reversed at pre-arbitration or arbitration

What you never pay for

  • Lost cases, or cases you decide not to fight: they are closed without a fee.
  • Pre-arbitration responses: they are covered by the success fee on the original case.
  • Custody of your money: refunds run through your own gateway and recovered chargebacks are credited by your acquirer directly to you. Our fees are invoiced separately.
  • Hidden meters: each billable event in the ledger links to its alert, RDR event or case, and invoices itemise to the line.

Your contract sets the rates, the success-fee percentage and any caps. Duplicate alerts on one transaction, for example when Ethoca and CDRN both fire, are marked in the ledger and handled as your contract specifies. Your billing screen shows current-period usage by product, success fees pending and released, invoices with line-item drill-down, and a payment method managed through a hosted billing portal.

FAQ

Questions high-risk merchants ask first.

Which alerts do you support, and how do you receive them?

Ethoca Alerts (Mastercard), Visa CDRN and Visa RDR notifications. PayShyld does not connect to Ethoca or Verifi directly; alerts are delivered and enrollments are made through wholesale alert partners that sell network connectivity to platforms. Your MIDs and descriptors are enrolled per network product through that partner, and the enrollment identifiers are stored so they stay portable.

How does an alert turn into a refund?

The alert is matched to the transaction in your connected gateway or CRM using the ARN, then the transaction reference, then card last 4 + amount + date. Your ordered automation rules decide the action: full or partial refund, cancel the subscription, add the customer to your blocklist, or hold for your decision with a timed fallback. The action runs in your system with an idempotency key, is verified by reading the status back, and the outcome is reported to the network with the correct code.

What happens when an alert cannot be matched to an order?

It goes to an "Unmatched" queue where an analyst searches your systems with the alert's keys and matches it manually, or reports it as not found. The SLA monitor runs every minute and escalates any open alert that is nearing its deadline, so an unmatched alert cannot quietly expire.

Does refunding an alert fix my VAMP ratio?

Partly. Resolving an RDR or CDRN case removes the dispute record (TC15) from the VAMP count, but the issuer's fraud report (TC40) still counts.10 On Mastercard, Ethoca-resolved disputes do not count toward dispute rates.11 The ratio monitor models exactly this: alert- and RDR-resolved disputes are excluded, fraud reports are retained, and where fraud-report data is missing the figure is labelled a lower bound.

How is RDR different from alerts?

RDR is network-side. When an issuer submits a Visa pre-dispute, Visa checks the rules you have configured; if one matches, the refund is posted at the network as an RDR-flagged credit and the outcome code is 103. If no rule matches, the code is 957 and the dispute proceeds as a chargeback.12 You are notified after the fact, not asked to act. PayShyld builds, versions and syncs those rules, ingests the 103 and 957 events, runs your post-resolution actions, and guards against a second refund from your own system. RDR does not handle partial disputes or already-refunded transactions.11

What access do you need to my gateway, CRM or PSP?

Only access you create. For NMI, Authorize.net, Sticky.io, Konnektive, CheckoutChamp and Stripe you generate an API credential in your own account with the permissions listed in our setup guide (for Stripe, a restricted key) and paste it into PayShyld, where it is stored in an encrypted vault and never shown again. You can revoke it in your own account at any time. For acquirer portals without an API, PayShyld generates a dedicated mailbox that you add as a portal user with dispute view-and-respond rights only. At least one refund-capable connector is needed for automatic resolution; otherwise alerts run in manual mode.

How do you fight a chargeback, and who approves the response?

The chargeback is ingested from your acquirer's report, an email notice, a processor API or manual entry, and classified by reason code against a library covering Visa, Mastercard, Amex and Discover. Evidence is collected from your connected systems, each item with its source and retrieval time. A response is drafted from the reason-code template, or with AI assistance under a citation validator that rejects any factual sentence not tied to an exhibit. Then a human approves: you, our analysts, or automatic approval below an amount you set when all required evidence is present. The packet is submitted by API where the processor supports it, by an analyst into the acquirer portal, or by you. An explainable representment-strength score accompanies every case.

What do I pay, and when?

A plan-based platform fee, a fee per alert received, a fee per RDR acceptance, and a success fee calculated as a percentage of the amount recovered on a won case, charged only once the funds are confirmed credited to you. If a won case is later reversed, the full success fee is credited back. Cases you decline to fight and cases that are lost cost nothing. Rates and caps are set in your contract; every billable event is visible in the usage ledger with a link to its source.

Do you store card numbers? Is PayShyld in PCI scope?

No full card numbers are stored, processed or transmitted. Card records hold the BIN and last four digits in one consistent format, and every file you upload or we fetch is scanned, including by OCR, and redacted before it is stored. The PCI Security Standards Council treats properly truncated numbers as not cardholder data,14 which is how the alert and dispute data flow stays outside PCI DSS cardholder-data scope. Your own PCI obligations as a merchant are unchanged.

Can I try it before anything touches a real transaction?

Yes. New accounts can run in sandbox mode, where simulated issuers generate alerts, RDR events and chargebacks so you can configure rules, watch matching and drafting, and review packets. Nothing is sent to a card network and nothing is billed. When you are ready, the onboarding wizard takes you to live enrollment.

See it on your own MIDs.

Create an account, run the sandbox against simulated issuers, then onboard your acquirers, MIDs and connectors when you are ready.

Create an account Sign in

Sources

  1. Visa, Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program fact sheet (2025): merchant "excessive" threshold of 150 basis points and at least 1,500 counted events from 1 April 2026 in the US, Canada, Europe and Asia-Pacific; disputes resolved through pre-dispute solutions are excluded.
  2. Chargeflow, VAMP: Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program: processors report a fee of about USD 8 per counted event. The fee amount is not published in Visa's fact sheet; confirm with your acquirer.
  3. Chase Merchant Services, Mastercard Excessive Chargeback Program FAQ (February 2022): ECM at 100–299 chargebacks and 150–299 basis points, HECM at 300 or more and 300 basis points or more; monthly assessments from USD 1,000 in month two to USD 100,000 (ECM) and USD 200,000 (HECM) from month nineteen. Schedule as published in 2022.
  4. Chargeback.io, What is CDRN: 72 hours from delivery to respond to a CDRN alert.
  5. Kount, Receiving and responding to alerts: Ethoca alerts documented with a 24-hour response window.
  6. Ethoca, Terms of use: outcomes requested within 72 hours; an alert without an outcome is deemed refunded or stopped and fees apply.
  7. Chargeback Gurus, summary of Mastercard and Datos Insights, State of Chargebacks 2025: of represented chargebacks, issuers win about 75% and merchants about 20%.
  8. AccountsRecovery.net, on the Chargebacks911 2026 Field Report: average net recovery 10.7%; 29% of merchants name evidence collection their biggest obstacle; 23.5% use five or more systems.
  9. Mastercard, How Ethoca helps prevent chargebacks (2026): Mastercard and Datos Insights project 286 million chargebacks in 2026 costing USD 36.9 billion.
  10. disputed.ai, RDR, CDRN, Order Insight and VAMP: resolving an RDR or CDRN case removes the TC15 dispute record but not the TC40 fraud report.
  11. Stripe Docs, Dispute prevention: Ethoca-resolved disputes do not count toward Mastercard dispute rates; RDR does not support partial resolution or already-refunded transactions.
  12. Verifi, Rapid Dispute Resolution rules and attributes FAQ: RDR outcome 103 (accepted, TC15 credit with RDR flag) and 957 (no rule matched, dispute proceeds).
  13. Stripe Docs, The MATCH list: a MATCH listing lasts five years.
  14. PCI Security Standards Council, Acceptable formats for truncation of primary account numbers: properly truncated PANs (for example first 6 and last 4) are not considered cardholder data.
  15. Mastercard, How Ethoca helps prevent first-party fraud (2026): Ethoca prevented more than 39 million chargebacks in 2025.

Network program thresholds and fees are quoted from the public documentation and industry reporting listed above as of November 2026. Programs change; confirm the thresholds and fees that apply to your MIDs with your acquirer.