Chargebacks are costly for merchants — not just in fees, but in time, reputation, and card scheme standing. Verifi RDR and Ethoca Alerts are chargeback prevention tools that help you resolve disputes before they become formal chargebacks.
What Are Verifi and Ethoca?
Verifi Rapid Dispute Resolution (RDR) is a Visa solution that automates the refund process for disputed transactions using predefined rules you configure.
Ethoca Alerts is a Mastercard solution that provides real-time alerts as soon as a dispute is detected by the issuing bank, giving you a window to take action.
View detailed reports to understand chargeback risks and improve dispute management.
Receive real-time notifications when a customer disputes a transaction, giving you time to act.
There is a brief period to issue a refund or stop order fulfilment before the dispute escalates.
Who Can Use Verifi and Ethoca?
These services are available to any merchant processing Visa or Mastercard payments through Trust Payments. They are particularly beneficial for:
- Merchants processing transactions from their website
- Merchants running a subscription-based business
- Merchants processing card-not-present transactions
- Merchants approaching card scheme chargeback thresholds
- Merchants selling high-value / luxury goods, services, and experiences
Eligibility criteria
To be eligible, merchants must:
- Have a minimum of 3 months' trading history with Trust Payments
- Be processing card transactions with appropriate card scheme access
- Have a fraud rate not exceeding 1%
- Be able to respond to alerts within 24–72 hours
Advantages of Verifi and Ethoca
Comprehensive protection
Using both Verifi and Ethoca provides coverage across Visa and Mastercard disputes, protecting your business from chargebacks on both schemes.
Chargeback fees can be significant per case, regardless of outcome. Resolving disputes proactively avoids these costs entirely.
Control over disputes
You decide the disputes to refund rather than entering a lengthy chargeback process where you may lose anyway.
Maintain card scheme compliance
Keep your chargeback ratio below the VAMP threshold and the Mastercard ECM threshold to avoid fines, penalties, and potential loss of processing privileges.
Improved customer experience
Quick dispute resolution leads to higher customer satisfaction and reduces the likelihood of losing customers permanently.
Transaction transparency
Alerts include full transaction details, helping you identify patterns in disputes and improve your processes over time.
How to Sign Up
- Contact your Account Manager or the Trust Payments Sales team to express your interest.
- Your Account Manager will confirm your eligibility based on your trading history, fraud rate, and transaction profile.
- The Trust Payments Chargeback team will gather the required details and pass them to Verifi and Ethoca to complete enrolment and configuration.
- Once configured, you will begin receiving real-time dispute alerts and can start managing chargebacks proactively.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Verifi RDR is a Visa solution that automatically resolves disputes using predefined rules.
- Ethoca Alerts is a Mastercard solution that sends real-time alerts requiring you to take manual action within a 24–72 hour window.
When you resolve a dispute through Verifi or Ethoca, you are issuing a refund to the cardholder. You remain liable for the refund amount, but you avoid chargeback fees, scheme penalties, and the dispute counting against your chargeback ratio.
The Visa Acquirer Monitoring Programme (VAMP) monitors chargeback and fraud ratios. From January 2026, the threshold is 0.3%. Merchants exceeding this contribute to Trust Payments' overall ratio and may face additional fees and penalties.
The Mastercard Excessive Chargeback Merchant (ECM) programme penalises merchants who exceed 1.5% chargeback rate and 100 chargebacks in a calendar month. Fines are assessed monthly and any costs incurred by Trust Payments will be passed on to the merchant.
If you do not act within the alert window (typically 24–72 hours), the dispute may escalate into a formal chargeback, incurring the associated fees and counting against your chargeback ratio.
No. These tools are designed to intercept disputes before they become chargebacks, but they cannot prevent all chargebacks. They are most effective when combined with clear merchant descriptors, strong customer service, and robust fraud prevention measures.
