Fraud rate: CNP e-commerce 0.05-0.2%, digital goods 0.2-0.5%, travel 0.5-1.5%
Chargeback ratio: Under 0.5% healthy, 0.75-0.9% danger, over 0.9% crisis (Visa threshold)
Refund rate: 2-5% typical; refund-to-CB ratio should be 3-5:1
Segment everything (CP vs. CNP, BIN, geo); trend over 4-8 weeks beats snapshots
Key Fact: Processors flag merchants around 0.9% chargeback ratio (internal threshold). Visa's VAMP Merchant Excessive level is 2.2% (tightening to 1.5% in April 2026) with $8/dispute fines. Mastercard ECM triggers at 1.5% AND 100+ chargebacks with fines up to $25,000/month at months 7-11. Stay under 0.5% to maintain a healthy buffer.
Use anchors, not absolutes. Compare to yourself over time and by segment (CP vs CNP, method, BIN, geo). Your baseline matters more than industry averages.
85-90%
CNP Auth Rate (typical US e-commerce)
98-99%
CP Auth Rate (retail / in-person)
0.05-0.2%
CNP Fraud Rate (e-commerce baseline)
Under 0.9%
Chargeback Ratio Safe Zone
Last verified: Dec 2025. Benchmarks shift with market conditions; recalibrate annually.
Key Fact: Typical CNP (online) authorization rates for US e-commerce are 85-90%. Apple Pay and Google Pay tokenized transactions achieve 92-97% because network tokens provide stronger issuer trust signals. If your auth rate is below 85%, check your decline codes, CP/CNP segmentation, and 3DS configuration first.
Note: These are reason-code-based categories. True friendly fraud (cardholder made the purchase but disputes) cuts across all categories and may represent 40-70% of total chargebacks for e-commerce merchants.
Chargeback Ratio Above 0.75%?
You're in the danger zone. Here's what to do based on where you are:
Above 0.9%: Program enrollment risk. 0.9% Panic Guide is the emergency playbook.
Got your first chargeback? Don't panic. Your First Chargeback explains what it actually costs and when to worry.
Check your chargeback composition first. "Unrecognized" chargebacks above 20% means your billing descriptor is wrong. That's a 10-minute fix that can cut your ratio in half.
Industry averages hide the reality that a $100K/year Etsy seller and a $3M/year DTC brand face completely different numbers. Here's what to expect at your size.
Metric
$50K-$250K/yr
$250K-$1M/yr
$1M-$5M/yr
Auth rate (CNP)
82-87%
85-90%
88-93%
Fraud rate
0.1-0.4%
0.08-0.25%
0.05-0.15%
Chargeback ratio
0.3-0.8%
0.2-0.6%
0.15-0.4%
Refund rate
3-8%
2-5%
2-4%
Processing cost
2.7-3.5%
2.4-2.9%
2.0-2.6%
Manual review rate
0% (no tools)
2-5%
5-10%
Reconciliation method
Eyeball bank deposits
Spreadsheet
Semi-automated
Why smaller merchants have worse numbers:
Auth rates are lower because smaller merchants often lack network tokens, retry logic, and issuer relationships
Fraud rates are higher per transaction because fraudsters target merchants with weaker controls
Chargeback ratios are higher because a single dispute hits harder (10 chargebacks on 2,000 transactions = 0.5%)
Processing costs are higher because you have less volume to negotiate with
The volume trap: At low volume, a handful of chargebacks can spike your ratio above network thresholds. A merchant doing 500 transactions/month only needs 5 chargebacks to hit 1.0%. See chargeback thresholds for the exact numbers.