Acquirers commercialize fraud intelligence for merchants

Acquirers are offering fraud detection and dispute management as commercial services after merchants began requesting false-positive rates and chargeback handling details alongside fees when choosing suppliers.

Requests for Proposal commonly ask for false-positive rates and chargeback capabilities as part of procurement. The Merchant Risk Council reported that in 2026 about 65% of merchants estimate their e-commerce false-positive rate falls between 2% and 10%.

Estimates show global merchant losses from false positives could exceed $231 billion in 2026, compared with projected card fraud losses of $39.6 billion in 2026. Acquirers can face liability when merchants cannot absorb those losses.

Visa revised its Acquirer Monitoring Program in April 2026, lowering the acceptable combined fraud-and-dispute ratio from 220 to 150. The update increases scheme-level scrutiny of acquirers’ overall portfolios and can lead to penalties or remedial requirements if thresholds are breached.

Acquirers are using technology and operational changes to meet those demands. Real-time artificial intelligence at the point of transaction, digital identity checks and network intelligence are being used to assess risk across channels. Efforts to make AI models explainable and to streamline dispute operations aim to reduce false positives and speed chargeback resolution.

Firms are packaging these capabilities in managed fraud-detection platforms, chargeback management services, analytics and fraud scorecards that merchants can use in selection. Some acquirers offer service-level agreements that commit to targets for false positives or chargeback turnaround times, while others link pricing to fraud performance metrics.

An industry webinar moderated by researcher Sharon Kimathi is scheduled to examine how acquirers can align fraud strategies with merchant requirements and scheme expectations.

Merchants are increasingly requesting measurable false-positive and dispute-handling metrics during procurement, and acquirers are documenting performance through reports, scorecards and contractual commitments.