Mastercard is tightening the way suspected payment scams are identified and acted on, with new monitoring standards due to take effect on 24 July 2026. The change is aimed at speeding up intervention where online merchants show signs of fraud, manipulation, excessive refunds or rising chargebacks, shifting the card ecosystem further away from retrospective clean-up and towards earlier risk detection.
The move comes hot on the heels of rival card issuer Visa instigating similarly tighten rules with its VAMP programme earlier this year.
For the telemedia sector, the timing matters. Many digital services, premium content products, gaming propositions, subscription offers and customer acquisition funnels sit firmly inside the card-not-present world that card schemes are now watching more closely. These businesses often operate at high volume, acquire customers quickly, test new offers and sometimes use multiple merchant IDs across markets, brands or product lines. Under the new Mastercard approach, that operating model may now attract faster scrutiny if the data starts to look wrong.
Mastercard has framed the change as part of a wider push against fake online merchants and AI-enabled scam storefronts, arguing that digital commerce has made it easier for bad actors to create credible-looking businesses, take payments and disappear before traditional warning signals mature into full chargeback patterns.
The company says it is revising franchise standards so that acquirers and payment facilitators must actively monitor merchant behaviour and begin an investigation within 72 hours when suspicious activity hits defined risk thresholds. If scam activity is confirmed, the merchant must be stopped from accepting Mastercard transactions.
What is changing?
The core change is the introduction of a much shorter escalation window. From 24 July, acquirers and payment facilitators are expected to investigate flagged merchants within 72 hours where Mastercard scam-risk indicators are met. Industry guidance from processors describes the update as applying to Mastercard’s potential scam merchant monitoring standards and says confirmed scam merchants must be stopped from processing Mastercard and Maestro transactions immediately.
This is not simply another chargeback threshold to watch at month end, it is a behavioural monitoring regime. Mastercard is looking for signs that a merchant may not merely be struggling with disputes, but could be misleading consumers, manipulating cardholders, operating an unclear business model, generating abnormal refund and chargeback activity, or using acceptance infrastructure in a way that exposes issuers, acquirers and consumers to scam risk.
That distinction is important for telemedia. A legitimate subscription merchant can still generate the sort of signals that look worrying from the outside: high refund levels after a marketing burst, failed recurring payments, customers disputing charges they do not recognise, vague billing descriptors, awkward cancellation journeys or sudden declines after a traffic source changes. The rule is not written only for bad actors, it also raises the compliance bar for legitimate merchants whose operating metrics resemble bad behaviour.
How it will be policed
The policing will fall heavily on acquirers, payment facilitators and PSPs, who will be required to monitor merchant behaviour and act when warning signs appear. That means telemedia merchants may find their processor asking faster and more detailed questions about campaign activity, product claims, customer onboarding, cancellation processes, refund handling, billing descriptors, MID usage and evidence that consumers knowingly agreed to pay.
Mastercard is also building more intelligence into the network. Its Merchant Trust Services initiative is designed to help acquirers and payment service providers identify risky sellers earlier, including at onboarding and in the early life of a merchant. Mastercard has also announced a Merchant Scam & Risk Indicator for issuers, giving banks merchant risk signals during authorisation. In one pilot, Mastercard says the tool detected around 80% of issuer-identified risky merchants, many as early as 90 days before issuer escalation.
The practical effect is that risk assessment is becoming more dynamic. It will no longer be enough to stay below a single monthly ratio. Merchants will need to understand how their business appears across authorisation data, issuer reports, refund and chargeback behaviour, monitoring alerts and customer complaint patterns.
What triggers an investigation?
Guidance sets out the key triggers that telemedia businesses should be watching. A 72-hour investigation can be triggered by a sharp fall in authorisation approval rates, especially where approval rates drop significantly or fall below 30% over a 72-hour period with sufficient transaction volume. Processors have also flagged Mastercard GRIP letters, merchant monitoring service provider alerts and issuer-reported scam activity as triggers for review.
For new merchants, the rules are particularly sensitive. Mastercard defines new merchants as those with less than six months of Mastercard transaction processing history and more than 500 transactions per month. In that early period, more than 5% of purchases resulting in refunds and chargebacks combined over a rolling 30-day period can trigger scrutiny.
Two separate issuers reporting fraud type 56, described as manipulation of the cardholder, can also start the process, as can two or more issuers raising fraud or non-fraud chargebacks where the supporting documentation references scams, manipulation or similar language.
In practice, the biggest danger for telemedia may be the combination of “ordinary” subscription friction and fast scaling. A new content offer that takes off quickly, but has unclear terms or weak post-sale communication, could find itself generating refunds, failed rebills and chargebacks before the business has built enough processing history to look stable. Multiple MIDs, if not clearly tied to genuine operational need, may also raise questions.
How telemedia businesses should prepare
The immediate task for merchants is to look at their business the way an issuer, scheme or acquirer will see it. That means focusing less on marketing conversion alone and more on the full payment lifecycle: authorisation, fulfilment, customer support, cancellation, refund, dispute and rebill behaviour.
A practical preparation plan should include:
- Track authorisation approval rates daily, with alerts for sudden drops, failed recurring payments and unusual declines by market, issuer, BIN, traffic source and MID.
- Monitor refund and chargeback rates together, not separately, especially over rolling 30-day periods and during the first six months of any new merchant account, product or campaign.
- Make billing descriptors unmistakable, so customers recognise the charge before they call their issuer.
- Clean up subscription journeys, including clear pricing, obvious consent, renewal reminders where appropriate, easy cancellation and fast customer support.
- Keep evidence ready, including transaction logs, consent records, IP/device data, delivery proof, customer communications and refund handling.
- Use additional MIDs only where there is a genuine business reason, with clear documentation of why the structure exists.
- Review affiliates, traffic partners and promotional claims, because misleading acquisition can become a payments problem even when the payment flow itself works.
- Work with processors before a problem occurs, agreeing escalation paths, evidence packs and remediation steps in advance.
For telemedia, the mantra should be simple: fewer surprises for the consumer means fewer surprises for the acquirer. Happy customers are not just a brand metric; they are now part of payment resilience.
The Visa VAMP connection
Mastercard’s new approach lands alongside Visa’s own tightening of fraud and dispute oversight through the Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program, or VAMP. Visa has consolidated its fraud and dispute monitoring into a single global framework, using a count-based ratio that combines fraud and disputes on card-not-present transactions. Visa says the VAMP ratio is calculated as fraud plus disputes divided by settled transactions, and that acquirers or merchants above thresholds must implement risk mitigation controls.
Checkout.com’s 2026 VAMP guidance says Visa has updated its calculation to include reported fraud, fraud disputes and non-fraud disputes, with merchant thresholds tightening globally outside MENA to a 1.50% excessive ratio from 1 April 2026, subject to minimum fraud-plus-dispute counts. Enforcement fees apply after non-compliance, with first-time identifications treated differently during advisory or grace periods.
Put together, Visa VAMP and Mastercard’s scam merchant monitoring point in the same direction. The schemes are making acquirers more accountable for the quality of merchant traffic and making merchants more accountable for the full consequences of customer acquisition, product design and payment operations. Fraud, chargebacks, refunds, declines and scam complaints are no longer separate operational headaches; they are becoming a combined measure of whether a merchant should continue to enjoy card acceptance at scale.
What it means for telemedia
The likely impact is twofold. First, marginal or badly run subscription businesses will find it harder to survive on card payments. Dark patterns, unclear opt-ins, poor cancellation, misleading ads and weak support will be punished faster, either through scheme scrutiny, acquirer intervention, higher reserves, higher processing costs or loss of card acceptance.
Second, legitimate telemedia businesses will need more sophisticated payment orchestration. That does not mean using alternative payments to dodge compliance. It means building a payment stack that is resilient, transparent and matched to local consumer behaviour. Cards will remain critical, but merchants will increasingly need to combine them with local account-to-account payments, wallets, instant payments, open banking, Pix-style recurring payments in markets such as Brazil, and direct carrier billing where it fits the product and region.
Pix Automático is a useful signpost here: Brazil’s recurring Pix feature was designed to allow authorised recurring payments for services such as utilities, phone bills, tuition, gyms and digital subscriptions, widening access for consumers who may not use credit cards. The same logic applies more broadly. In markets where cards are expensive, fraud-sensitive or exclusionary, alternative payments can reduce dependence on one rail, improve approval rates and create cleaner subscription relationships.
For DCB, the opportunity is similar but comes with its own discipline. Carrier billing can be a strong fit for digital content, gaming, streaming, micro-subscriptions and mobile-first services, particularly where card penetration is weaker. But operators and aggregators already live in a highly scrutinised environment. The lesson from the card schemes is not that merchants should flee to other rails; it is that every rail now needs cleaner consent, clearer communication and better lifecycle management.
The overall message for telemedia is that payments can no longer be treated as a back-office function. They are becoming a frontline trust signal. The businesses that prosper will be those that can prove, in data and in customer experience, that subscribers understand what they bought, recognise who billed them, can leave when they want and are not forced to use chargebacks as customer service.
