Ethoca Alerts

Ethoca Alerts cover roughly 95% of Mastercard disputes and 40% of Visa disputes. Alerts can be fully automated or managed individually.

When you receive an alert, you have two options:

1. Refund the transaction and resolve the alert

2. Dismiss the alert, skip the refund, and let the chargeback proceed

If you've set up a resolution rule, this happens automatically. Otherwise, the alert appears in your dashboard. You have 48 hours from receipt to provide an outcome. If you don't respond in time, the alert is automatically declined and the chargeback comes through.

Important: Ethoca Alerts must be refunded at the gateway level to prevent a chargeback. Marking an alert as resolved in the portal or API alone won't stop the dispute, the transaction must also be refunded through your gateway.

Enrollment

Ethoca enrollment is descriptor-based. During onboarding, we'll ask for all billing descriptors used by your merchant account(s). Provide every variation: soft, hard, static, dynamic. Missing a descriptor reduces your coverage.

We evaluate each descriptor to confirm:

1. It's unique enough to enroll

2. It isn't already enrolled elsewhere

If a descriptor is too generic (e.g., "Pet Store"), another merchant may already be enrolled with the same name, blocking your enrollment or causing you to receive their alerts. Using your site name or legal company name typically works better.

Billing

Ethoca Alerts are billed at a fixed per-alert fee, whether you refund or not.

Invalid alerts

Around 5–10% of Ethoca alerts each month are invalid. Examples:

• The transaction was already refunded

• The transaction was already disputed

• The alert is clearly for another merchant

• You can't find the transaction

• It's a duplicate of a previous alert

Our system detects invalid alerts automatically, filters them out, and credits your invoice. You never pay for an alert that provided no value. If you spot an invalid alert that wasn't auto-detected, submit it for manual credit review in your dashboard. If the card networks approve, the credit appears on your next invoice.

Reducing coverage

If you want to filter alerts by amount, date, reason code, or another criterion, contact sales or support. We work with the card networks case by case to add filter capabilities to your descriptor.

For example: if you'd refund low-value chargebacks but prefer to accept high-value ones, a filter lets you avoid paying alert fees on alerts you don't plan to act on.

Multiple merchant accounts

If multiple merchant accounts share the same descriptor, our system attempts to locate the transaction across all connected payment providers.

When possible, we recommend adding a unique character to each merchant account's descriptor. This helps us match orders more efficiently during alert processing, especially at higher volumes.