What Visa Reason Code 93 Was and Why It Mattered

Visa reason code 93 was a fraud chargeback code in Visa's older dispute rules. It stood for the Merchant Fraud Performance Program. If you got a code 93 notice, it meant Visa's own fraud program had flagged the sale, not the cardholder alone. That made it different from most other chargebacks you might see.

What Is Visa Reason Code 93?

In the older rules, reason code 93 was Merchant Fraud Performance Program. It was one of Visa's 22 legacy reason codes, which were all two digit numbers grouped by claim type. Code 93 sat in the fraud group.

Most fraud chargebacks start with a cardholder saying they did not make or approve a purchase. Code 93 did not work that way. This code applied when Visa told the card issuer that its Merchant Fraud Performance Program had flagged a sale. The claim came from the program itself.

When was reason code 93 used?

The program watched merchants whose fraud numbers ran too high. When a merchant landed in the program, Visa could tell issuers about sales from that merchant. The issuer could then charge back those sales using code 93.

So a code 93 notice usually meant two things at once. First, the cardholder's bank believed the sale was fraud. Second, Visa had already put the merchant on a fraud watch list for its overall fraud rate.

If you received one, the sale itself was only part of the story. The bigger problem was that your business had been flagged for fraud across many sales, not just the one on the notice.

The Merchant Fraud Performance Program Explained

The Merchant Fraud Performance Program was a Visa watch program. Its job was to find merchants with fraud levels high enough to hurt the payment system. Visa tracked fraud complaints and fraud rates across a merchant's sales.

A merchant could land in the program when its fraud numbers passed Visa's thresholds. Once in, the merchant faced consequences. Issuers could charge back flagged sales under code 93, and the merchant had to bring its fraud rate down to get out of the program.

This was a pressure tool. Visa used it to push merchants to fix fraud problems at the source. Accepting a code 93 chargeback did not fix the root issue. The merchant still had to address the fraud that put it in the program.

Visa had other watch programs too. The Visa fraud monitoring program under reason code 10.5 worked much the same way. It flagged merchants whose fraud rates were too high.

Emergency Cash Disbursement Exception

Code 93 had limits on when it could be used. A code 93 chargeback was not valid for an emergency cash disbursement.

An emergency cash disbursement is cash a bank gives a cardholder at a branch. The cardholder asks for it when the card is lost, stolen or broken. Since code 93 was tied to merchant fraud flags, it did not fit cash handed over by a bank. Other rules covered that kind of sale.

Did you hand out cash at a bank? If you got a code 93 notice, that notice was likely wrong. That detail was worth checking before you spent time building a response.

The VCR Initiative and the End of Reason Code 93

Code 93 no longer exists as its own code. The VCR Initiative changed this. Visa took its 22 old reason codes and cut them down to four groups. The groups are Fraud, Authorization, Processing Errors and Consumer Disputes.

The VCR Initiative was Visa's plan to make disputes simple. The old two digit codes were retired. Disputes now fall into one of the four groups. Each group has its own rules and proof needs.

Fraud claims that once might have used code 93 now fall under the 10 Fraud category. But the change was more than a renumbering. The old code pointed to a specific program flag. The new categories describe the type of claim, not which program started it.

If an old notice or record shows code 93, treat it as a fraud dispute tied to a merchant monitoring program. For current disputes, read the notice to find the category and code you are dealing with. See how to read a chargeback notice for help finding the code.

Summary

Code 93 was the chargeback code for Visa's Merchant Fraud Performance Program. It applied when Visa flagged a sale from a merchant with high fraud numbers. It could not be used for emergency cash disbursements. The VCR Initiative ended code 93 and all the other old codes. Visa now uses four dispute groups instead.

If you are dealing with a fraud dispute today, the claim may still trace back to a monitoring program. Learn what happens after you answer a chargeback so you know the rounds that can follow your response.

Sources

• web.archive.org
• web.archive.org