Crossing $1M a month
About to cross a million a month? That's when the platforms start paying attention.
Nothing's wrong yet, which makes this the best time to prepare. The businesses that get through this stage cleanly are the ones that set up for it before the first review notice.
What changes
What changes at this size
- You become visible. Card brand monitoring programs only apply once a merchant passes a minimum number of disputes, and at $1M a month in small ticket sales you'll pass it. A dispute rate nobody noticed at $200K becomes a monitoring case at $1M.
- Growth itself is a flag. Stripe lists an unexplained sharp rise in volume as a reserve trigger. A quarter that triples is exactly that.
- The stakes get bigger. A 25% reserve is $250K of each month's sales held back. A 120 day hold after a closure is four months of revenue.
- You're depending on one account. At this volume a single processor is a single point of failure for the whole company.
What good looks like
What the well run businesses do
- Run two processors. A primary and a second account with its own sponsor bank, carrying 10 to 20% of volume so it has history. If either one holds or closes, traffic moves the same day.
- Know the numbers monthly. Dispute ratio by the card brands' definition (disputes plus fraud reports over settled transactions), refund ratio, and average delivery time. Set your own alert threshold well below the card brands' 1.5% line.
- Enroll in dispute prevention before you need it. Alerts and automated resolution take disputes out of the count before they become chargebacks.
- Fix fulfillment first. Delivery time and order accuracy drive more disputes than fraud does in most categories.
- Keep the paperwork current. Formation documents, owner IDs, bank statements, processing statements. An underwriter at a new bank wants three months of each, and you want to be able to send them in an hour.
What we do. A 15 minute risk read: how your numbers look to a card brand monitor and to a sponsor bank, what your exposure is at your current volume, and what a second account with a bank that underwrites your category would take. Free, no pitch. Most businesses at this stage use us for the second account and keep their primary.
Source for the dispute threshold: Chargeback Gurus on the 2026 VAMP changes.
Also worth reading
If one of these is you
The free risk readWhere you stand on the six numbers the platforms watch, and what to fix first.
Stripe put a reserve on your accountWhat a rolling reserve actually costs you and what to send back.
Stripe closed your accountWhat to do in the first 48 hours, and what to avoid.
Shopify paused your payoutsWhat the review is looking at and how to keep the store funded.
Square is holding your depositsWhat triggered it and how to get processing again.
Free, 15 minutes
Book a 15 minute risk read
Tell us where you process and what you sell, then pick a time on Eli's calendar. You get the written summary whether or not you work with us.
- No pricing or quotes on the call
- We won't contact your customers or your current processor
- If we're not the right fit, we'll tell you who is