Descriptors.com · Issuer calculator

What is “what is this charge?” costing you?

Dispute volume concentrates: a short head of descriptors drives most of the “what is this charge?” queue, and the registry already covers the strings issuers flag most. Put in your own volumes and see what resolving covered charges — before they become calls and disputes — is worth a year.

Your numbers

Cardholder disputes your back office works, all networks
Industry figures run $75–100+ with staff time, network fees and write-offs counted
$
Calls and chats that are recognition questions, not fraud reports
Your own dispute-volume ranking's head — the short list of strings that drive most of it
%
Advanced assumptions
Fully loaded contact-center cost
$
The addressable ceiling
%
Confusion cost on descriptors covered today

Resolution rate
Monthly savings
Annualized

Your agents can use this today.

Browser lookup from day one — no integration, no release cycle. API when you're ready.

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How this is calculated

The ladder is coverage-first. Deflection is applied only to the share of your confusion volume that sits on descriptors the registry already covers — your top-flagged head, set above from your own dispute-volume ranking. Coverage widens as merchants claim descriptors, and the note under the ladder shows the full-coverage figure.

The head is not hypothetical. WhoBilled.me analyzed 192,911 real statement descriptors and built coverage for all 372 descriptors most frequently flagged in card-issuer dispute data — including the aggregator prefixes and processor strings no cardholder can decode. The most-looked-up merchants are household names, which is exactly why the head of your dispute ranking concentrates the way it does. Your dispute-volume ranking and our coverage list are substantially the same list.

Resolution rates in the ladder's range are documented for descriptor-detail programs — Visa reports Order Insight deflecting 40–45% of confirmed first-party-misuse disputes, up to 90% for some subscription merchants. The ladder still treats the rate as a scenario, not a promise.

The $85 default sits inside the commonly cited $75–100+ fully-loaded range for working a dispute. Replace it with your own figure.

Resolution paths sit alongside dispute rights, never in front of them. A descriptor lookup answers the recognition question; nothing about it gates, delays or discourages a cardholder's right to dispute under Reg E, Reg Z or network rules.

This is an arithmetic model of your own inputs, not a performance guarantee or a forecast. Actual results depend on descriptor coverage, your cardholder base and your dispute mix.

The product behind the number

Descriptors.com

Claim the descriptor your customers actually see, control what it says about your business, and decide how they reach you when they have a question about a charge.

For merchants

Own your profile

Claim, enrich and maintain the record consumers and banks look up. $20 per month, no integration, no processor change.

How it works

For acquirers & ISOs

Resell it

Bring the fix to your own book at your own retail, with portfolio tooling and no build cost.

Partner economics

The full picture

Product overview

How descriptors are boarded, enriched and recognized — and why the data is declared rather than inferred.

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