Scam Merchant Monitoring Program and X Money Launch Elicit Reaction

By Roy Urrico

Finopotamus aims to highlight white papers, surveys, reports and news items that provide a glimpse as to what is taking place and/or impacting credit unions and other organizations in the financial services industry.

In this roundup we focus on a pair of financial news items: the unveiling of Mastercard's Scam Merchant Monitoring Program (SMMP), and X Money, with commentary from Monica Eaton, Founder and CEO of Tampa Bay, Fla.-based Chargebacks911 and Fi911, dispute management software firms, as well as CIO of Global Risk Technologies.

Mastercard's Scam Merchant Monitoring Program

Mastercard's SMMP, which took full effect on July 24, 2026, compels acquiring financial institutions and payment facilitators to investigate flagged merchants within a 72-hour time frame. Confirmed scam operations face instant network termination rather than a gradual fine structure. If a scam is confirmed, the acquirer must immediately terminate the merchant’s ability to process Mastercard or Maestro transactions.

Investigations forced by specific flags also include an abrupt 50-percentage point decrease in authorization rates over 72 hours, official Mastercard Global Rules Investigation Program (GRIP) letters, alerts from monitoring providers, or a combined refund-and-chargeback rate exceeding 5% over a 30-day window for newer merchants under six months old.

Following Mastercard's rollout of its SMMP, Eaton argued that while stronger monitoring is a positive step, the industry continues to overlook a more fundamental challenge:

Monica Eaton, Founder and CEO of Chargebacks911 and Fi911.

"Mastercard's Scam Merchant Monitoring Program is a genuine step forward, and the industry needed it. But fraud prevention and dispute resolution are not the same function, and they should never be treated as one system. Fraud filters decide what looks risky before a transaction happens. Disputes are the independent quality control function for fraud decisions, not an extension of the fraud system itself. No industry lets the same team grade its own work, and payments should not be the exception.”

Eaton continued, “Right now that feedback loop is inconsistent at best. Fraud teams rarely see what disputes actually reveal, and dispute teams rarely feed that intelligence back upstream in a structured way. That is the real gap SMMP does not close.”

While artificial intelligence gets discussed as the fix, Eaton maintained, AI’s usefulness depends on the quality, consistency and exchange of the data given to it. “Right now, fraud and dispute data live in separate silos speaking different languages. The industry does not need a single platform that does everything. It needs fraud prevention and dispute resolution operating as two specialized, connected functions, each doing its own job, with standardized intelligence flowing between them. That connection, not another monitoring layer, is what will actually move the needle on scams."

X Money Begins U.S. Rollout

X Money a new in-app digital wallet and financial service rolled out on July 27, 2026 for U.S. Premium and Premium+ X subscribers. Deposits are held at FDIC member Cross River Bank.

X Money offers:

• A deposit account, peer-to-peer payments and a debit card within the app.

• Integrations with both Visa and Apple Wallet.

• A digital debit card and as a metal version with personalization options.

• Perks including up to 6.00% APY, 3% cashback bonuses, "no foreign transaction fees" and early direct deposit.

Eaton argues that consumers deserve consistent protections regardless of payment innovations. "X Money is part of a bigger shift that is genuinely good for consumers. Peer to peer, account to account and wallet-based payments give consumers more choice in how they move money, and that is worth embracing rather than resisting.”

The real question is not whether X Money works. It is whether consumers get the same protection regardless of which payment method they choose, suggested Eaton. “Right now, they do not. A card transaction, a peer-to-peer transfer, and an in-app wallet payment all carry different consumer expectations and different dispute protections, often for reasons that have nothing to do with the actual risk involved.”

That inconsistency is the problem the industry has not solved, Eaton warned. “Without consistent standards across payment types, there is no reliable way to measure quality or protect consumers equally, no matter how good the technology behind any one platform is. As new entrants keep expanding what counts as a payment method, the goal should not be caution toward any one of them. It should be building consistent expectations and protections that travel with the consumer, not the payment rail they happen to use."