Visa VAMP
The Merchant Guide
Your VAMP threshold may be 1.5%, but your acquirer has a much tighter line to defend: 0.5% across its entire portfolio. That puts pressure on your account well before you reach your own threshold.
What VAMP Is
In April 2025, Visa retired its fraud and dispute monitoring programs, VFMP and VDMP, replacing both with the Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program (VAMP).
- The Metric: Combines all card-not-present fraud and disputes into a single monthly ratio, closing the loop on merchants flying under individual thresholds.
- The Impact: Rather than simplifying compliance, VAMP shifts risk enforcement to acquirers by assessing portfolio-wide performance and holding banks financially accountable for their merchants.
Visa measures your acquirer; your acquirer manages you. The pressure reaches your account through your bank.
The Ratio and What Counts
VAMP’s ratio measures both fraud and chargebacks.
The VAMP ratio
TC40 fraud reports+TC15 disputes
TC05 settled CNP transactions
Single dispute can count twice: an initial fraud claim (TC40) and its resulting dispute are tallied separately. For subscription brands with recurring billing, one dissatisfied customer can stack multiple bad events in a single month’s numerator.
- You operate in a vertical where disputes run hot: subscriptions, trials, supplements, coaching, gaming, dropshipping.
- You attract card-testing bots, which VAMP measures separately as enumeration.
- You sell cross-border, where issuer fraud reporting rates run higher than domestic.
- You run no dispute-alert coverage, so chargebacks don’t get resolved.
Every fraud report and every dispute lands in the numerator, and a single bad transaction can land there twice.
The Thresholds Today
Visa publishes a merchant threshold and two acquirer thresholds, and the acquirer ones are lower. That gap is deliberate: it makes your bank hold you to a stricter standard than Visa does.
The published merchant threshold is 1.5%, but your acquirer’s threshold is 0.5%. When your acquirer’s portfolio breaches its own tier, Visa’s per-item fees apply to every merchant in that portfolio with a ratio of 0.5% or more. Around 0.5%, acquirers typically intervene with warning letters, mandatory alert enrollment, and reserves. Treat 0.5% as the number that matters, not 1.5%.
The other line: enumeration
Visa tracks card testing under VAMP using a separate enumeration metric, flagging merchants when monthly attacks reach 300,000 transactions and a 20% enumeration ratio. Automated card testing still creates standalone exposure despite a spotless dispute ratio.
The published line is 1.5%, but the one that governs your account is your acquirer’s at 0.5%. Manage to that.
Fees and Consequences
VAMP assesses fees on a per-event basis.
| Who is identified | Fee per TC40 + per TC15 | At the 1,500-event floor |
|---|---|---|
| Merchant · Excessive (≥1.5%) | $8 | $12,000 |
| Acquirer · Above Standard (≥0.5%), applied per merchant at ≥0.5% | $4 | $6,000 |
| Acquirer · Excessive (≥0.7%), applied per merchant at ≥0.5% | $8 | $12,000 |
| Your first identification in a rolling 12-month window earns a three-month grace period; a second inside those 12 months earns none. | ||
Regional volume floors
- US, EU, AP, Canada, LAC: 1,500 combined fraud reports and disputes.
- CEMEA: 150 combined events and $75,000 in fraud/dispute value.
Accounts staying below these volume floors avoid identification, regardless of their calculated ratio.
The per-item fee is the cheapest thing that happens to an identified merchant. Reserves, delayed payouts and a MATCH Pro listing cost far more.
The Prevention System
Five actions to prevent VAMP’s intervention.
Mastercard and Visa offer chargeback alerts—powerful tools that give you more control over disputes, especially TC15s. They license these products to alert providers like Chargeblast, Disputifier, and Chargemont, who layer more on top:
- Refund logic
- Representment
- Reporting
- Multi-network coverage
- Pre-dispute deflection
- Evidence capture
Disputifier Chargeback Alerts
White-label platform with quick setup. Handles chargeback alerts and front-end fraud prevention in one dashboard, validating device fingerprints, purchase regions, and buyer behavior at the point of sale.
Learn more →
Chargeblast Chargeback Alerts
Real-time chargeback alert platform. Intercepts disputes before they hit your processor’s formal count and integrates with major gateways for automated resolution.
Learn more →
Chargeback.io Dispute Management
Full-service chargeback management. Provides dispute intelligence, alert routing, and prevention analytics for subscription-heavy merchant portfolios.
Learn more →
Chargemont Chargeback Alerts
Chargeback alerts and dispute prevention that intercept disputes before they register with your processor.
Learn more →Alerts clear disputes, not fraud reports. Necessary, and on their own not sufficient.
Put refund, cancellation and shipping policies where a customer actually looks, the footer and the checkout, then fix what the charge itself tells them:
- Billing descriptors: match the brand on the website, because “I don’t recognize this charge” is the easiest dispute for a customer to raise.
- Pre-billing reminders: on every subscription and every renewal.
- Refund windows: fair enough that the refund beats the bank call.
The same charge, twice. Only the descriptor changed.
A descriptor the customer recognizes is the cheapest dispute prevention available to you.
Identify your most common chargeback reason codes. Each type has its own fix:
- True fraud (stolen credentials) is fixed with fraud tooling.
- Merchant error (non-delivery, fulfillment failures) is fixed operationally.
- Friendly fraud (customers who forgot, or who lie) is fixed with documentation and alert responses.
Check your reason codes to identify what is causing chargebacks.
This is the only lever that reduces fraud reports rather than managing their aftermath. Layer the controls:
- CVV and AVS checks
- IP and proxy detection
- Device fingerprinting
- BIN intelligence
- Velocity limits per card, IP and email
- 3-D Secure 2, where the economics support it and everywhere regulation requires it
Every fraud attempt stopped at authorization is a TC40 that never exists.
This is the only work that stops fraud reports from existing. Everything else manages them after the fact.
Some disputes are nothing more than reachable customers who chose the bank because the merchant was harder to contact:
- Confirmation emails with item, date and billing details
- Shipping updates with tracking
- Support that answers
- Return steps a customer can find without asking
Everything here is something the bank would otherwise have to tell them.
Bad customer experience shows up in your data dressed as fraud. Fix it upstream and the ratio follows.
A customer who can reach you has no reason to call their bank instead.
How VAMP Got Here
Visa updated its initial timeline. The actual effective dates were:
Glossary
The reporting codes and tools this guide leans on.
TC40
The fraud report an issuing bank files with Visa when a cardholder claims a transaction was unauthorized. Counts toward your VAMP ratio even if you refund the transaction, even if no dispute follows.
TC15
The dispute record. Under VAMP it means every dispute, fraud and non-fraud alike. A transaction can produce both a TC40 and a TC15, and both count.
TC05
The settled-transaction record: the denominator of the VAMP ratio. Card-not-present settlements only.
VAMP ratio
(TC40 fraud reports + TC15 disputes) divided by TC05 settled CNP transactions, measured monthly by central processing date.
RDR
Rapid Dispute Resolution, a Verifi rail that auto-resolves Visa disputes in real time under merchant-defined rules. Disputes resolved this way are excluded from the VAMP ratio.
CDRN
The Cardholder Dispute Resolution Network, Verifi’s issuer-side alert network. A CDRN case resolved with a refund closes the dispute before it becomes a chargeback, and is excluded from the ratio.
Ethoca
Mastercard’s alert network, covering Mastercard and some Visa issuers. Alerts arrive before the chargeback posts, leaving a window to refund and stop it.
Compelling Evidence 3.0
Visa’s framework for pre-empting friendly-fraud disputes with prior-transaction evidence. The only mechanism that removes a TC40 from the VAMP count.
Order Insight
Visa’s inquiry-deflection tool: it answers the cardholder’s bank with order details at the moment of the inquiry, before a dispute is filed.
VAAI / enumeration
Visa Account Attack Intelligence, which identifies card-testing (enumeration) attacks. VAMP identifies a merchant at a 20% enumeration ratio with 300,000+ enumerated transactions in a month.
MATCH Pro
Mastercard’s industry list of terminated merchants (formerly MATCH). Operated by Mastercard, checked in merchant underwriting across the industry. A termination for cause can land the merchant here.
Advisory period
The April to September 2025 window when Visa identified breaches without charging fees. It is over; identification now carries the fee schedule in section 04.
How Compaytence Helps
Compaytence is a global payments and compliance consultancy working across a network of 30+ top-tier providers. VAMP is squarely inside the work: keeping merchant ratios out of the programs, and rebuilding the setup when an account is already flagged.
- 1Authorization Rate Analysis
- 2Risk & Chargeback Mitigation
- 3Bank Policy Examination
- 4Website UX & UI Review
- 5Licensing & Compliance Audit
- 6Assessment of Documentation
Having questions about VAMP & your compliance? Compaytence takes the guesswork out. Book a call now!
Sources
Figures verified 2 September 2026 against Visa’s VAMP fact sheet (corporate.visa.com), Stripe and Checkout.com monitoring-program documentation, and acquirer threshold notices. Thresholds change; confirm the current tables before relying on a figure in an underwriting or remediation context. Visa and the Visa mark belong to Visa Inc.; this guide is independent merchant education and is not endorsed by Visa.