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Payments Glossary · Risk & Compliance

Visa VAMP (Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program)

Also called VAMP, Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program

Visa's consolidated fraud and dispute monitoring program, live since April 1, 2025, which scores acquirers and merchants on a single combined ratio.

What it is

VAMP replaced Visa's separate dispute and fraud monitoring programs effective April 1, 2025, consolidating them into one measurement. The ratio is reported fraudulent transactions plus total disputes, divided by total settled transactions, counting card-absent transactions only. That formula is the important part. Fraud reports and disputes are combined in the numerator, so a transaction reported as fraudulent that also becomes a dispute can effectively be counted twice, and resolving a dispute through Rapid Dispute Resolution does not remove the underlying fraud report from the numerator. Card-present volume does not dilute the denominator. Thresholds are tiered and tightening. Enforcement began October 1, 2025 with an acquirer excessive level of 0.7 percent, a merchant excessive level of 2.2 percent, and an enumeration threshold of 20 percent. From January 1, 2026 for acquirers and April 1, 2026 for merchants, the levels moved to acquirer above standard 0.5 percent, acquirer excessive 0.7 percent, and merchant excessive 1.5 percent. Reported per-dispute fees are 4 dollars at acquirer above standard, 8 dollars at acquirer excessive, and 8 dollars at merchant excessive, with a three-month grace period reported for first-time identification. Because acquirers are scored as well as merchants, an acquirer approaching its own threshold will act against individual merchants well before those merchants hit the published merchant level. Any specific figure here should be confirmed against current Visa bulletins through your acquirer, since program parameters change.

Why it matters to your business

If you take any orders online or by phone, VAMP is the program most likely to cost you your account, and it does not measure what you think it measures. It counts accusations as well as losses, and it ignores your clean in-store volume. The practical consequences are prevention-first: readable descriptors, address and card verification rules that actually decline mismatches, 3-D Secure on risky orders, and dispute alerts so you can resolve before a chargeback posts. Ask your acquirer where you currently sit and what their internal action level is, because they will act before Visa does. This is education, not legal advice. Network program terms are contractual and change; confirm current thresholds with your acquirer.

Where it gets contested

Merchants and dispute-management firms have criticized VAMP's arithmetic since it was announced. The core objection is double counting: a TC40 fraud report and a dispute arising from the same transaction both sit in the numerator, so a single bad transaction can be scored twice, and merchants who use Visa's own resolution tools do not get full credit for doing so. The second objection is the card-absent-only denominator. An omnichannel merchant with a large clean in-store book gets no dilution from it, so a small online ordering channel can carry the entire score. Restaurants and retailers that added online ordering are the obvious casualties of that design. Visa's position, broadly, is that the program measures ecosystem harm rather than merchant fault, and that consolidating two programs into one reduces complexity. What remains unresolved is whether the tightening schedule leaves a viable path for small card-not-present merchants without purchasing prevention tooling, and whether acquirer-level pressure produces terminations that no published merchant threshold would justify.

How to check it yourself

Ask your acquirer's risk team in writing for your VAMP ratio for the last three months and whether you have received any above-standard or excessive identification. If they cannot produce the number, that is itself a finding about how your account is being monitored.

Receipts

Claims above that are checkable, with where to check them. Published so you do not have to take anyone's word for it.