Changes to Visa's global fraud programs

From April 1, 2025 Visa will retire its existing monitoring programs for disputes and fraud globally*.

In their place, Visa will introduce the Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program (VAMP) – designed to incentivize merchants and acquirers to strengthen fraud, disputes, and enumeration attack risk controls.

The VAMP will assess both merchant and acquirers based on their ratio of fraud and disputes, divided by their total number of transactions processed, and their total number of transactions affected by enumeration attacks, as identified by Visa’s Account Attack Intelligence system.

Visa will introduce the VAMP with an advisory period. Fines under the program will not take effect until October 1, 2025.

NoteVisa recently announced a significant change to program - and will now include card not present (TC 40) disputes resolved through Rapid Dispute Resolution (RDR) in the VAMP calculations where a corresponding fraud notice is present.

Visa will continue to exclude non-fraud disputes resolved via RDR from VAMP.

Overview

Acquirer and merchant ratios for disputes and fraud

The VAMP requires merchants and acquirers to keep fraud and disputes below a certain ratio of their settled transactions. Visa will calculate this ratio based on the following formula:

(Monthly # of transactions reported as fraud + # of non-fraud disputes)
--------------------------------------------
(Monthly # of settled transactions)

If an acquirer or merchant’s ratio breaches the thresholds below, Visa will place them under the VAMP, and fines will apply. Visa plans to decrease these thresholds from January 1, 2026:

Effective date	Acquirer above standard ratio	Acquirer excessive ratio	Merchant excessive ratio
April 1, 2025	Not applicable	>=0.50%	>=1.50%
January 1, 2026 (MENA)	>=0.30% to <0.50%	>=0.50%	>=1.50%
January 1, 2026 (Global, excluding MENA)	>=0.30% to <0.50%	>=0.50%	>=0.90%

For merchants, the thresholds will only apply where the total number of fraud transactions plus non-fraud disputes is:

Outside of MENA: Greater than 1,000
In MENA: Greater than 100 and over 75,000 USD in value

Non-fraud disputes resolved through Rapid Dispute Resolution and non-fraud Compelling Evidence 3.0 disputes are excluded from the VAMP ratio.

Merchant ratios for enumerated transactions

Visa will also introduce an excessive enumeration ratio for merchants. These apply to enumeration attacks identified by Visa’s Account Attack Intelligence system.

If you have more than 300,000 Visa-identified enumeration attacks in a month that are more than or equal to 20% of your transaction volume, you’ll fall under the excessive enumeration program.

Enforcement fines under the VAMP program

For first-time identifications within a rolling 12-month period and during the advisory period, Visa will apply a grace period before assessing fines.

After October 1, if you or your acquirer has breached any VAMP threshold more than once in 12 months, you'll be placed in the program and incur fines for subsequent transactions reported as fraud or disputed.

See the table below for an overview these fines will apply:

Effective date	Acquirer breaches above standard ratio	Merchant breaches excessive ratio	Acquirer breaches excessive ratio and merchant ratio is >=0.3%	Merchant breaches excessive enumeration ratio
April 1, 2025	Not applicable	10 USD per dispute or transaction reported as fraud	10 USD per dispute or transaction reported as fraud	10 USD per dispute or transaction reported as fraud
January 1, 2026	5 USD per dispute or transaction reported as fraud	10 USD per dispute or transaction reported as fraud	10 USD per dispute or transaction reported as fraud	10 USD per dispute or transaction reported as fraud

Note In the AP and Europe regions, VAMP fees will not apply where a chargeback also incurs an unsecured dispute fee. Unsecured dispute fees are applied to fraud chargebacks where the merchant did not authenticate the disputed transaction.

How we can help

VAMP will make managing disputes and fraud more important than ever. Fortunately, the associated fees are avoidable. Checkout.com has a range of fraud management solutions that leverage AI, rule-based, and expert-supported capabilities to keep your fraud rates down:

To learn more about these solutions or the VAMP, please contact your Account Manager or raise a support request using our webform. We’ll be happy to help.

‍

* Excluding LAC region countries.

Download PDF