Visa has overhauled its fraud and dispute monitoring in 2025. The new Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program (VAMP) consolidates multiple legacy programs into one global framework with a unified VAMP ratio that tracks card-not-present (CNP) fraud and disputes under a single metric. An advisory period ran through the end of September 2025, after which enforcement ramps according to the new thresholds.
What exactly is VAMP
VAMP replaces prior regional programs and introduces a single remediation process. The goal is to reduce fraud, disputes, and card-testing (enumeration) at scale, while giving acquirers and merchants clearer expectations and timelines.
What changed in 2025
- Unified metric (VAMP ratio):
VAMP Ratio = [Fraud (TC40) + Disputes (TC15)] ÷ Settled CNP (TC05). - Timeline: Updated thresholds are active for CNP transactions; the advisory window has ended and enforcement applies according to the region-specific rules.
- Enumeration: Explicit global triggers now apply for both the rate and the absolute count of card-testing events.
Thresholds you must know
Acquirer portfolio (illustrative)
- Above Standard at approximately 0.50% (50 bps) VAMP ratio
- Excessive at approximately 0.70% (70 bps) VAMP ratio
Minimum monthly volumes apply.
Merchant level (Excessive; when not already covered at the acquirer level)
- AP/Canada/EU/US: VAMP ratio around 2.2% (220 bps) with monthly count thresholds
- LAC: VAMP ratio around 1.5% (150 bps) with monthly count thresholds
- CEMEA: VAMP ratio around 2.2% (220 bps) plus minimum monthly count and amount thresholds
A planned reduction to 1.5% in AP/Canada/EU/US is scheduled for 2026, so plan ahead.
Enumeration (card testing)
- Enumeration ratio around 20% (2000 bps), and
- Enumerated authorization count around 300,000 per month
Crossing these triggers requires proactive remediation with your acquirer.
Notes: exact numeric thresholds can vary by region and portfolio performance; align with your acquirer on the current, binding values for your MID(s).
How this differs from the old world
Previously, merchants and acquirers tracked separate fraud and dispute metrics. VAMP bundles them into a single ratio and adds explicit enumeration triggers. This simplifies monitoring, makes portfolio-level risk clearer, and puts more emphasis on high-volume CNP traffic.
Who is most exposed
- High-risk verticals with heavy CNP volumes and friendly-fraud exposure
- Businesses targeted by bot-driven enumeration
- Merchants with weak refund flows, unclear billing descriptors, or inconsistent dispute evidence
How to stay below VAMP thresholds
- Stop enumeration at the edge.
Use device and network intelligence, BIN/IP/email velocity, caps on repeated low-value auths, and adaptive 3DS. Add pre-auth screening policies for high-risk signals. - Lower disputes by design.
Remove friction in cancellations and refunds to preempt TC15s. Improve descriptors and support SLAs to reduce “merchant not recognized” cases. Where available, adopt pre-dispute workflows to resolve early. - Harden fraud defenses.
Tune rules for first-time buyers, promo abuse, and reshipping. Combine pre- and post-auth models so you reduce TC40 issuances and avoid compounding fraud and dispute counts. - Use compelling evidence correctly.
Provide strong delivery, usage, and device signals. Where applicable, implement contemporary evidence data formats that help exclude qualifying events from ratio calculations. - Coordinate with your acquirer.
Share telemetry on spikes, 3DS success, refund benchmarks, and routing plans. Agree on how they will remediate during any monitoring period and how backup routing will be applied.
A 30-day compliance plan
- Week 1: Map historical TC15/TC40 counts into the VAMP formula. Recalculate your VAMP ratio by market, BIN, and channel.
- Week 2: Deploy enumeration shields: velocity checks, small-amount controls, and real-time blocks on obvious bot sources.
- Week 3: Audit refunds/cancellations; implement early-resolution workflows and improve evidence collection.
- Week 4: Finalize escalation playbooks with your acquirer; define thresholds that force 3DS or hold fulfillment.
Example calculations (simplified)
- VAMP ratio: If the month shows 2,000 fraud+dispute events and 100,000 settled CNP transactions, your VAMP ratio is 2.0% (200 bps). That can be below some Excessive thresholds in certain regions and above others; check the regional cutoffs with your acquirer.
- Enumeration ratio: If 80,000 of 350,000 authorizations are confirmed as enumeration, the ratio is 22.9% (2,286 bps). Also verify any absolute-count trigger.
Align risk with your processing setup
If you need acquirer-level routing, backup gateways, or programmatic dispute handling, anchor that in your merchant account so controls persist across processors and MID splits.