VAMP 2026: What Changes on April 1 and Who Will Start Pushing on Merchants

Enforcement pressure of the Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program (VAMP) is increasing in a powerful bid to reduce the overall amount of chargebacks, disputes, and fraud. VAMP is Visa’s program for monitoring card-not-present (CNP) fraud and disputes, and it represents one of the key compliance challenges for merchants.

Visa is not taking any prisoners with its new approach. Payment service providers (PSPs) and merchants alike need to take notice, right away. VAMP will continue to target organizations whose chargeback rates are beyond what Visa considers acceptable (or what they call excessive), and the implications of being on the right side of the line are very real: fines, holdbacks, and even removal from the network.

Even if a merchant’s chargeback rate isn’t considered “excessive,” an acquirer (for most merchants this means their PSP) may still tighten requirements because their own thresholds are stricter than merchant thresholds. These upstream pressures are certain to have consequences downstream as VAMP moves from something to know, to something that’s enforced. 

3 VAMP Details a Merchant Should Know 

The VAMP ratio is a fraction, not a sum. 

Visa defines the VAMP ratio as: VAMP ratio = (Fraud (TC40) + Disputes (TC15)) / Settled Transactions (TC05)

• TC40 = fraud reports.
• TC15 = disputes/chargebacks.
• TC05 = settled transactions (the denominator.)

VAMP is count-based, not dollar based.

VAMP is driven by event counts, not transaction value. A large number of low-dollar disputes can still create material exposure. In other words, a merchant that makes 1000 sales; has 10 TC40 fraud events and 20 TC15 Dispute events would have a ratio of (10+20)/1000= 300 bps, or 3%. The size of each transaction is not considered in the ratio, it is literally the number of transactions that have taken place over the period.

VAMP includes more than chargebacks.

Many teams think of risk programs as “chargebacks only,” but VAMP incorporates both dispute events (TC15) and fraud reporting (TC40). This is a significant shift in the way the program works, which many merchants will struggle to systematize in the early going, as disputes that never became chargebacks were not counted in the past. Meaning, a merchant that was in danger of slipping into VAMP monitoring could simply choose to refund all customers who appeared in danger of slipping into a chargeback.

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What changes with VAMP on April 1, 2026? 

For the U.S., Canada, and EU, Visa’s “excessive” merchant threshold drops from ≥220 bps to ≥150 bps.

One important constraint remains: merchants typically enter monitoring only when they exceed both:

• The ratio threshold and;
• A minimum monthly count of fraud + disputes (≥1,500/month for the U.S., Canada, EU, and AP.)

Even if your business is far below 220 bps today, however, your acquirer is managing VAMP at the portfolio level—and Visa identifies acquirer portfolios as:

• Above Standard: ≥50 bps (basis points.)
• Excessive: ≥70 bps.

In other words, across their whole business, acquirers must attain an average fraud and dispute level way below that of any individual merchant. That portfolio scrutiny is why many merchants are being asked by their PSPs for clearer, faster answers on fraud and dispute drivers, especially around month-to-month volatility, segmentation, and how quickly issues can be mitigated. In practice, the questions often look like:

• What are your TC40 and TC15 counts each month?
• How quickly can you reduce them if they spike?
• Can you segment risk by region, channel, product line, or cohort?
• What controls do you have for enumeration (card testing)?

However, Visa does call out exclusions that depend on the timing of the data extract:

• Disputes resolved through pre-dispute solutions may be excluded.
• TC40 fraud qualified for Compelling Evidence 3.0 may be excluded.

This matters operationally: two merchants with similar customer experiences can end up with different VAMP ratios based on how disputes are resolved, how evidence is collected, and whether qualifying events are included in the workflow in a timely manner.

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How to Reduce Your VAMP Ratio 

You don’t need a big internal task force to start planning for this. You need visibility and repeatable reporting.

Start by asking your acquirer or processor for a monthly export that includes:

• TC40 Count
• TC15 Count
• TC05 Count
• Your calculated VAMP ratio (plus how it was calculated.)

Then ask for breakouts by:

• Region
• Checkout Type
• Product SKU
• Customer Type or Cohort
• Payment Method
  
  

If your partners can’t provide this, merchants can often build internal views using the dispute, fraud, and authorization signals they already own—then reconcile those reports against what the acquirer ultimately reports.

Bottom line: April 1, 2026 will make “excessive” thresholds harder to avoid, and expensive to navigate. Merchants that can quantify TC40/TC15 drivers, segment risk quickly, and respond with evidence-backed mitigation will have an easier time meeting these acquirer expectations. 

What now?

• Confirm monitoring is in place for both disputes and fraud. Understand that low conversion, high volume marketing programs may put you at risk for sudden VAMP inclusion.
• Ask your acquirer if they can share TC40’s with you. If not, engage with a pre-dispute system such as Verifi or another vender that resells them. 
• Have an active fraud scoring system flag risky transactions. 
• Have a pre-transaction system for blocking bots and suspicious device IDs or IP combinations. This protects against enumeration attacks. 

Visa wants to bring fraud and acceptance levels for CNP in line with CP. Expect more actions like this and lower thresholds annually. Act with urgency before enforcement pressure lands, and before VISA starts to extract fines, holdbacks, and potentially access to the network.

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