Online transactions have made payments faster and more convenient, but also more attractive to a new generation of fraudsters. To protect both consumers and merchants, payment providers like Visa employ a series of programs to detect fraud early, handle chargebacks, and manage disputes.
One of the more recent implementations of Visa’s fraud detection efforts was the VAMP Program (Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program), which lowered risk thresholds to their lowest ratios yet and simplified what metrics merchants have to track. The initial program took effect in April 2025, with enforcement beginning in October and stricter thresholds beginning in 2026.
Besides VAMP, we’ll cover everything you need to know as a merchant with regards to how Visa handles disputes, records and settles chargebacks, and about Visa fraud detection.
What is Visa’s Fraud Monitoring Program?
Visa’s fraud monitoring programs—largely represented by VAMP—are a series of tools and metrics that helps merchants detect and reduce fraudulent transactions by using advanced algorithms to monitor card transactions in real time. These programs are designed to track suspicious patterns, including excessive chargebacks, unusual transaction volumes, or discrepancies in transaction data. When merchants reach certain thresholds for fraud or chargeback activity, Visa flags their account for additional scrutiny.
Acquirers (which VAMP primarily targets) and merchants who exceed Visa’s fraud thresholds are enrolled in the program and must take corrective actions to avoid further penalties, such as implementing additional fraud detection tools (like Sift) or improving transaction security measures. Visa’s fraud monitoring provides various tools to help merchants identify suspicious transactions early, including address verification, CVV checks, and 3D Secure (3DS), a service that adds an extra layer of authentication during the transaction process.
Merchants flagged by VAMP typically face increased fees and penalties, eventually leading to a suspension of their ability to accept Visa payments. To avoid falling under the program, merchants are encouraged to monitor their chargeback ratios carefully and implement preventative measures like using fraud detection solutions such as Sift and Visa’s own Advanced Authorization and Risk Manager.
What Was the Visa Chargeback Program (VDMP)?
The Visa chargeback program was referred to as the Visa Dispute Monitoring Program (VDMP), but has now been replaced with VAMP. The new program combines both fraud monitoring and disputes, effectively putting both Visa fraud detection and the Visa chargeback program into a single easy-to-read metric for merchants.
VAMP offers a set of tools designed to prevent first-party fraud, which is when a user requests a chargeback for services rendered or a product delivered despite receiving what they ordered. By verifying the legitimacy of a transaction, VAMP helps merchants understand when a transaction was authorized, reducing the likelihood of a fraudulent chargeback claim.
Another aspect of Visa’s chargeback process is chargeback alerts, which tells a merchant when a chargeback has been initiated. This gives the merchant time to address the claim and present relevant evidence that can show when a chargeback is fraudulent.
How Does Visa’s Fraud Monitoring Program Help Prevent Fraud?
The Visa fraud monitoring program—also part of VAMP—uses several processes to help prevent fraud for merchants and customers alike.
- Real-time transaction monitoring: Visa continuously monitors all transactions to identify unusual patterns, including looking for signs of card-not-present fraud, unusual spending behaviour, geographical inconsistencies, and rapid transaction volumes.
- Automated fraud detection tools: Visa uses automated fraud detection tools like Visa Advanced Authorization and Visa Risk Manager to analyze transaction data against historical trends. Today, these tools use machine learning algorithms to look for suspicious transaction patterns and provide merchants with alerts for flagged users.
- Thresholds for fraud: Sometimes a merchant becomes too lax with fraud detection, so Visa employs thresholds for merchants that exceed certain thresholds that can result in increased fees and scrutiny from the payment provider. This tells the merchant that corrective action, such as integration of further fraud detection solutions, is necessary to protect themselves and their customers.
- Prevention of unauthorized transactions: Through Visa’s 3DS technology, merchants can prevent unauthorized transactions by requiring extra steps for certain transactions. This includes requesting a one-time password (OTP), which must be entered before the transaction is approved. This helps further guarantee that the customer is the card holder.
- Support for high-risk merchants: Visa provides additional support to high-risk merchants by offering specific fraud prevention tools, programs, and techniques. E-commerce businesses, digital retailers, and subscription-based services are all at increased risk because of their tendency to be “card-not-present” transactions.
- Chargeback management: Visa’s VAMP includes mechanisms to manage and reduce chargeback rates and the impact of chargebacks. Most of this is achieved through early warnings of chargeback initiations, which helps merchants understand why a chargeback happened or give them time to present evidence if the chargeback is fraudulent.
What Can I Do to Keep my VAMP Ratios Low?
Keeping your VAMP ratios low is more important than ever.
With merchant thresholds for fraudulent transactions dropping to just 0.9% and fees for “excessive merchants” sitting between $5 and $10 per fraudulent or disputed charge, using Visa as a payment provider can get quite expensive if you don’t monitor fraud and chargebacks.
Payment protection solutions like Sift are a good first step to stopping fraud in its tracks and halting first-party fraud before it can get a transaction through, and there are other best practices businesses can follow to keep VAMP ratios low.
Monitor Your Ratios
The first step is understanding and monitoring your fraudulent transaction ratios. Any fraudulent or disputed transaction counts against your ratio, and when you’re processing thousands of purchases, this percentage can sneak up on you. For example, if you have 1,000 transactions in a given month, the 0.9% threshold from Visa goes into effect after just 9 disputed or fraudulent charges. Be proactive about solving disputes to avoid chargebacks, always collect evidence to prevent first-party fraud, and use payment protection solutions to identify suspicious users before they can commit fraud.
Implement Strong Fraud Prevention Tools
Visa offers fraud prevention tools, but the best policy is to have a dedicated fraud prevention solution. Platforms like Sift offer expansive databases of user signals and history that their AI-powered solutions use to identify suspicious activity before it occurs. Sift also provides a Clearbox Decisioning approach, which lets you know why a user is flagged so you can let legitimate customers through and adjust your fraud tolerance to your industry needs and VAMP ratios. While payment protection solutions are a good way to avoid the dreaded “excessive merchant” label, Sift actually spurs growth by providing frictionless experiences for legitimate customers while stopping fraudulent transactions and chargeback fraud in its tracks.
Adopt Fraud Detection Strategies
Monitor transactions for patterns such as unusually large purchases, rapid and multiple transactions, or purchases coming from unusual areas. High or large transaction volumes may indicate a fraudster trying to get as much as they can before their unauthorized use of a card is discovered.
Educate Your Staff
As in most cases, education is the best policy. Train your staff to be aware of potential fraud signs and explain how Visa’s VAMP thresholds work and what they mean for the company. Keep them up-to-date on recent fraud trends and how to handle fraud when discovered. Finally, a good customer service staff is crucial: handling customer complaints with grace and understanding is the best way to stop a potential chargeback. Remember, VAMP ratios apply to legitimate chargebacks as well as fraudulent ones.
Visa Fraud Monitoring Program Helps Those Who Help Themselves
Visa’s best interest is to keep their client merchants low-fraud, service-oriented, and honest, and that is a large part of why VAMP was implemented. The best policy to keep VAMP ratios low is to favor transparency when selling and employ top-tier customer service, but having a payment protection solution is just as critical.
Sift is already used globally by some of the largest businesses across industries. Our Global Data Network is cross-industry and “self-learning,” with every new transaction further increasing our ability to identify and flag suspicious users and fraudulent transactions. We trust our customers to know what’s best for their company and in their industry, so we keep our decisioning transparent and adjustable, making your Sift experience fit your specific business needs. Through market-leading AI-powered fraud detection and industry-specific customizability, Sift helps protect your bottom line while providing frictionless experiences for your loyal customers.
The Visa fraud monitoring programs and chargeback process is, in the end, here to help both merchants and customers alike to make commerce a safe, streamlined experience for all. Understanding how these programs work is the first step, but knowing how to address fraud, chargebacks, and unhappy customers is the next. If you’re running a business, make sure you understand these steps, and you’re well on your way to a bright, and lucrative, future.
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