VAMP (Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program)
Visa's consolidated monitoring program that tracks combined fraud and dispute activity at the acquirer and merchant level. It replaced Visa's older separate dispute (VDMP) and fraud (VFMP) programs with a single ratio.
Overview
What is VAMP?
The Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program (VAMP) is Visa's framework for monitoring excessive fraud and disputes. It consolidates what used to be two separate programs — the dispute-focused VDMP and the fraud-focused VFMP — into a single combined ratio assessed at the acquirer level and attributed down to individual merchants. The goal is the same as before: keep fraud and chargebacks across the network within acceptable bounds, and apply escalating scrutiny and fees to the merchants and acquirers that drive them.
For high-risk merchants, VAMP matters because it changes how your performance is measured. Rather than tracking dispute count and fraud separately, Visa now looks at a blended picture of enumeration (card-testing) fraud and disputes. Crossing the program's thresholds places your acquirer — and therefore you — into a monitoring tier with action-plan requirements and potential fines, exactly the kind of pressure that ends accounts for merchants running close to the line.
Thresholds and ratio definitions phase in over time and differ by region and merchant risk classification, so the practical number to manage to should be confirmed with your acquirer. What does not change is the playbook: keep fraud and disputes low, and spread exposure across more than one acquirer so a single bad month never breaches a program threshold.
In depth
Everything you need to know.
VAMP combines fraud and dispute signals into a single ratio measured against a merchant's transaction or settlement activity, calculated on a recurring (typically monthly) basis. When the ratio exceeds the program threshold, the acquirer is notified and the merchant enters a monitoring tier — early tiers focus on remediation and action plans, later tiers add per-dispute or per-transaction fees that escalate the longer the breach persists.
Because the measurement sits with the acquirer, a single noisy merchant can affect an acquirer's standing — which is precisely why acquirers underwrite high-risk merchants carefully and act quickly when ratios climb. Distributing volume across multiple acquirers through payment orchestration keeps any one relationship comfortably below threshold.
High-risk verticals operate closer to monitoring thresholds than mainstream businesses, so a consolidated fraud-plus-disputes ratio leaves less room to hide a weak month. A card-testing attack that spikes enumeration fraud, or a product issue that spikes disputes, can move the combined ratio quickly. Entering a VAMP tier brings action-plan obligations and fees, and repeated or unresolved breaches put the acquiring relationship itself at risk.
The merchants who stay clear treat fraud and dispute prevention as one connected discipline — because under VAMP, that is exactly how Visa measures them.
- Confirm the current ratio definition and threshold with your acquirer — they phase in and vary by region and risk class.
- Stop card-testing at the door with velocity rules and real-time fraud screening — enumeration fraud feeds the combined ratio.
- Use 3D Secure 2.0 to shift liability and pre-dispute alerts to resolve before a chargeback is filed.
- Distribute volume across multiple acquirers so a single month never breaches a program threshold.
- Monitor fraud and disputes together, in real time, rather than as separate monthly reports.
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