Payment Platforms

Understanding Visa’s VAMP Update and the Impact on Merchants

August 19, 2025

Visa's new program—the Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program (VAMP)—is dramatically reshaping how payment processors and merchants, especially in high-risk sectors, operate. VAMP was introduced to clamp down on fraud and excessive disputes, putting added pressure on acquiring banks and, by extension, on merchants.

Why High-Risk Merchants Are Most Exposed

High-risk businesses—like subscription services, travel agencies, nutraceutical retailers, or credit-repair firms—already face frequent scrutiny for their elevated fraud and dispute levels. Under VAMP, if those levels exceed Visa’s thresholds, the acquiring bank may face steep penalties. As a result, legitimate merchants can still find themselves vulnerable to account suspensions or fines, especially when:

Fraud prevention tools are less advanced than those used by traditional retail businesses.
Recurring transactions increase the risk of forgotten charges or customer disputes.
Poor data collection limits the ability to verify customer identity.

Compelling Evidence 3.0 (CE 3.0): Your Defense Against Fraud Alerts

Enter Compelling Evidence 3.0 (CE 3.0). This evolved standard from Visa empowers merchants to cut fraud alerts—specifically the TC40 alerts that get flagged under VAMP. By providing matching customer data across multiple recent transactions (like device IDs or login details), merchants can prove the validity of a disputed charge and keep fraud ratios under control.

It's essential: CE 3.0 is the only way to suppress TC40 alerts, and it can be the difference between keeping or losing your merchant account.

What Triggers VAMP Enrollment?

VAMP tracks everything from total disputes (both fraudulent and not) to enumeration attacks (tiny trial transactions used to test card validity). Some key thresholds include:

Merchants with 1,500 or more disputes per month may be flagged.
If the dispute rate is 0.5%–0.7%, acquirers face a fee of $4 per transaction over the limit. Above 0.7%, that fee jumps to $8.
Over 300,000 enumeration attempts and a rate of 20% or higher can also trigger VAMP penalties.

Zen Payments: The Solution to Increased VAMP Risks

At Zen Payments, we specialize in helping high-risk merchants navigate the complexities of compliance under evolving Visa programs like VAMP. Here's how we support you:

We implement fraud tools that meet CE 3.0 standards, helping suppress fraud alerts.
We’ll be your guide on data collection and dispute management strategies to keep your account healthy and avoid increased fees.
We provide high-risk merchant accounts with reputable acquiring banks—so your business stays functional even if other processors hesitate.

Choose to sign up for Zen Payments today to protect yourself from increased fees!

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Taylor Stika

Taylor Stika is the CEO and Founder of Zen Payments. With a background in the payment processing industry starting in 2015, Taylor has extensive experience in managing and optimizing payment systems. Under his leadership, Zen Payments has grown and developed into a reputable provider of high and low-risk payment.

Frequently Asked Questions

Disputes, fraud alerts (TC40), and high volumes of suspicious transactions like enumeration attacks all count toward VAMP calculations.

Compelling evidence 3.0 is Visa’s new standard for fighting fraud-related chargebacks. It gives merchants more ways to prove that a disputed transaction was legitimate and that the customer actually made the purchase.

Visa looks at your dispute-to-sales ratio (not just the number of disputes) when deciding whether your business falls under VAMP, the Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program. If your fraud-related disputes exceed 0.5% of sales transactions and you have at least 1500 dispute transactions in a single month, your business may be flagged for VAMP review.

VAMP reshapes the entire payment system by forcing acquirers and merchants to adopt stronger risk management practices. This ripple effect impacts every part of the global commerce ecosystem, from customers using a debit card or credit card to processors managing transaction processing and regulatory compliance.

Yes. Even cases of friendly fraud, where a customer disputes a charge they knowingly made, can raise your visa chargeback ratio. That’s why merchants need proper chargeback management strategies, including CE 3.0, to protect revenue.

While VAMP is specific to the Visa network, other credit card companies like Mastercard also enforce strict regulatory compliance and chargeback thresholds. Many merchants must adopt a unified fraud monitoring approach to stay compliant across brands.

Advanced analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence tools power smarter fraud monitoring and dispute resolution. With real-time dashboards, merchants can track dispute ratios, identify CNP (card-not-present) fraud patterns, and apply automation to reduce errors in chargeback management.

If merchants cross thresholds, acquiring banks may pass on steep fines. For example, exceeding dispute percentages can mean fees of $4 to $8 per transaction. Add in interchange fees and operational complexity, and the cost to merchants can severely reduce profit margins.

CE 3.0 provides a standardized formula for supplying transaction information, like device IDs or login history, across multiple purchases. This reduces failures in the dispute resolution process, boosts efficiency, and keeps more money in the merchant’s bank account.

Non-compliance can lead to increased fines, loss of acquiring relationships, and in some cases, termination of your ability to process on the Visa network. This type of failure can disrupt your business model and cut off access to global payments.

Zen Payments provides expert guidance on fraud monitoring, automation, and chargeback management. Our customer support team helps clients implement CE 3.0, set up technology like tokenization and orchestration, and maintain healthy communication with acquirers to protect clients’ long-term experience in the payments space.

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