Visa VAMP Program Explained: Rules, Fees and 2026 Changes

Who this helps: you run a subscription business on any processor, Visa is a large share of your card volume, and you want to know which VAMP line applies to you, what it costs to cross it, and how to stay under it.

Visa's chargeback rules for merchants were rewritten in 2025, and a lot of what you will read about them is out of date. The number that matters is not the 1.5% in the headlines. It is 0.5%, the line that applies when your acquirer's whole portfolio is flagged, and you may not know when it is. Here is how VAMP works in 2026, what it costs, and how a subscription business stays under both lines.

What is the Visa VAMP program?

VAMP, the Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program, is Visa's single program for monitoring fraud and disputes on card-not-present payments, the online and phone payments every subscription business takes. Since April 1, 2025, it has replaced Visa's separate dispute and fraud programs, the Visa Dispute Monitoring Program (VDMP) and the Visa Fraud Monitoring Program (VFMP).

Each month Visa calculates a VAMP ratio for every acquiring bank (the bank that holds a merchant's account) and every merchant: fraud reports plus disputes, divided by settled online transactions. Each fraud report and each dispute is one event, and Visa calls the total your VAMP count. Visa then identifies anyone above its lines, and the fees flow through the acquirer to the merchant. You cancheck your own VAMP ratio with our free calculator.

Visa publishes a shortVAMP fact sheet; the detailed program guide is written for acquirers, so the rest of this guide draws on processors' documentation. Mastercard runs its own program, theExcessive Chargeback Program, with different thresholds.

What are the VAMP levels?

Merchants have two lines, and acquirers have three. A merchant is excessive at a 1.5% ratio with at least 1,500 events in a month, and when its acquirer's whole portfolio, every merchant it processes payments for, is flagged, a merchant can be identified from 0.5% with as few as 5.

VAMP levels (as of October 2026)

The lower merchant level is the part guides leave out. Braintree's documentation says merchants at 0.5% with at least 5 events “could be notified” when their acquirer is flagged, and Stripe's says Visa “may assess fees” at that level. An acquirer above 0.5% has every reason to act on the merchants pushing it there, which is why our guide to what a good chargeback rate is puts the target below 0.5%.

How much does VAMP cost?

$8 for every event at the excessive levels, and $4 when your acquirer is above standard, charged monthly through your acquirer, according to Braintree's documentation. A first identification in any 12 months gets a three-month grace period before fees start, and there are no fees on a merchant with fewer than 5 events. Processors call these fees or fines; they are the same charge.

The fees are the smaller cost. Acquirers manage their own VAMP ratio by acting on the merchants inside it, with reviews, reserves held back from payouts, and closures, and Shopify warns that an extended period in VAMP may restrict a merchant's use of Shopify Payments. If your acquirer closes your account after a VAMP identification, Visa's rules require it to list you on its terminated merchant file and, where Visa's criteria are met, on VMSS, the screening list other acquirers check, as our guide to the MATCH list explains.

What changed in VAMP in 2025 and 2026?

Five dates matter. The program was consolidated in April 2025, the current rules arrived in June 2025, fees started in October 2025 and January 2026, and the merchant line fell to 1.5% in April 2026.

VAMP updates and timeline, 2025 to 2026

What counts toward VAMP?

Every fraud report and every dispute on a card-not-present Visa payment, whatever the reason. Refunds do not count, and a dispute you fight and win still does.

Four details decide your number in practice.

1. A fraud claim counts twice. When a customer tells their bank a charge was not theirs, the bank files a fraud report (a TC40) and often a dispute, and Stripe's documentation notes that a payment in both reports counts twice.
2. Some disputes are taken out. Visa excludes disputes resolved before they are filed, through RDR or Order Insight, and fraud reports that qualify under Compelling Evidence 3.0, as long as they qualify in time for Visa's monthly data extract.
3. Each month stands alone. Visa compares the fraud reports and disputes it received in a month with the payments settled in that same month, so a month with fewer sales shows a higher ratio from the same disputes. A bad March shows up in April, when Visa identifies merchants and your processor or acquirer notifies you.
4. On Stripe, Visa counts by descriptor. Stripe's documentation says Visa identifies a Stripe account by the fixed part of its statement descriptor and its acquiring bank, so one business with several descriptors can be several monitored accounts.

VAMP also has a separate measure for card testing, called enumeration: 20% of authorization attempts and 300,000 enumerated attempts in a month. Stripe's documentation says Visa does not fine merchants for it, though Visa requires acquirers to act on it.

How does VAMP affect a subscription business?

Through fraud claims first, because each one counts twice, and through the lower line, which can catch a business far below the 1,500 floor. A subscriber who forgets a subscription and calls the renewal fraud adds two events.

Dana runs a $29 monthly meal-planning app with 40,000 Visa renewals in March. That month she receives 150 Visa disputes: 60 customers saying they canceled and 90 saying the charge was not theirs, each of whom also triggered a fraud report. Her VAMP count is 60 plus 90 twice, 240 events, and her ratio is 0.60%. She is nowhere near 1.5% or 1,500, but if her acquirer were flagged, 0.60% and 240 events would be enough for Visa to identify her. Visa doesn't publish a fee for this level; if her acquirer passed on its own $4 or $8 per event, that would be $960 to $1,920 a month.

The fraud claims are also the part she can shrink fastest. Recognition failures, a customer not knowing the charge, come from unclear descriptors and forgotten renewals, and the same claims can be blocked before they are filed or cleared from the count under Compelling Evidence 3.0.

How do you get out of VAMP?

By bringing your ratio back under the line that identified you. Visa has not published how long you must stay under to exit; Solidgate's documentation says one month below the thresholds, while some vendors say three consecutive months, so ask your acquirer which it applies.

Fees continue for each month you are identified after the grace period. Ask your acquirer what format it wants for a remediation plan; Stripe, for example, offers a template. An acquirer that sees a plan with dates and numbers is more likely to work with you than to hold back payouts or close the account.

How do you lower your VAMP ratio?

Stop disputes before they are filed, and stop fraud claims from being filed at all. Five habits do the work, and fighting is not one of them.

1. Watch the number Visa sees. Track fraud reports plus disputes against settled online sales each month with our free VAMP check or your processor's VAMP dashboard.
2. Stop disputes before they are filed. Alerts from Visa's RDR and CDRN and Mastercard's Ethoca networks let you refund first; RDR and Order Insight resolutions are excluded from the count. A fraud report filed with the call still counts unless it qualifies under Compelling Evidence 3.0.
3. Use Compelling Evidence 3.0 on fraud claims. Store your customers' signup IP address, device and login, so qualifying fraud claims are blocked or their fraud reports removed.
4. Fix recognition. A descriptor customers recognize and a reminder before a renewal or trial conversion cut the fraud claims that count twice, as our prevention playbook covers.
5. Cancel the renewals behind a dispute. A subscription that keeps billing after a dispute can produce another one the next month.

FAQ

Rules checked against Visa's VAMP fact sheet and Core Rules (18 April 2026 edition), and the VAMP documentation of Braintree, Stripe, Solidgate and Shopify. Last reviewed 13 October 2026.