Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program (VAMP) 2025: What High-Risk Merchants Need to Know

The Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program (VAMP) represents one of the most critical compliance frameworks that high-risk merchants must understand and manage. In 2025, Visa has implemented updated thresholds and enforcement mechanisms that make VAMP compliance more important than ever. For merchants operating in high-risk industries like CBD, nutraceuticals, telehealth, and e-commerce, understanding VAMP isn't optional—it's essential for business survival.

VAMP was created by Visa to monitor and penalize acquiring banks (and by extension, their merchants) that exceed specific fraud and chargeback thresholds. The program aims to maintain the integrity of the Visa network by identifying problematic merchants and incentivizing better fraud prevention and customer service practices. When merchants exceed VAMP thresholds, they face escalating fines, mandatory remediation plans, and ultimately, the potential termination of their ability to accept Visa cards.

The stakes are extraordinarily high. Visa processes over 200 billion transactions annually, and maintaining consumer confidence in the payment network requires strict policing of merchant behavior. For high-risk merchants who already face elevated chargeback rates due to industry factors, VAMP represents an existential threat that requires constant vigilance, sophisticated fraud prevention tools, and proactive management strategies.

VAMP operates on two primary metrics: fraud-to-sales ratio and chargeback-to-transaction ratio. As of 2025, Visa monitors these metrics on a monthly basis, with thresholds that trigger different levels of intervention. Understanding these thresholds is crucial for maintaining compliance and avoiding penalties.

The fraud monitoring threshold is set at 0.9% of total sales volume with a minimum of $50,000 in fraudulent transactions per month. This means that if your business processes $10 million in monthly Visa sales, you can have no more than $90,000 in fraud-related transactions before entering the VAMP fraud monitoring program. For high-risk merchants, this threshold is particularly challenging because friendly fraud and true fraud rates tend to be significantly higher than low-risk industries.

The chargeback monitoring threshold is 0.9% of total transaction count with a minimum of 100 chargebacks per month. If you process 50,000 Visa transactions monthly, you cannot exceed 450 chargebacks without triggering VAMP intervention. This threshold is especially problematic for high-risk merchants because certain industries naturally experience higher chargeback rates due to product delivery times, customer expectations, subscription confusion, and other factors beyond simple fraud.

Visa categorizes VAMP violations into three tiers: Early Warning (first month exceeding thresholds), Standard (two consecutive months), and Excessive (three or more consecutive months). Each tier carries progressively severe penalties and requirements. The Early Warning stage involves monitoring and reporting but minimal fines. Standard tier brings monthly fines starting at $25,000, mandatory fraud prevention plan submission, and enhanced monitoring. Excessive tier results in fines up to $100,000 per month, potential card network restrictions, and possible termination of the merchant account.

In 2025, Visa implemented several significant changes to VAMP that high-risk merchants must understand. First, Visa introduced enhanced data reporting requirements that mandate acquirers provide more detailed merchant-level fraud and chargeback data. This increased transparency means Visa can identify problematic merchants more quickly and accurately, reducing the time merchants have to implement corrective measures before penalties escalate.

Second, Visa expanded the scope of what counts as fraud for VAMP purposes. Previously, only certain fraud reason codes triggered VAMP monitoring. Now, Visa includes a broader range of dispute codes in fraud calculations, including some forms of friendly fraud that merchants previously could exclude from their fraud ratios. This change effectively lowered the real-world threshold for many merchants, making it easier to enter VAMP monitoring unintentionally.

Third, Visa increased the fines associated with VAMP violations across all tiers. The Standard tier fines increased from $10,000 to $25,000 per month, and Excessive tier fines can now reach $100,000 monthly, up from $50,000 in previous years. These dramatic fine increases reflect Visa's intensified focus on network integrity and their willingness to impose financial pain on acquirers and merchants who fail to control fraud and chargebacks effectively.

Finally, Visa introduced a new 'Rapid Exit' pathway for merchants who demonstrate exceptional fraud prevention improvements. Merchants who reduce their fraud ratios by at least 50% within two months of entering VAMP can exit the program more quickly and with reduced fines. This change incentivizes immediate and aggressive action when VAMP thresholds are exceeded, rather than allowing merchants to slowly drift toward compliance over many months.

The immediate consequence of VAMP violation is financial. Monthly fines of $25,000 to $100,000 can devastate profitability, particularly for growing businesses operating on thin margins. These fines are charged to the acquiring bank, which then passes them directly to the merchant, often with additional penalties. Over a six-month period in the Excessive tier, a merchant could face $600,000 in VAMP fines alone, not including the underlying chargeback fees and lost merchandise.

Beyond direct fines, VAMP violations trigger mandatory fraud prevention plan requirements. Merchants must submit detailed remediation plans outlining how they'll reduce fraud and chargebacks, implement those plans under acquirer supervision, and provide regular progress reports. This process is resource-intensive, requiring dedicated staff time, potentially expensive technology investments, and ongoing monitoring and reporting that diverts attention from business growth.

Perhaps most seriously, prolonged VAMP violations lead to merchant account termination. If a merchant remains in the Excessive tier for more than six months without demonstrating meaningful improvement, Visa can mandate that the acquirer terminate the merchant account. At this point, the merchant loses ability to accept Visa cards, and the account termination gets reported to the MATCH list (Member Alert to Control High-Risk merchants), a shared database of terminated merchants that other acquirers check before approving new accounts.

MATCH list placement is catastrophic for most businesses. It makes obtaining new merchant services extremely difficult, often requiring specialized high-risk processors willing to work with MATCH-listed merchants at significantly higher rates and more restrictive terms. Some merchants placed on MATCH never recover, finding themselves unable to accept credit cards and forced out of business. The reputational damage, combined with practical difficulties in payment processing, creates a downward spiral that's very difficult to escape.

Preventing VAMP violations starts with comprehensive fraud prevention systems. High-risk merchants need AI-powered fraud detection that analyzes hundreds of variables in real-time, including device fingerprinting, geolocation analysis, velocity checking, behavioral analysis, and pattern recognition. These systems must be sophisticated enough to catch fraud without creating excessive false positives that harm conversion rates and customer experience. The best fraud prevention platforms continuously learn from your transaction data, becoming more accurate over time at distinguishing legitimate customers from fraudsters.

Effective chargeback management is equally critical. This includes implementing clear refund policies, ensuring accurate product descriptions, providing excellent customer service, using billing descriptors that customers recognize, sending shipping confirmations and tracking information, and following up proactively on delivery issues. For subscription businesses, chargeback prevention means ensuring crystal-clear terms, sending pre-renewal notices, making cancellation easy, and using sophisticated dunning management for failed payments. Many chargebacks can be prevented through better customer communication and service rather than fraud detection alone.

Monitoring and analytics provide early warning of VAMP threshold approaches. High-risk merchants should track daily fraud rates, chargeback ratios, dispute reason codes, and trend analysis that predicts when thresholds might be exceeded. Automated alerting systems should notify management immediately when metrics approach dangerous levels, providing time to implement emergency measures before VAMP violations occur. Regular reporting dashboards showing fraud and chargeback trends by product, customer segment, acquisition channel, and time period help identify root causes and target prevention efforts effectively.

Strategic business practices can reduce VAMP risk significantly. This includes customer verification steps at checkout, email and phone verification, address confirmation, clear communication of delivery times and product expectations, responsive customer support, generous refund policies that prevent disputes, subscription management tools that reduce confusion, and regular reviews of high-chargeback products or customer segments. Sometimes the best fraud prevention is refusing certain types of high-risk transactions or customers, accepting lower sales volume in exchange for dramatically improved fraud and chargeback metrics that keep you well under VAMP thresholds.

Your payment processor plays a crucial role in VAMP compliance. High-risk merchants need processors who specialize in their industry, understand the specific fraud patterns and chargeback drivers, and provide sophisticated tools for fraud prevention and chargeback management. Generic payment processors that serve primarily low-risk merchants often lack the expertise and technology needed to keep high-risk merchants under VAMP thresholds.

Look for processors offering integrated fraud prevention, real-time monitoring and alerts, chargeback representment services, industry-specific compliance features, and dedicated support teams that understand high-risk challenges. The processor should provide detailed analytics showing exactly where you stand relative to VAMP thresholds, predictive alerts when you're trending toward violations, and expert guidance on remediation strategies if thresholds are exceeded. Some processors offer VAMP insurance or guarantee programs that protect merchants from certain penalties in exchange for following recommended fraud prevention practices.

At Paysuki, we've built our entire platform specifically to help high-risk merchants stay compliant with VAMP and other card network monitoring programs. Our AI-powered fraud prevention stops fraudulent transactions before they process, our chargeback protection system prevents disputes before they're filed, and our monitoring tools provide real-time visibility into your VAMP risk level. We've helped hundreds of high-risk merchants maintain VAMP compliance even as their transaction volumes scaled dramatically, proving that sustainable growth is possible with the right payment infrastructure and partner.

VAMP compliance in 2025 requires more than passive monitoring—it demands active management, sophisticated technology, and strategic business practices that prioritize fraud prevention and customer satisfaction. The updated thresholds, expanded fraud definitions, and increased fines make VAMP more challenging than ever, particularly for high-risk merchants who naturally face elevated dispute rates. However, VAMP compliance is absolutely achievable with the right approach.

The key is treating VAMP as a central business priority rather than a peripheral compliance issue. This means investing in best-in-class fraud prevention technology, implementing comprehensive chargeback management processes, monitoring metrics continuously, and making strategic decisions about products, customers, and business practices based partly on their fraud and chargeback risk. Merchants who take VAMP seriously and build operations around staying compliant find they not only avoid penalties but also improve profitability through reduced fraud losses and better customer experiences.

If you're concerned about VAMP compliance or looking for a payment processor that specializes in keeping high-risk merchants compliant, Paysuki can help. Our platform is specifically designed for high-risk industries, with fraud prevention and chargeback protection tools that keep you well under VAMP thresholds even as your business scales. Contact us today to learn how we can help you stay VAMP-compliant and grow your business without fear of card network penalties.