For years, Visa measured fraud and disputes in separate lanes. The Visa Fraud Monitoring Program (VFMP) watched fraud, the Visa Dispute Monitoring Program (VDMP) watched chargebacks, and acquirers and ISOs could manage each one on its own track. That era is over. In April 2025, Visa retired both programs and folded them into a single framework: the Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program (VAMP).
The name tells you where the pressure now sits. VAMP measures individual Merchants, but it also measures the acquirer’s entire portfolio, and it holds the acquirer accountable for the result. At the center of that calculation is a data set most acquirers and ISOs still can’t see clearly or quickly enough: issuer-reported fraud, better known as TC40 data.
From VFMP to VAMP: What Changed
VFMP was built on fraud dollars and fraud-to-sales ratios, with its own Early Warning, Standard, and Excessive tiers. VAMP replaces that model with one count-based ratio:
VAMP Ratio = (TC40 fraud reports + TC15 disputes) ÷ settled card-not-present transactions
That change matters for three reasons:
Fraud and disputes now land in the same bucket. A TC40 counts against the ratio whether or not the issuer ever files a chargeback.
It counts transactions, not dollars. A flood of small-ticket fraud now hurts as much as a handful of large ones. Low-price trial offers and digital goods are exposed in ways they weren’t under VFMP.
The acquirer is measured directly. Your portfolio has its own ratio and its own thresholds, and they are far tighter than the Merchant thresholds.
What Is TC40 Data?
TC40 data is fraud reported to Visa by issuing banks when a cardholder says a transaction wasn’t theirs. The issuer may or may not follow up with a chargeback. Often, writing off a small amount is cheaper for the issuer than working a dispute. That’s why reported fraud and chargebacks have always been tracked separately.
Under VFMP, a very few savvy Merchants treated TC40 alerts as an early warning: refund the transaction before the chargeback arrives. Under VAMP, that strategy has limits. A refund may head off the chargeback, but it doesn’t erase the fraud report. Once the TC40 is filed, it counts. The only real defense is finding and shutting down the source of the fraud before the next wave of TC40s is reported.
Current VAMP Thresholds for Acquirers
Visa publishes separate thresholds for acquirer portfolios and for individual Merchants. As of the April 1, 2026 update, the key levels are:
Acquirer (portfolio-level) thresholds
Above Standard: portfolio VAMP ratio of 0.50% (50 basis points) or higher. Reported fees of $4 per fraud or dispute event.
Excessive: portfolio VAMP ratio of 0.70% (70 basis points) or higher. Reported fees of $8 per fraud or dispute event, along with remediation expectations from Visa and closer scrutiny from your sponsor bank.
Merchant thresholds
Excessive: Merchant VAMP ratio of 1.50% or higher in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Asia Pacific (reduced from 2.20% on April 1, 2026), with a minimum of 1,500 combined fraud and dispute events in the month. Enrolled Merchants face per-event fees, commonly reported at $8.
Enumeration: an enumeration ratio of 20% or higher, with at least 300,000 enumerated transactions in the month.
Grace period: first-time Merchant violations within a rolling 12-month period generally receive a three-month grace period before enforcement.
Visa updates these rules regularly, and fees vary by region and by acquirer agreement, so acquirers and ISOs should confirm current figures with Visa and their sponsor bank.
Notice the gap. Your portfolio threshold is less than half of the Merchant threshold. A Merchant running at 1.4% is “compliant” by Visa’s Merchant standard, yet that same Merchant is running at twice your Excessive threshold. And Merchants that never reach the 1,500-event minimum are never individually enrolled, but every one of their TC40s and disputes still counts toward your portfolio ratio.
One Merchant Can Put the Entire Portfolio at Risk
Under VAMP, your portfolio ratio is only as healthy as its worst high-volume Merchant. Consider a simple example:
Your portfolio settles 2,000,000 card-not-present transactions per month at a healthy 0.40% VAMP ratio, or 8,000 fraud and dispute events.
You board one new Merchant processing 200,000 transactions per month. Within 60 days, a new affiliate campaign drives that Merchant’s ratio to 4.0%, or 8,000 additional events.
Your portfolio ratio jumps to 16,000 ÷ 2,200,000 = 0.73%. You are now in Excessive territory.
One Merchant, representing less than 10% of your transaction count, just pushed the entire portfolio over the line. The fees, the remediation plan, and the sponsor bank conversation now affect every Merchant you serve, including the hundreds that did nothing wrong. This is why VAMP can’t be managed at month-end. It has to be managed Merchant by Merchant across the portfolio, every day.
The Visibility Gap: Reporting That Arrives Too Late
Here is the problem most acquirers and ISOs face today. Their TC40 and VAMP reporting typically arrives weeks after the month closes. By the time a risk analyst sees that a Merchant crossed a threshold, the fraud happened four to eight weeks ago, the next month’s TC40s are already being filed, and the portfolio ratio is already set.
Even when the report arrives, it rarely says why. A month-end summary might tell you that a Merchant had 2,400 TC40s. It won’t tell you that 70% of them came from one affiliate, one landing page, one product SKU, or one range of issuing BINs. Without that detail, your team is left calling the Merchant, requesting spreadsheets, and waiting, while the problem keeps compounding. Often, acquirers are left with only one option to solve the problem: terminate the merchant (and forgo the profit).
To actually manage VAMP, acquirers and ISOs need TC40 data that is:
Real time, or close to it, so rising fraud shows up in days, not after month-end.
Transaction-level, tied to the exact transaction ID rather than rolled up into a monthly count.
Enriched with Merchant context, so each TC40 can be traced to its true source through data points such as:
Affiliates and marketing channels
Campaigns and landing pages
Products, SKUs, and price points
MIDs and descriptors
Issuing BINs and card types
Customer location and IP addresses
The timing between the TC40 and any related chargeback
That level of detail is the difference between knowing a Merchant has a fraud problem and knowing exactly what to turn off.
Put TC40 Data in Your Merchants’ Hands
Acquirers and ISOs can’t fix a Merchant’s fraud problem on their own. The Merchant controls the affiliates, the traffic sources, the checkout flow, the promotions and the fraud tools. Yet historically, TC40 data has been hard for Merchants to get from their processor.
When Merchants can’t see their own TC40s, the relationship turns adversarial. The acquirer sends a warning, the Merchant pushes back, and nobody is working from the same facts. When Merchants can see the same TC40 data the acquirer sees, at the same level of detail and at the same time, the dynamic changes:
The Merchant can pause the affiliate, block the BIN range, tighten 3-D Secure, or pull the product or promotion driving the fraud.
The acquirer can verify the fix in the data instead of taking the Merchant’s word for it.
Both sides watch the ratio move in the right direction together, before Visa ever has to get involved.
Sharing TC40 data turns your Merchants from the source of the problem into partners in solving it.
Continuous Underwriting for the VAMP Era
VAMP rewards acquirers and ISOs who manage risk continuously and punishes those who manage it one month-end report at a time. Episodic reviews and annual re-underwrites weren’t built for a program where a single Merchant can move your portfolio ratio in a matter of weeks.
SLYCE360 with its advanced analytics and automations continuously monitor TC40 and VAMP ratios across your entire portfolio and highlight rising fraud trends early, before a Merchant, or your portfolio, crosses a VAMP threshold. SLYCE360 integrates directly with your Merchants’ CRMs, giving you deep insights into the true source of elevated VAMP (affiliate, campaign, product, landing page, and more) that has historically been a black hole for compliance teams.
Just as important, SLYCE360 gives your Merchants the same view, so they can work collaboratively with your team to resolve issues at the source instead of hiding them.
And best of all: the cost of the SLYCE360 service is paid by your Merchants, not by you, and you receive a commission.
Visa has moved the accountability to the acquirer. SLYCE360 gives you the visibility to meet it.