Compliance Deadline Nears for Enhanced Visa Program Targeting Fraud

Visa has rolled out an updated fraud-mitigation and dispute-management framework called the Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program, or VAMP, which took effect on April 1, 2025.

An advisory period runs through the end of September, after which time Visa’s clients and partners must comply with VAMP, where applicable. Visa set the advisory period to give clients and partners time to adjust their controls and prepare for VAMP.

Fraud is a long-standing problem in the payments industry and has become more sophisticated with new technology developments.

“The rapidly evolving payment ecosystem, increasing complexity of players involved, and technological advancements in payment methods have resulted in the rise of fraud, disputes, and enumeration attacks,” Visa said in an online post about its acquirer monitoring program.

Enumeration — or brute force — attacks happen when bad actors use an automated system to repeatedly submit payment details for card-not-present transactions. Once they find a valid combination, they can use it to make unauthorized purchases.

Enumeration leads to more than $1 billion in fraud losses per year, according to Visa.

Attacks of this nature lead to $1.1 billion in annual fraud losses, Visa says. And the company points to the rise in disputes as another reason why an enhanced program is necessary. 

In 2019, consumers disputed $7.2 billion in credit card charges with issuers. But disputes rose to an estimated $11 billion in 2023. And a finance-industry research company estimates that disputes will continue to increase sharply in the near future, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

“Consumer advocates say the trend is a sign that people are getting savvy about their rights as cardholders,” according to The Wall Street Journal report, which highlighted federal law that enables credit and debit card customers to dispute billing mistakes as well as unauthorized or unrecognized charges.

Visa didn’t become the biggest credit card network in the U.S. by letting criminals take advantage of its products and programs. The company is serious about combating fraud, and it urges merchants and acquiring banks to ramp up their fraud-fighting efforts too.

Acquiring banks and merchants face the possibility of fees and fines if they don’t fight off fraud well enough under the revised VAMP program, according to a recent Payments Dive report.

Merchants should review how Visa plans to apply the new charges to avoid unexpected costs. Rick Lynch, CSO at ChargebackHelp, wrote in a recent LinkedIn post that Visa may impose fines even on merchants with low fraud and dispute levels.

“Visa’s VAMP program is a major step in fighting fraud and disputes, but its design means ‘good’ merchants aren’t entirely safe if their acquirer portfolio is ‘bad’,” Lynch said. “In VAMP, your risk is tied not just to your business, but to the company you keep in your acquirer’s portfolio.”

Visa may fine an acquirer if too many transactions in the acquirer’s portfolio result in fraud or disputes — and those costs can be passed on to merchants, Lynch said.

While acquiring banks and merchants are likely to resist the idea of new fees, the financial pressure could motivate stronger fraud-prevention measures. If those efforts succeed in reducing fraud, the fees may ultimately prove worthwhile.

Charges stemming from the Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program figure to impact merchants across industries and geographic territories, but they may cause a bigger blow to the bottom lines of smaller and medium-sized merchants.

Larger merchants typically see higher transaction volumes than smaller businesses. And they can use those volumes as leverage in negotiating deals with card service providers, according to Payments Dive.

The improved Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program stands to make managing fraud a more streamlined process for participants in the card ecosystem. The initiative results from Visa’s consolidation of five dispute and fraud efforts into a single program, and it streamlines 38 separate remediation processes into just one.

Merchants can deal with cases of fraud as they occur. But it may be in a merchant’s best interest to fortify its defenses to stop fraud before it starts.

Daniel Stanbridge, Chief Risk and Compliance Officer at Electronic Merchant Systems, said his company has deployed a significant amount of resources into technologies that allow it to detect signals for disputes and fraud as they’re happening.

“A vital aspect of managing dispute ratios is to also understand them,” Stanbridge told us. “Subsequently, we have invested a lot of energy in pulling data together to help us spot and forecast potential ratio problems before they arise.”

Merchants that take steps to prevent fraud and dispute problems before they grow not only save money, they can block bad actors from continuing to benefit from a particular scheme.

Visa rolled out a new program in August to help clients thwart cybersecurity threats.

Visa is doing its part to stop the spread of fraud. The company prevented more than $40 billion in fraud in 2023, according to a post on its VAMP webpage. 

By helping acquirers bolster their risk controls, Visa believes VAMP can address four times as much fraud globally in comparison to prior programs.

The payment network is going big in its fight against fraud on multiple fronts in 2025. It recently announced a new cybersecurity advisory unit that will provide actionable insights to identify and counteract emerging cybersecurity concerns.

James Mirfin, Global Head of Risk and Identity Solutions at Visa, also spoke of the benefits of getting out ahead of the problem when combating fraud and security risks.

“When it comes to cybersecurity and fraud prevention, proactive detection and response is key,” Mirfin said in a press release.

“Our clients, which range from small mom-and-pop shops to larger enterprises, need comprehensive resources that can be scaled to meet the unique needs of their business,” he added.