The Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program is Coming for Your Profits: What Acquirers Need to Know to Fight Back

With Visa’s Updated Acquirer Monitoring Program (VAMP) set to launch on April 1, 2025, acquirers will encounter substantial changes in managing fraud and dispute metrics across their merchant and Independent Sales Organization (ISO) portfolios. This shift impacts not only acquirers but also payment service providers (PSPs) and ISOs, especially those operating in the card-not-present (CNP) and recurring payment (RP) spaces. VAMP emphasizes accountability and proactive compliance, requiring acquirers to support merchants and ISOs in meeting these standards to avoid penalties, increased fees, or potential operational restrictions.

By preparing now, acquirers can reduce the risk of last-minute actions that might jeopardize valuable merchant relationships. This overview provides essential strategies for acquirers to align with VAMP, enhance support for merchants and ISOs, and maintain robust compliance practices.

For more details on the new VAMP thresholds, refer to our previous bytes post, “What We Know About VAMP.”

Here are seven ways acquirers can prepare for VAMP:

1. Understand VAMP’s Impact

The first step in preparing for VAMP is to fully understand the significant impact it will have on your business. The upcoming Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program (VAMP) brings a new level of scrutiny and accountability, requiring acquirers to meet stricter standards for fraud and dispute management across their merchant and ISO portfolios. Under VAMP, Visa will closely monitor compliance, requiring acquirers to maintain fraud and dispute levels within acceptable thresholds.

Non-Compliance carries steep consequences that can result in:

• Increased fees and penalties.
• Operational restrictions.
• Risk of removing profitable medium and high-risk merchants.

Where possible, acquirers are best advised to adopt a proactive approach:

• Collaborate closely with merchants and ISOs to navigate compliance requirements. Educate them about the new metrics and set clear expectations for payments performance. Provide accurate VAMP data now to merchants and ISOs so they know where they stand currently. Balance compliance with the need to maintain profitable relationships.
• Develop clear guidelines, implement advanced systems, and adopt best practices to optimize fraud prevention and dispute resolution. Ensure these processes are seamlessly integrated across departments, aligning compliance efforts with broader business goals.
• Confirm that all necessary data elements are available to calculate your VAMP thresholds accurately. It requires clearly identifying resolved Rapid Dispute Resolution (RDR), Cardholder Dispute Resolution Network (CDRN), and Confirmed Compelling Evidence 3.0 cases, as these are excluded from the TC40 fraud data when determining your thresholds. For more details on these calculations, refer to our previous article, “What We Know About VAMP,”  or contact your Visa representative for further clarification.

Preparing early and recognizing the challenges ahead will position your business to navigate VAMP’s requirements successfully while maintaining strong profitable relationships with merchants and ISOs.

2. Establish and Communicate Your VAMP Internal Threshold Requirements

The second critical step in preparing for VAMP is to swiftly establish thresholds that align with Visa’s standards and communicate them clearly to your partners. Once these thresholds are defined, it’s crucial to ensure that your merchants and ISOs have a thorough understanding of what’s required.

Deploying a series of publications and webinars can quickly guide your partners through the compliance process. Providing specific examples of the new calculation method will also help clarify how VAMP standards apply in practice, reducing the risk of misinterpretation.

With VAMP’s shift from fraud dollar-based monitoring to unit-based metrics, smaller merchants who previously stayed compliant by managing dollar limits may now struggle with unit-based thresholds. Proactive communication is not just helpful but crucial to help these merchants transition smoothly and efficiently.

Some acquirers may also find it necessary to adjust merchant and ISO thresholds across their portfolios. Rather than defaulting to terminating profitable medium and high-risk merchants, acquirers should prepare forecast scenarios using varied thresholds to identify compliance strategies that also maintain profitability. If adjustments are needed, it’s essential to communicate these changes to merchants and ISOs as early as possible, giving them sufficient time to prepare. This is particularly important for recurring payment (RP) partners, who may need to implement changes now to ensure compliance in the near future.

To support your educational efforts for merchants, we’ve prepared an essential guide you can share with your merchants to navigate their preparation for VAMP. [Access the guide here.]

3. Develop Reporting and Monitoring Tools

The third way an acquirer can prepare for VAMP is to explore options for developing in-house tools or partnering with service providers to integrate monitoring systems. These systems are critical for proactively alerting merchants and ISOs as they approach their VAMP thresholds, enabling immediate intervention, minimizing the risk of non-compliance, and keeping merchants and ISOs on track.

Don’t wait or rely solely on Visa’s OneERS Acquirer Risk Tool to meet your compliance needs. While OneERS is expected to play a key role in acquirers’ compliance and risk monitoring, its release remains pending, raising urgent concerns about its readiness, reliability, and how compliance will be managed during this critical period. Even more concerning, the tool fails to deliver actionable insights into the operational issues affecting your merchants and ISOs, leaving significant gaps in your ability to drive meaningful improvements. The time to act is now, irrespective of the status of OneERS. For more information on these challenges, refer to our previous post: “What New Challenges Does VAMP Pose for Acquirers?”

Before committing to building your own solution, it is essential to conduct a buy vs. build analysis immediately. Evaluate whether existing solutions from service providers can address your needs more efficiently and cost-effectively than building an in-house tool. Key factors like development time, resource allocation, scalability, and ongoing maintenance costs must be carefully evaluated to prevent project delays and avoid significant cost overruns.

If you decide to move forward with developing your own solution, ensure you incorporate the following critical elements:

• Scalability
  Design the tool to grow with your merchant and ISO portfolios and accommodate evolving VAMP thresholds.
• Real-Time Alerts
  Implement systems capable of delivering real-time or near-real-time alerts for merchants and ISOs nearing their thresholds, allowing for prompt action.
• Data Accuracy
  Prioritize integration with reliable data sources and robust validation processes to ensure accurate and precise reporting. False positive and negative VAMP measurements can significantly erode your bottom line, or even put you out of the medium and high-risk merchant acquiring business.
• Merchant Accessibility
  Develop an intuitive user interface that merchants and ISOs can easily navigate to access compliance data and receive actionable insights. Notifying them of their thresholds isn’t enough—they need clear, actionable recommendations. For instance, your tool should offer guidance on identifying dispute trends, optimizing fraud prevention, or addressing operational gaps that lead to non-compliance. Empower your partners with these insights to ensure they can act effectively.
• Integration Capability
  Ensure compatibility with your existing systems and the ability to incorporate services such as dispute mitigation and fraud prevention tools.
• Custom Reporting
  Provide flexible reporting options, from high-level summaries to in-depth analyses, to address diverse merchant and ISO needs.
• Compliance Updates
  Build the tool with features that enable seamless updates to reflect changes in VAMP standards or other regulatory requirements.

Conducting a thorough buy vs. build analysis and addressing these considerations is essential to staying ahead in the rapidly changing compliance landscape. The right decision will balance cost, efficiency, and functionality, delivering a solution that empowers merchants and ISOs to meet compliance requirements effectively while solidifying your position as a trusted partner in this competitive payments environment.

4. Embed Dispute Mitigation Solutions

The fourth way an acquirer can prepare for VAMP is by seamlessly embedding dispute mitigation solutions into your payment processing platform. This strategic approach delivers substantial value to merchants and ISOs by simplifying access to tools such as Rapid Dispute Resolution (RDR) and the Cardholder Dispute Resolution Network (CDRN). Integrating these solutions directly into your offering eliminates the need for additional service providers, creating a smoother, more efficient experience for your partners and a revenue source for the acquirer.

Positioning yourself as a comprehensive, one-stop solution not only strengthens relationships with merchants and ISOs but also enhances your value proposition. Embedding these tools helps your partners meet VAMP standards, streamlines the dispute resolution process, and fosters stronger collaboration. This win-win scenario improves compliance while enhancing operational efficiency for all stakeholders.

However, simply ingesting RDRs and CDRNs is not enough to reduce VAMP ratios meaningfully. The real impact lies in actively decisioning and refunding these alerts to ensure disputes are resolved. A “resolved” dispute indicates the customer has been refunded, the chargeback avoided, and any TC40 fraud report removed from the VAMP ratio numerator. This action directly reduces overall ratios, significantly improving compliance.

Here’s are the benefits of embedding mitigation products:

• Enhances Your Competitive Edge

Embedding dispute mitigation solutions elevates your platform beyond a payment processor, transforming it into a powerful operations and compliance tool. In today’s competitive payments landscape, offering value-added services like dispute mitigation is no longer a luxury—it’s a necessity. Acquirers must expand beyond traditional payment services to address broader operational and compliance challenges faced by medium and high-risk merchants and ISOs.

This approach not only benefits your merchants and ISOs but also provides direct access to their dispute data, enabling more accurate VAMP ratio calculations. With this data, you can better monitor compliance, proactively address emerging trends, and intervene quickly when merchants or ISOs breach or approach thresholds. Additionally, requiring merchants to use these tools ensures they are actively employing dispute mitigation strategies, as their activity and data are visible to you.

• Drives Profitability

Embedding dispute mitigation solutions is a revenue-generating opportunity for acquirers. By offering indispensable tools that improve compliance and dispute management, you enhance your revenue streams while creating value for your partners. This virtuous cycle—merchants maintaining compliance while growing the topline and you increasing profitability—creates a compelling, competitive edge in the market.

This strategic approach allows you to:

• Strengthen merchant and ISO partnerships.
• Proactively manage compliance.
• Differentiate your offerings in a crowded market.
• Drive long-term profitability and success for all stakeholders.

Seamlessly embedding dispute mitigation solutions into your platform is an investment in both compliance excellence and operational growth, ensuring you stay ahead of the next turn in the compliance curve.

5. Implement Fraud Prevention Measures

Fraud prevention is central to VAMP compliance. Acquirers must ensure their merchants are fully equipped to prevent both real and friendly fraud:

• Deploy Proven Fraud Prevention Tools
  Provide merchants with tools like 3-D Secure, Address Verification Service (AVS), and Card Verification Value (CVV) checks. Strengthen security with multi-factor authentication and velocity checks to counter advanced fraud tactics.

Educate Merchants on Fraud Tools
Many merchants either don’t know about the fraud tools available to them or lack the knowledge to use them effectively. Offer immediate training on Visa’s best practices for anti-enumeration and account testing. Help merchants optimize their payloads with fraud prevention data to reduce disputes, improve authorization rates, and meet compliance requirements quickly. Stay tuned for our upcoming Slyce360 BYTE, “Boosting VAMP Accuracy with Payload Metadata.” In this release, we’ll explore how leveraging metadata can strengthen your data, driving more accurate VAMP calculations. Don’t miss out! Stay updated by subscribing to Slyce360 BYTES or following our LinkedIn posts for exclusive, game-changing insights.

• Strengthen Fraud Strategies
  Collaborate with merchants to implement tailored fraud prevention strategies that address their specific risk profiles. For example, ask merchants to identify higher fraud affiliates and devise changes to offer terms,  promotional offers, or operational practices to lower fraud rates. Acting now to build resilience is critical in combating evolving fraud threats.

6. Manage the Enumeration Ratio

The enumeration ratio—a key VAMP compliance metric tracking fraud attempts through card data testing—requires focused attention and decisive action:

• Understand Enumeration Metrics
  Ensure your team is familiar with Visa’s Account Attack Intelligence (VAAI) tool, which calculates enumeration activity. Without accurate tracking, unknown compliance risks can be lurking beneath the surface of what looks like a healthy merchant portfolio.
• Upgrade Monitoring Systems
  Invest in systems that monitor both successful and failed authorization attempts, providing early detection of fraud patterns. Advanced tools are essential for flagging suspicious activity before it jeopardizes compliance.
• Deploy Advanced Fraud Detection
  Use AI-driven fraud detection tools or machine learning algorithms to distinguish legitimate customer actions from fraudulent enumeration attempts. Real-time detection is critical to avoid costly penalties.
• Educate Merchants on Best Practices
  Merchants and ISOs may be unaware of enumeration risks. Offer training on:
  • CAPTCHA implementation
  • Rate-limiting reauthorization attempts
  • Adding multi-factor authentication
  • Revising reauthorization strategies to mitigate vulnerabilities.
• Balance Security with Customer Experience
  Implement fraud prevention measures that safeguard merchants while minimizing disruption for legitimate customers. Striking this balance is essential to avoid unexpected operational challenges and unwelcome declines in merchant processing volumes.
• Monitor Continuously and Respond Rapidly
  Enumeration attacks can spike without warning. Acquirers must invest in 24/7 monitoring systems with immediate response capabilities.

Visa offers an in-depth resource on implementing fraud prevention and security tools: Visa Anti-Enumeration and Account Testing Best Practices. This guide provides strategies for mitigating fraud, protecting sensitive data, and enhancing transaction security—critical for businesses managing high volumes of card-not-present (CNP) transactions.

Access Visa’s guidance here: Visa Anti-Enumeration and Account Testing Best Practices.

7. Support Merchants and ISOs for Long-Term Success

Adapting to Visa’s Acquirer Monitoring Program (VAMP) presents significant challenges, but acquirers who embrace the opportunity to empower their medium and high-risk merchants and ISOs will set themselves apart as industry leaders. Success requires a collaborative approach that prioritizes partnership, providing merchants with valuable resources, actionable best practices, and ongoing guidance.

By providing merchants with consistent, tailored support, acquirers can empower them to effectively manage fraud and associated disputes, fostering a proactive compliance culture. Consider implementing incentive programs for merchants who consistently maintain low fraud and dispute levels—not only to drive performance but also to build trust and loyalty, and reduce merchant account churn.

This approach goes beyond compliance—it builds strong, resilient acquirer-merchant relationships rooted in mutual success. By positioning themselves as trusted partners in their merchants’ growth, acquirers can navigate VAMP with confidence while distinguishing themselves as forward-thinking leaders, especially in the CNP RP payments ecosystem.

Transform Your VAMP Compliance Strategy with Slyce360

Slyce360 is more than a compliance tool—it’s a comprehensive platform that empowers acquirers, ISOs, and merchants to meet evolving compliance thresholds, including VAMP, with ease and precision. With advanced analytics, real-time data, and proactive alerts, Slyce360 helps you identify fraud, disputes, and merchant operational concerns before they become costly problems that can lead to uncomfortable conversations with sponsor FIs, card brands or regulators.

Acquirers, ISOs, and merchants can rely on Slyce360’s intuitive reporting and powerful collaboration tools to monitor and manage emerging trends, ensuring VAMP requirements don’t limit growth potential. The platform streamlines compliance processes while driving efficiency, making it easier than ever to stay ahead of changing standards.

But Slyce360 doesn’t stop at compliance—it’s built to boost profitability for everyone involved. The platform’s Dispute Mitigation Optimization Tools maximize the effectiveness of RDR and CDRN investments, helping merchants reduce disputes and save money while meeting mitigation requirements. Acquirers and ISOs benefit from reduced compliance costs and stronger partnerships with their merchants, creating a win-win scenario for all stakeholders.

By fostering seamless collaboration between acquirers, ISOs, and merchants, Slyce360 aligns everyone toward shared compliance goals, ensuring success in a constantly evolving regulatory landscape. Whether it’s optimizing dispute management, enhancing fraud prevention, or building stronger relationships, Slyce360 delivers the tools you need to thrive and stand out in today’s competitive payments industry.

Don’t just manage compliance—make it work for you with Slyce360. Contact us today to get started!

December 5, 2024