Visa's VAMP Threshold Dropped to 1.5% in 2026: What It Means for Your Dispute Rate
By Yan Payments
What is Visa’s VAMP threshold, and did it really drop to 1.5%?
Yes. As of April 1, 2026, Visa lowered the “Excessive” merchant threshold under its Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program (VAMP) from 2.2% to 1.5% in the US, Canada, the EU, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America/Caribbean. CEMEA merchants (the Middle East, parts of Africa, and Central/Eastern Europe) stay at 2.2% for now. If your combined fraud and dispute rate crosses that line, Visa and your acquirer can start charging you per-transaction fees you may never have paid before, even if nothing about your business has obviously changed.
VAMP replaced Visa’s older Visa Dispute Monitoring Program (VDMP) and Visa Fraud Monitoring Program (VFMP), folding fraud and non-fraud disputes into a single ratio instead of tracking them separately. That sounds like a technical housekeeping move, but it changes the math in a way that catches more merchants than the old system did.
How is the VAMP ratio actually calculated?
Visa adds up your fraud reports (the TC40 data your issuer files when a cardholder calls in a fraud claim) and your non-fraud disputes (TC15 chargebacks, things like “item not received” or “not as described”) over a rolling period, then divides that total by your number of settled transactions. The result is your VAMP ratio.
The catch is that a transaction disputed as fraud and later charged back can effectively count against you twice, once as a fraud report and again as a dispute. Under the old VDMP, a merchant with 70 fraud claims and 10 legitimate disputes out of 10,000 transactions sat around 0.8%, comfortably under most thresholds. Run the same numbers through VAMP’s combined formula and that merchant can land close to 1.5%, right at the new line, without anything in their actual fraud exposure having changed.
Visa only monitors merchants once they clear a volume floor, generally cited at 1,500 combined fraud-and-dispute events a month across the AP, Canada, EU, LAC, and US regions. Below that floor, the ratio doesn’t trigger action regardless of percentage. Above it, there’s reportedly no soft warning tier before the fees start. You’re either under 1.5% or you’re not.
Who actually gets hit by this
Card-present retail and restaurants with low dispute volume mostly won’t notice. The merchants who need to pay attention are the ones running recurring billing, subscriptions, memberships, or any card-not-present model where a customer forgets they signed up and disputes the charge instead of canceling it. A gym with an auto-renewing membership, a software or service business billing monthly, a contractor running recurring maintenance plans on file, these are exactly the profiles where “friendly fraud” and simple non-fraud disputes creep up without anyone noticing month to month.
If you cross into Excessive territory, the fees reportedly run around $8 per disputed or fraud-flagged transaction above the threshold, charged to your acquirer, who will pass it on to you. On a merchant processing a few thousand transactions a month with a ratio drifting toward 2%, that adds up fast, and it stacks on top of whatever chargeback fees your processor already charges.
A quick way to check where you stand
Call your processor or log into your merchant portal and pull your dispute and fraud-claim counts for the last three months. Then run the numbers yourself.
| Monthly transactions | Fraud + dispute events | VAMP ratio | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5,000 | 50 | 1.0% | Under threshold |
| 5,000 | 75 | 1.5% | At the line |
| 5,000 | 110 | 2.2% | Excessive |
| 1,200 | 25 | 2.1% | Below volume floor, not monitored yet |
If you’re anywhere near 1.5% and above the 1,500-event floor, don’t wait for a notice from your acquirer. Ask them directly whether you’ve been flagged, because by the time a fee shows up on your statement you’ve usually already been over the line for a billing cycle or more.
What actually brings a dispute rate down
A few things matter more than people expect. Clear, recognizable billing descriptors cut down on “I don’t recognize this charge” disputes, which make up a surprising share of non-fraud cases. Sending a receipt or confirmation immediately after a sale, rather than relying on a statement line a customer sees weeks later, does the same. For recurring billing specifically, a simple pre-dunning email a few days before a renewal charge, and a visible, working cancellation path, keeps a lot of customers from disputing instead of just canceling.
If you take phone or online orders and store cards on file for repeat customers, our invoicing tools can attach clear line-item descriptions and automatic receipts to each charge, which helps on both fronts. And if you haven’t looked at your actual dispute numbers in a while, it’s worth doing now rather than after a fee notice arrives. We can walk through your statement with you if you want a second set of eyes, just reach out through the contact form.
None of this requires panic if you’re a typical retail or restaurant merchant running mostly card-present sales. It’s worth real attention if any meaningful share of your revenue comes from card-not-present or recurring charges.
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