00:21
Michael Jabbara
Hi, I'm Michael Jabbara, and I lead Payment Ecosystem Risk and Control at Visa.
Ami Patel
I'm Ami Patel and I lead Ecosystem Engagement and Advocacy for Visa.
Michael Jabbara
At Visa, our mission is to uplift everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid. And a core part of that mission is ensuring a secure payments ecosystem. We do that by investing in technologies that identify and mitigate fraud, but we also do that by implementing and executing programs that aim to identify and stop fraud before it even happens.
The Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program is one such example, which we launched all the way back in the early 90s to make sure that consumers and businesses can transact both securely and seamlessly. Of course, a lot has changed since then. We've had e-commerce. We've had social commerce. Digital transactions have become widely popular. We needed to evolve the program to fit with the times that we are in now. With me today is Ami to tell us exactly about that evolution.
01:28
Ami Patel
Fast forward to today, Michael. There's real-time¹ payments, there's AI, there's agentic commerce and digital experiences that were unimaginable back then. And the pace of change has just accelerated to the point where incremental improvements and tweaking programs was just no longer going to be sufficient. We knew we had to rebuild from the ground up and restructure the programs from the six that we had built over the last three decades to consolidating it under one new roof.
01:57
Michael Jabbara
So, Ami, what are we trying to accomplish with this program?
Ami Patel
We have three core intents with this new program. The first being we want to transition from having a reactive approach to fraud, to making it much harder for the fraud to be committed in the first place. The second key thing we want to accomplish in the program is we want to reduce the operational burden for our clients. We're aiming to have them focus less time on the admin of running six programs, long work out periods, long remediation periods to focusing on the systemic issues and solving problems that are in the ecosystem today. Third is to have a safer, smoother, more streamlined cardholder experience. We want to prioritize the end consumer's friction and customer experience.
The program is about balance. We want to balance consumer experience, reducing the operational burden that we're placing on our clients and making sure we have secure industry growth. And by doing so, we know that we're going to get higher authorizations, higher approval rates that are driven by lower fraud and lower disputes in the ecosystem. VAMP is a testament to Visa's commitment to our clients and consumers. The process is simpler, it's more efficient, and it gives more flexibility to clients to maintain the business model and the risk appetite that they need to manage in this new day and age.
03:20
Michael Jabbara
One of the points that I find interesting is when we talk about programs like VAMP, the conversation jumps directly into fraud, dispute, “how do I lower the ratio?” — conversations around the "what." But we don't talk enough about the "so what." And what I find impactful is when we look at acquirers who are in the program versus acquirers who are not in the program, there is a material difference in terms of the number of transactions that they have approved: 10 percent. And that goes to the heart of why we do this. Because if we're able to incentivize decreasing fraud and disputes, that is increasing the number of sales that merchants are able to process, it's lowering their operational expenses related to chargebacks and customer disputes and all of that. And the endpoint is better customer relationships. But tactically, what does this mean for acquirers and merchants?
Ami Patel
Michael, we created a new way to measure and manage performance. We monitor both at the acquirer and the merchant level. And there's three ways an acquirer can be identified. The first is at their overall acquirer portfolio thresholds. There's a second way in terms of the individual merchants within their portfolio if they exceed a certain threshold themselves. And the third is around the enumeration activity at the merchant level. Now we've set a minimum of 1500 fraud plus disputes, what we're calling a minimum VAMP count of 1500, to ensure that we're focusing not on the normal business fluctuations, but certainly on the significant issues that are happening today and in the ecosystem.
Based on the feedback that we receive from the industry, we are also including a more balanced aspect between the two components of what makes up the thresholds. We created more balance by adding in what's called fraud disputes into the equation. And to accommodate for the additional volume coming in, we've made a few changes. One, we've raised that minimum count to 1500. And we also have excluded certain aspects that help reduce the friction in the payment experience, like investments in pre-dispute tools, as well as Compelling Evidence 3.0, which helps with friendly fraud.
05:45
Michael Jabbara
So based on the way that you've described the thresholds for the new VAMP program, it sounds like it's only going to impact a very small portion of Visa's clients, those who are experiencing significantly outlier behavior on the fraud and dispute side.
Ami Patel
That's right. The majority of our clients won't be affected by the program at all. It truly is an outlier program. That means an acquirer has to be performing five, seven, ten times the global average. Now there's two levels to the program itself. So the acquire can be identified as an above standard, which means they are at a significant higher level than the industry average. Remediation is required at that level. But there's even a more stringent level called the excessive level. And this means that the fraud and dispute activity has reached such a point that there is a more drastic remediation that needs to be addressed at that stage.
Now, because the majority of our portfolio won't be impacted by the program, we're introducing an early warning mechanism for our clients. And this means if clients are approaching either of those two levels, the above standard, and they're getting near it, we'll just send them an early warning saying, hey, maybe you want to take a look at what's happening. You're coming near and approaching these thresholds, and we want to make sure that you address the issue before you even enter the program itself.
07:13
Michael Jabbara
For the small minority of clients who are going to be identified under the new program parameters, they must be experiencing a lot of change in a relatively short period of time. We had gone quite a long number of years without making any changes. And then all of a sudden, we've completely revamped how we deal with outlier disputes and fraud in the ecosystem. What should they be thinking about? What should they be doing to be ready?
Ami Patel
We know this sounds like a lot of change. And change is hard. And we get that. Every step and every change that we've made has been with clients' input and industry input. We also took a data led approach to the changes that we're introducing today. So as a next step, I'd encourage our clients, merchants, the Visa ecosystem to first reach out on Visa.com, because it's the first time we've been able to publish a public facing factsheet for our compliance programs. And it's a major achievement. It is something that the industry has been asking for and we've been able to deliver on it.
08:25
I'd also encourage merchants to reach out to their acquirers because it starts there. They should ask them what their VAMP ratio performance is, what implications do they have for their programs based on the acquirer's portfolio performance? And that is only a conversation they can have with their individual acquirer based on the contracts that they have with them.
And then the third aspect I would encourage the community to do is a health check. This is a time they have the advisory period² all the way until September 30th, before any enforcement begins, and only the excessive level will begin at that time. Between now and the end of September 30th is the right time to review and just do a health check. Optimize the risk controls that are there, and that should be sufficient to start taking a look and proactively address things before any issues come up.
Michael Jabbara
That sounds great. Ami, thank you so much for joining me and illuminating us on what's going on with VAMP and this evolution.
- Actual fund availability varies by receiving financial institution, receiving account type, and whether transaction is domestic or cross border.
- The VAMP advisory period ended September 30, 2025. For more information about VAMP, contact your acquirer, processor or Visa representative.