Understanding VAMP: Overview, Deep Dive, and Preparation

We’ve abridged our 5 most important preparation tips below- but If you want to explore more expert tips to prepare, check out the full webinar recording or our comprehensive ebook. In this section:

1. Using the advisory period to prepare
2. Getting access to data
3. Reducing dispute numbers
4. Engaging your acquirer
5. Thinking about pre-dispute tools

1. Know Your Timelines: Use the Advisory Period

The advisory period, running from June 1st through September 30th, 2025, represents a critical window for merchants to prepare for VAMP enforcement without facing penalties. During this time, there will be no enforcement actions, making it the ideal opportunity to get VAMP-ready. Use this period to:

• Understand how to access and monitor your TC40 and TC15 data coming from payment service providers and acquirers. 
• Review and strengthen risk controls, especially for if you’re above or close to threshold.
• Engage with acquirers (PSPs) during this time to understand any implications from the acquiring side, including how penalties might be passed through and what the acquirer’s own VAMP performance looks like (more on this below).

2. Get Access to Your TC40 and TC15 Data, and Monitor Your Ratios

VAMP preparedness starts with understanding where you are, and what you’re up against – this requires a firm understanding of the regulation’s nuances, your TC40 and TC15 rates, and how they measure up under the new system.  Merchants should work with their different payment service providers to ensure access to TC40 and TC15. If the data isn’t readily available, push for commitments on when it will be. Consider this your most critical action item – you can’t manage what you can’t measure. It’s worth noting that the situation is different for merchants who use 3D Secure (3DS), compared to those who do not:

• Merchants using 3DS are dependent on their PSPs for the TC40 data, as this creates a liability shift – meaning the fraud chargeback will not come in.
• Merchants not using 3DS that have a hard time getting TC40 data can get an approximate estimate of their VAMP ratio by multiplying their fraud chargebacks by 2x (as every TC40 should result in a fraud chargeback, and these are counted twice according to the new rules).

3. Find Opportunities to Reduce Disputes. Your Chargeback Data Can Help 

It might seem like a no-brainer, but the most effective way to prepare for VAMP is to reduce your TC40s and TC15s – even if you’re not currently at risk of enrollment. Aside from ducking VAMP thresholds, this can benefit your entire payments operations.

“Merchants can really win by focusing on fraud and disputes. Our data shows that lower risk portfolios have a 10% higher approval rate for their transactions from issuers. If they have lower fraud, lower disputes, you know, issuers are savvy to that and they are able to approve transactions more.” Ami Patel, Visa

Reducing fraud and chargeback-related disputes is a larger challenge that typically requires a combination of fraud prevention tools, clear return policies, a customer-centric commercial approach, and other operational improvements. An often underused resource in this context is your chargebacks data. To learn more, read: What Merchants Can Learn from Chargebacks Data

4. Engage Your Acquirer… Before They Engage You

Acquirers face their own stringent thresholds under VAMP – 0.5-0.7% for “above standard” status, and 0.7% for “excessive”. This pressure turns the merchant-acquirer dynamic into a risk partnership where both parties sink or swim together – with potential consequences for businesses facing VAMP enrollment. Start by asking your acquirer about their own VAMP ratio and how they plan to manage portfolio risk. Learning whether your PSP is comfortably below thresholds or scrambling to improve can inform your negotiation strategy and highlight potential risks to your processing relationships. It is equally important to review contractual terms that were likely drafted before VAMP existed. 

5. Consider Your Use of Pre-Dispute Tools 

As mentioned above, RDR and CDRNs will allow merchants to avoid TC15s for the purposes of VAMP ratio calculations, as they enable some disputes to be resolved before becoming chargebacks. However, these tools will not cancel out TC40s, as these are registered before a chargeback is filed. It’s worth noting here that the use of pre-dispute resolution tools can impact your overall revenue recovery rates since they result in refunds that affect your bottom line. Hence, it’s always worth considering your use of them as part of a broader revenue recovery strategy.   Another relevant tool is Compelling Evidence 3.0 (Order Insight), which allows merchants to  share transaction data with issuers in real-time. This can help the issuers’ representatives dissuade cardholders from pursuing a dispute (e.g. by clarifying the time and place where the transaction was made based on the data received from merchants). In these cases, both disputes (TC15) and fraud reports (TC40) won’t be  filed in the first place, and thus they will be excluded from VAMP ratios.