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Card scheme's monitoring program

Card schemes (like Visa and Mastercard) monitor your monthly dispute activity in relation to your sales volume. If the number of chargebacks you receive exceeds the levels deemed acceptable by the scheme, you may be placed on their monitoring program.

Once you’re on a program, the scheme can charge you fines and additional fees, until you reduce the dispute activity back down to acceptable levels. We will notify you if you are at risk of or have been enrolled in such a program and collaborate with you in reducing your disputes.

In this document, we list Visa and Mastercard's monitoring programs to enhance your understanding of these programs.

Visa monitoring program

Starting April 2025, Visa has launched the enhanced Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program (VAMP), consolidating the Visa Dispute Monitoring Program (VDMP) and the Visa Fraud Monitoring Program (VFMP) into a unified framework. VAMP introduces dispute and transaction-based metrics called the VAMP ratio and VAMP enumeration ratio, and evaluates the performance of merchants and acquirers based on these ratios:

  • Metric: The number of fraudulent transactions (fraud count) and the number of non-fraud disputes.
  •  The fraud count refers to the number of fraud notifications from Visa.
  • Non-fraud disputes are chargebacks with reason codes under 11, 12, and 13 categories.
  • Chargeback reason code 10.5 is excluded.
  • Ratio calculation: (Fraud count plus non-fraudulent disputes count) divided by total sales count.

Please refer to the Chargeback reason codes - Visa.

VAMP threshold

Visa will also consider the fraud and dispute count thresholds of the acquirer. Therefore, Antom is responsible for ensuring that it does not exceed the established VAMP thresholds.

Through the VAMP program, Visa will assess the ratios of Antom and merchant accounts based on the following thresholds. Once these thresholds are exceeded, it may result in penalties. When you are included in the VAMP program, Antom will provide you with detailed information regarding remedial measures.

Threshold effective date

Standard VAMP ratio

Excessive VAMP ratio

1 April 2025

N/A

≥ 0.50%

1 January 2026

0.30% ≤ VAMP threshold < 0.50%

≥ 0.50%

Note：

In addition to the above threshold ratio specifications, the following standards for merchant thresholds are also included:

  • A minimum count of 1,000 disputes applies, with only card-not-present (CNP) transactions being considered.
  • For the enumeration threshold, a minimum of 300,000 monthly enumerated transactions identified within the Visa ecosystem applies.
  • In the CEMEA regions, the merchant’s excessive VAMP ratio threshold must meet the condition of having a minimum of 100 disputes and a total fraud and dispute value of USD 75,000 or higher.
  • Fraudulent disputes resolved through Visa Rapid Dispute Resolution (RDR) will be included in the threshold calculation，whereas non-fraud disputes will not be included.
  • Both fraudulent disputes and non-fraud disputes resolved through the Cardholder Dispute Resolution Network (CDRN) are not included in the threshold calculation.
  • From the first triggering of the VAMP program, all merchants will receive a 90-day compliance adjustment period (penalty-free); if standards are not met by the end of this period, penalty procedures will be initiated.

 Mastercard monitoring program

Mastercard uses the Acquirer Chargeback Monitoring Program (ACMP) to monitor merchants that receive an excessive number of chargebacks monthly. Mastercard's ACMP consists of two programs, the Excessive Chargeback Program (ECP) and the Excessive Fraud Merchant (EFM) program.

The following table shows the thresholds of both monitoring programs:

Monitoring program

Monitoring metrics

Threshold

ECP

(Excessive Chargeback Program)

Both:

1. CTR = CB count received on the reported month/payment count of the preceding month

2. CB count

Chargeback-Monitored Merchant (CMM), if both:
1. CTR: 1%
2. CB count: 100

Excessive Chargeback Merchant (ECM), if both:

1. CTR: 1.5%-2.99%

2. CB count: 100-299

High Excessive Chargeback Merchant (HECM), if both:

1. CTR: 3%

2. CB count: 300

EFM

(Excessive Fraud Merchant Compliance Program)

 N/A

If all the following conditions are met:

  • Minimum of 1,000 e-commerce transactions in clearing
  • At least 50,000 USD (or local currency equivalent) in fraud chargebacks in a month
  • 0.50% fraud chargeback BPS in a month (Fraud CB count received on reported month/payment count of the preceding month)
  • Penetration of 3DS transactions is less than 10% of the merchant’s CNP volume (non-regulated)/50% (regulated)