Acquirers Sell Fraud Intelligence as Liability Rises

Visa reduced its Acquirer Monitoring Program (VAMP) threshold from 220 to 150 in April 2026, lowering the tolerance for portfolio-level fraud and disputes and increasing acquirers’ exposure to sanctions and remediation.

Merchants have begun to make fraud metrics part of bank selection, putting false-positive rates and chargeback processes on request-for-proposal documents alongside price. The Merchant Risk Council found about 65% of merchants estimate their e-commerce false-positive rate lies between 2% and 10% in 2026.

Industry projections estimate global merchant losses from false positives will exceed $231 billion in 2026, while projected card fraud losses are about $39.6 billion. The difference represents revenue lost when legitimate orders are declined.

VAMP measures combined fraud and dispute counts divided by total settled Visa transactions. The lower 150 threshold increases portfolio-level accountability for acquirers and has led to closer scrutiny from card schemes and regulators.

Acquiring banks are investing in machine learning and AI decision engines, digital identity services, network intelligence and model explainability. Providers say these tools are intended to reduce fraud, cut false positives and make dispute decisions auditable.

Those technical capabilities are being offered as commercial services. Some acquirers now provide tiered fraud-management packages, performance-based pricing and managed chargeback handling, with commercial claims focused on lower false-positive rates, faster dispute resolution and higher recovery rates.

Operational changes have measurable cost effects. Reducing false positives preserves merchant sales and reduces manual-review and customer-service work. Faster dispute workflows can lower chargeback losses and related fees for merchants and acquirers.

Legacy rule-based systems are under pressure because merchants request more nuanced screening across card-not-present, in-person and alternative payment types. Integrated stacks combining behavioral signals, device and network data, identity verification and adaptive AI are increasingly common.

The change in merchant procurement criteria places fraud performance alongside price when selecting acquiring banks. The VAMP revision has increased the financial stakes for acquirers that manage large merchant portfolios.