Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program (VAMP) Explained

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Why does compliance with Visa’s new VAMP program matter and what do merchants need to do?Visa’s new VAMP program for online payments became effective April 1, 2025, consolidating five existing fraud and dispute programs into a single acquirer program. The payment gateway is a critical tool for merchant compliance. Do not assume your payment gateway will get you compliant.

Fraud problems are not just from real buyers but bots attacking web servers. A big mistake is thinking you won’t have a fraud problem with your B2B business. That’s because criminals are not necessarily looking for your business, but they are automatically seeking technical vulnerabilities. For example, card testers can blast a thousand attempted transactions in seconds. Without controls to prevent, you’ll be stuck with potentially thousands of dollars in authorization fees.

Fraud prevention and risk management are critical to maintaining the integrity of financial transactions. One of the ways Visa addresses these concerns is through the Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program (VAMP). This program aims to ensure that merchants and acquirers meet Visa’s security standards and mitigate fraud risks across the payment ecosystem. This article delves into what VAMP is, how it works, and how payment gateways contribute to compliance.

What is Visa VAMP?

The Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program (VAMP) is an initiative by Visa designed to monitor and enforce the compliance of acquirers and merchants with Visa’s security requirements. The program tracks merchant activities and identifies merchants who present an elevated risk for fraud, allowing Visa to take action before fraud risks escalate.

VAMP operates primarily by analyzing transaction data to detect patterns indicative of fraud. It uses a sophisticated risk algorithm that identifies outliers in a merchant’s transaction activity, such as unusual chargeback rates or instances of card-not-present fraud, both of which are major indicators of potential fraud.

If a merchant is flagged by the VAMP program, the acquirer is notified and required to investigate and take corrective actions. This can include additional monitoring or, in more severe cases, suspension of the merchant’s account. The goal is to protect cardholders and the broader Visa ecosystem from fraudulent activity.

Key Elements of the Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program

The Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program includes several important components that aim to maintain compliance and ensure the integrity of transactions:

  1. Risk Scoring and Monitoring: VAMP assigns risk scores to acquirers and merchants based on a variety of factors. Merchants with high chargeback rates, evidence of data breaches, or other signs of fraudulent behavior are placed under heightened scrutiny. Every month, Visa pulls data from your acquirer about:
    • How many of your online transactions were reported as fraud?
    • How many turned into disputes/chargebacks?
    • How many card-not-present transactions have you successfully processed?
    • Visa then plugs these numbers into one formula — the VAMP ratio — to see whether you (or your acquirer’s overall portfolio) are within acceptable limits.
  2. Risk Thresholds: The Visa VAMP ratio is calculated by Fraud Reports plus Disputes divided by the number of transactions.. For USA merchants, the excessive VAMP threshold ratio is 2.20% and a minimum of 1,500 transactions. Merchants who exceed these thresholds are flagged for further investigation. Fraud that turns into a chargeback gets double-counted. Effective April 1, 2026 the Excessive threshold drops to 1.50%, potentially flagging more merchants unless fraud and disputes are reduced.
  3. Corrective Actions and Penalties: Once a merchant is flagged, the acquirer is responsible for taking corrective actions. If corrective actions are not taken, Visa may impose penalties such as fines or even suspension of the merchant’s ability to accept Visa transactions. Acquirers then pass these costs along to merchants.
  4. Education and Resources: Visa provides acquirers with resources to help them better understand compliance and fraud prevention measures. This includes best practices, training, and guidance on preventing fraud and maintaining a secure payment environment.

Why VAMP Matters for Acquirers and Merchants

For acquirers, VAMP is a tool that ensures they are working with merchants who adhere to Visa’s standards for security and risk management. Acquirers are responsible for monitoring their merchants’ activities and reporting any fraudulent or non-compliant behavior to Visa. Failure to comply with VAMP can lead to increased fines, penalties, and even the termination of the ability to process Visa transactions.

For merchants, compliance with VAMP is essential for protecting the business from fraud-related losses. Non-compliance can result in financial penalties and loss of access to the Visa payment network, which can significantly impact the business’s ability to process payments.

How Payment Gateways Play a Role in VAMP Compliance

Payment gateways are a critical component of the payments infrastructure. Payment gateways play a key role in ensuring that merchants comply with proper authorization and Visa’s security protocols, including those outlined in VAMP. If you recall when EMV chips were launched, a lot of players in the payment ecosystem were not compliant, some of them took years to catch up and some never did.

  1. Fraud Detection and Prevention: Payment gateways incorporate various tools and technologies to detect and prevent fraudulent transactions. These tools include features such as Address Verification Service (AVS), CVV checks, velocity checks, 3-D Secure, other filters. By detecting and preventing fraud before it occurs, payment gateways help merchants stay within Visa’s risk thresholds. 3-D Secure can reduce merchant fees. Some gateways have more robust merchant manageable solutions than others.
  2. Security Features: Visa’s security standards require merchants to implement strong encryption and secure payment processes. Payment gateways are responsible for ensuring that all cardholder data is encrypted and stored securely. They also support features like tokenization, which replaces sensitive card data with unique identifiers, further reducing the risk of data breaches and fraud. All of the major payment gateways have robust security.
  3. Chargeback Management: A high chargeback ratio is a major red flag for the VAMP program. Payment gateways provide tools for merchants to manage and reduce chargebacks, such as implementing fraud prevention measures. The most effective solutions automate transaction management to mitigate risk of fraudulent attempts in the first place.
  4. PCI DSS Compliance: Payment gateways are required to comply with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), which mandates a set of security measures designed to protect cardholder data. PCI DSS compliance is directly linked to Visa’s security expectations and plays a critical role in VAMP compliance. All of the major payment gateways offer PCI compliant solutions.
  5. Reporting and Analytics: Payment gateways also provide merchants and acquirers with detailed transaction reports and analytics that can help identify trends, spot potential fraud, and ensure ongoing compliance with Visa’s monitoring criteria.
  6. Proper Authorization: This is one of the least talked about but critical component to mitigate chargebacks. Examples of challenging rules that many payment gateways don’t comply with are mismatched authorization and settlement, one dollar pre-authorizations, and expired authorizations.

Visa VAMP is a critical initiative for maintaining the security and integrity of the Visa payment ecosystem. It is a program that holds acquirers and merchants accountable for managing fraud risks and ensures that high-risk merchants are identified and monitored effectively. Payment gateways play a central role in compliance by offering essential fraud prevention tools, securing transactions, and supporting proper authorization compliance.

By staying proactive about security, monitoring transaction data, and implementing Visa’s recommended best practices, merchants and acquirers can ensure they remain compliant with Visa’s VAMP program, help protect themselves and their customers from fraud, and reduce fees.

For more detailed guidance on how to comply with Visa VAMP, visit Visa’s official Acquirer Monitoring Program page.

For a free consultation on compliant B2B payment gateways, contact 3D Merchant Services.

2025 Credit Card Surcharge Laws Update

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What are 2025 surcharge regulations?

Our primary customer base is business to business (B2B) so this credit card surcharge article includes specifics for companies, not government or education, and in particular for

B2B and automotive, truck, and related dealers. Merchants must consider Federal and state laws as well as merchant account, Visa, MasterCard and other card networks compliance rules.

Since our August 2024 update there have been multiple changes. Most notably, on July 1, 2024, when a new California law called Senate Bill 478 went into effect.

Which states prohibit merchants surcharging?

States with other surcharge regulations

  • Colorado allows credit card surcharging up to 2%. 
  • New York, New Jersey, Nevada, and South Dakota prohibit surcharges from exceeding the cost that the merchant pays to accept the card. (See also Visa merchant surcharge rules.)
  • The legislative intent in many states was to protect consumers, and not to restrict B2B surcharging, therefore, B2B companies may have exceptions. 

Can a B2B company use surcharge to offset fees?

The rules vary across multiple card brands and terms of acceptance. Here’s a 2025 updated review of who can surcharge, what card types, and checklist of how to roll out credit card surcharge at your company. The answers are targeted for business to business merchants, our area of expertise. Historically if a merchant complies with Visa surcharge rules, they’d be compliant with other brands, so we often cite that as the standard. A B2B company that wishes to surcharge in every state should contact an attorney.

What is a credit card surcharge?

Surcharge is any fee charged by a merchant for the use of a card.These disclosure requirements include advance notice to both Mastercard and the merchant’s acquirer of the merchant’s intention to impose a surcharge no less than thirty days before the merchant implements a surcharge.

These disclosure requirements include advance notice to both Mastercard and the merchant’s acquirer of the merchant’s intention to impose a surcharge no less than thirty days before the merchant implements a surcharge.

What’s the difference between a surcharge and convenience fee? Convenience fees can only be charged for a bona fide convenience in the form of an alternative payment channel outside the Merchant’s customary payment channels and not charged solely for the acceptance of a Card. If a merchant only accepts credit cards, it’s prohibited. If a merchant is 100% card absent, merchant cannot charge a convenience fee.

Card brands agree on this for surcharging:

  1. Merchant Discount Rate is the fee, expressed as a percentage of the total transaction amount that a Merchant pays to its Acquirer or Service Provider for transacting on a Credit Card brand. In short, it’s typically all the fees on your merchant statement EXCEPT PCI compliance, terminal rental fees or any other special fee that is not paid via the mechanism of the per-transaction merchant discount fee. Per Visa, merchants must “Limit the amount to your merchant discount rate (MDR) for the applicable credit card or 3% whichever is lowest.” This is the reason merchants can get in trouble if their surcharge solution provider charges a flat amount for every card type.
  2. The Surcharge amount must be submitted separately (in the defined surcharge field) from the Transaction amount in the authorization and clearing message.
  3. The receipt must list the surcharge amount separately.
  4. If the original transaction has a partial or full refund, the surcharge amount must all be refunded proportionally.
  5. Surcharge on debit or prepaid cards is prohibited for all merchants.To ensure compliance use a payment gateway that can identify the card brand and type of card to allow surcharges only on eligible cards.
  6. The fee must be relative to their average cost of card acceptance.
  7. Any surcharge amount, if allowed, must be included in the Transaction amount and not collected separately.

How much can a merchant surcharge?

In short, surcharging is allowed to cover costs, not to make a profit. Let’s face it, based on the rules above, to simplify implementation, merchants will surcharge at the brand level because they lack the technology to discern between product types on a per transaction basis. Taking all that into account what can you surcharge?

  • Cannot exceed Maximum Surcharge Cap, which for Visa is currently 3%, effective April 15, 2023, and MasterCard remains at 4% in 2025.

Just because somebody offers it doesn’t make it right. Some companies are offering “free merchant accounts” by offsetting fees with surcharge of 3.5% or even 4%, both exceeding current rules. The average B2B company has much lower than 3.5% effective rate so that was always a violation of card acceptance rules, subject to penalty. The companies offering these services are making big money on the spread of actual fees vs what customers are paying. Again, these are card brand rules violations.

Non-compliant merchants could face fines ranging from $50,000 to $1 million according to a memo from a. credit card processor to merchants, 12/2023 ahead of expected increase in Visa enforcement in 2024 and beyond.

Surcharge checklist:

  1. Merchants must notify their acquirer 30 days before they begin surcharging; must state whether will surcharge at the brand level or product level.
    1. https://www.visa.com/merchantsurcharging
    https://www.mastercard.us/en-us/business/overview/support/merchant-surcharge-rules.html
    1. Amex- none required
  2. For card not present orders, disclose verbally if telephone; for online orders minimum 10-point Arial font, but in any case no smaller or less prominent than surrounding text.
  3. Receipt must be delivered with the surcharge as a separate line item.
  4. The surcharge amount must be sent with the transaction for authorization.
  5. Retail Point-of-Entry Disclosure example: “We impose a surcharge on credit cards that is not greater than our cost of acceptance. We do not surcharge debit cards. ” Main entrance(s) of the Merchant Outlet, in a minimum 32-point Arial font, but in any case no smaller or less prominent than surrounding text.
  6. Point of transaction sign: Every customer checkout or payment location, in a minimum 16-point Arial font, but in any case no smaller or less prominent than surrounding text.

What’s the penalty for non-compliance with surcharge rules? Fines. Acquirers of any merchant identified as surcharging improperly may be assessed an immediate US $1,000 fine. They pass those down to their clients. Acquirers (the credit card processor or merchant account provider) merchant clients could face fines ranging from $50,000 to $1 million. This is not all inclusive.

  1. Effective January 2025, Kansas allows surcharging.
  2. In 2015, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a federal court, overturned Florida state law as being unconstitutional, allowing surcharges to legally continue in Florida and nine other states that had enacted bans against them. The case was a highly contentious 2-1 decision in which the court’s chief judge said the state surcharge bans (like Florida’s) were “being struck down by a federal court for no good reason.”
  3. In December 2019, Oklahoma attorney general official opinion declaring the state’s no-surcharging law unconstitutionally restricts free speech. 

Surcharge Laws Stories:

  • NYS new rules in effect on February 11, 2024. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-announces-new-law-clarify-disclosure-credit-card-surcharges-goes-effect-sunday
  • Visa Intensifies Enforcement on Merchant Surcharges https://thefinancialtechnologyreport.com/visa-intensifies-enforcement-on-merchant-surcharges/
  • Visa Revises Rules Governing Surcharge Programs https://www.taftlaw.com/news-events/law-bulletins/visa-revises-rules-governing-surcharge-programs-1/
  • 2/2023 NJ Businesses Fined For Credit Card Surcharge Without Proper Notice https://lakewoodalerts.com/cracking-down-businesses-fined-for-credit-card-surcharge-without-proper-notice/
  • California update
    https://oag.ca.gov/consumers/general/credit-card-surcharges
  • 2018 Florida https://www.nbc-2.com/story/40273084/you-can-legally-be-charged-extra-for-using-a-credit-card
  • 2018 case in California http://delfinomadden.com/credit-card-surcharge-ban/
  • http://fortune.com/2017/03/29/credit-card-charges-supreme-court-freedom-speech/

State statutes on surcharge laws

  • https://oag.ca.gov/hiddenfeeshttps://portal.ct.gov/DCP/Legal/Credit-Card-Surcharge
  • https://m.flsenate.gov/Statutes/501.0117
  • https://portal.ct.gov/dcp/legal/credit-card-surcharge?language=en_US
  • https://sll.texas.gov/faqs/credit-card-surcharge
  • https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/BC/htm/BC.604A.htm#604A.0021
  • https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleXX/Chapter140d/Section28a Massachusetts statutes.
  • Maine https://legislature.maine.gov/statutes/9-A/title9-Asec8-509.html
  • Minnesota https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/325G.051

For more information, see Surcharge law resources under Merchant Alerts & Rules Links or contact your acquirer for accurate and current information specific to your situation. Neither Christine Speedy nor this web site provide legal advice. Consult an attorney for all your legal questions.

Does your company want to surcharge? Or do you want to reduce fees with payment optimization? Call Christine Speedy right now at 954-942-0483, 9-5 ET for compliant solutions. Please share your surcharge insights for others and ask any questions below. The information herein is based upon public information available at the time written and may change.

3D Merchant Services is rebranding as Greater Good Tech.

Disclaimer: This information is for reference only and is not legal advice. Rules are constantly changing, and you should verify the accuracy of surcharge laws for your business needs and location.

Visa Rules Update 2024 For Merchant Credit Card Processing

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The summary of Visa Rules 2024 changes is nearly 20 pages! Translation: Merchants need for advanced payment processing technology to automate processing rules compliance. It’s critical avoid unwanted extra fees and issuer initiated chargebacks. Here’s a simple way to validate whether technology you have now is likely to support new and future changes:

  1. Reviewing your merchant statement, do you have any transactions with interchange rates of 2.95% or 3.15%, the most common “non-qualified” rates? 
  2. Have you had any issuer generated chargebacks?

If you answered yes, please call 954-942-0483 or use our contact form a FREE review.
Bookmark our handy reference list of card brand rules here.

Since 2007, 3D Merchant Services has offered exceptional services to automotive, manufacturing, distribution, and construction related industries.

Call Christine Speedy, For simple solutions to complex B2B payment transaction problems, 954-942-0483, 9-5 ET. With a focus on card not present and omnichannel technology, Christine has been a sought out payment technology resource for clients, consultants, panels/forums, and the media.

2024 Convenience Fee Rules Explained

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Credit card convenience fees 2024 rules explained. Visa rules on convenience fees are outlined in Table 5-4 Convenience Fee Requirements in Visa Core Rules, which was last modified April 2022.

What’s a convenience fee and when can I use it? Convenience fees can only be charged for a bona fide convenience in the form of an alternative payment channel outside the Merchant’s customary payment channels and not charged solely for the acceptance of a Card.

  • Example 1: A merchant accepts credit cards only- Convenience fees are prohibited.
  • Example 2: A merchant gets 99% of payments via checks in the mail, ACH, and wire; they may be eligible to charge a convenience fee.

The improper use of convenience fees can result in fines. Merchants must take responsibility to be informed about the rules of card acceptance. This blog often cites Visa rules because typically if you’re in compliance with Visa’s, you’re compliant with other card brands. The rules of card acceptance are not the same as Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI).

There are three ways merchants can assess a fee to recoup some or all of the cost of card acceptance:

  1. Convenience fee is a flat rate and has restrictions that it must be a bona fide convenience. If you only accept payments online, that would make the merchant ineligible.
  2. Surcharge fees can be added in store or online for a maximum of 3%. There are many merchant solutions that are not compliant with the rules, and it’s been widely published that Visa is cracking down on compliance due to high volume of complaints.
  3. Service fees are limited to MCC code, for example, education and government.

3D Merchants Services core clients typically qualify for surcharge fees, however are frequently offered incorrect or improperly implemented solutions by other entities.

The following are all elements that can impact whether you can charge a convenience fee:

  • Federal law
  • State law
  • Rules of card acceptance, for example, Visa Core Rules
  • Merchant acquirer (credit card processor)

Who can and cannot charge a convenience fee?

  • If the Merchant operates exclusively in a Card-Absent Environment, cannot charge a convenience fee.
  • Convenience fee can only be charged by the merchant that provides the goods or services to the cardholder, not a third party.

Visa convenience fee rules excerpts:

  • Cannot be charged on a Recurring Transaction or an Installment Transaction.
  • Must be listed as a separate line item on the receipt.
  • Must be included with the total transaction. In other words, the receipt must split out the amount, but only one transaction is sent.
  • Added only to a domestic Unattended Transaction. In other words, customers self-pay.
  • Must be disclosed to customers as a charge for alternate payment channel convenience.

How much is allowed for a convenience fee?

Per Visa, the convenience fee must be a flat, or fixed amount, regardless of the value of the payment due. There isn’t a limit on the amount and a merchant may choose to dynamically generate the convenience fee amount. Regardless, the consumer must be able to opt-out prior to completing the transaction.

See Visa Core Rules Table 5-4: Convenience Fee Requirements for more information. Note, this is a change from the 2021 blog post.

Rules may vary by card brand, but typically, if a merchant complies with Visa rules, they’ll be compliant with the other brands. A convenience fee is not the same as a credit card surcharge for Visa, which also has another type called a service fee,which applies to government and education only.

Call Christine Speedy, For simple solutions to complex B2B payment transaction problems, 954-942-0483, 9-5 ET. CenPOS authorized reseller based out of South Florida and NY. CenPOS is an integrated commerce technology platform driving innovative, omnichannel solutions tailored to meet a merchant’s market needs. Providing a single point of integration, the CenPOS platform combines payment, commerce and value-added functionality enabling merchants to transform their commerce experience, eliminate the need to manage complex integrations, reduce the burden of accepting payments and create deeper customer relationships.

Please share your convenience fee insights for others and ask any questions below.

B2B credit card processing FREE analysis

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Are increasing merchant services credit card fees annoying you?

While technology can optimize fee management, there are multiple reasons new fees or rising fees may occur. Use the information for a quick self-assessment and determine whether it’s worthwhile to engage with a 3D Merchant Services payments professional for further review. This method is easier than my B2B credit card processing fact check, while still revealing problems that must be resolved.  As a processor neutral payments expert, Christine Speedy offers a unique perspective.

The areas needing most attention are rate qualification and other fees.

Here’s a shortcut to determine if you have authorization problems, which directly impact credit card processing transaction fees. Why is this important? Because unless you fix the underlying problem, switching merchant accounts will only provide partial relief from escalating transaction fees like non-. If you have any of these items below on your merchant statement, there’s a problem that is causing unnecessary extra costs.

  • Mastercard Transaction Processing Excellence Fee – Nominal Authorizations
  • Misuse
  • Integrity
  • Compliance or Non-compliance
  • Standard / STD (any)
  • EIRF
  • Data rate I
  • Data Rate II or Data Rate 2
  • Chargeback: FRAUD TRANS-NO CARDHOLDR AUTH
  • Chargeback reason: Compliance
  • Non-Qualified, NQ

Hint: If you open your merchant statement in Adobe Acrobat, in OSX with command F you can copy and paste the terms above. It’s not foolproof due to varying abbreviations, but you only need to have one of the bad items to know there’s a problem.

For card not present business to business, these are two credit card processing interchange types you should see; many often don’t and that is also a problems resulting in higher costs.

  • Full UCAF
  • Data Rate III, Commercial Level III

I don’t know why, but I get calls from other salespeople in the industry looking for solutions to help customers qualify for Data Rate II. Why wouldn’t you want the customer to qualify at Data Rate III? Makes no sense.

I also hear from merchants how they were told that the new solution would fix their level 3 data problems, but it didn’t. If you do preauthorizations, and the solution doesn’t automatically get new authorizations and manage reversals it’s not going to fix authorization problems. Always ask, “how will the payment gateway manage authorization reversals if we don’t settle for the original preauthorization amount’? That’s one of several critical key questions. If they don’t know the answer instantly, move on.

Due to constant changes in card network rules and data security compliance rules, a review by a neutral payments expert is essential. Did you have any red items? It’s time for a deeper dive into why.  Your FREE report will identify issues impacting profits and security, include action items how to fix them, and rarely requires changing financial partners.

credit card transaction fee checkup form

Call Christine Speedy, to reduce merchant fees with new or existing merchant account at 954-942-0483, 9-5 ET. With Christine as your account manager you’re assured a unique experience to maximize profits and security without business disruption.

3D Merchant Services is now WBE and WOSB certified and is rebranding to Greater Good Tech.