Visa's new VAMP threshold: What South African merchants need to know about VAMP changes in 2026

The online payments industry changed significantly on 1 April 2026. Visa introduced a major change that will have a real impact on merchants, payment facilitators, and ecommerce businesses across South Africa.

Visa's Acquirer Monitoring Program (VAMP) threshold for "Excessive" merchant fraud and dispute activity has been reduced from 2.2% to just 1.5%. While this may seem like a minor adjustment, it represents a substantial tightening of compliance standards  for businesses that accept Visa card payments online. If that includes your online store or digital service, you need to read this article. 

What is VAMP?

VAMP is Visa's unified fraud and dispute monitoring framework. It combines fraud reports and chargebacks/dispute programmes into a single measurement to assess the overall risk associated with each merchant's transactions. The programme was designed to improve payment security and encourage stronger fraud prevention measures across Visa’s global payments ecosystem.

In simple terms, rather than treating fraud and customer chargebacks separately, VAMP combines them into a single count-based formula to evaluate merchant risk. 

What does the new 1.5% VAMP threshold mean for your business?

From 1 April 2026, crossing the 1.5% combined threshold places a merchant into Visa’s “Excessive” risk category. Merchants that exceed this new, lower level may face increased scrutiny, penalties, or even intervention from their payment provider or acquiring bank (that is, the bank that processes credit and debit card payments for your business, issues your merchant account, links your business to card networks like Visa, and deposits customer funds into your business account after a purchase).

For South African ecommerce businesses, this means there is now less room for error than ever before. Even if your business previously operated comfortably within Visa's limits, you may now find that your company is at risk of non-compliance despite you not having made any changes to your business model.

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How will this new VAMP threshold affect merchants?

The new threshold places greater emphasis on:

• Strong customer authentication
• Accurate transaction monitoring
• Effective fraud prevention tools
• Transparent refund and cancellation processes
• Proactive chargeback management

As an online merchant, you should expect acquiring banks, payment facilitators, and processors to apply stricter onboarding and monitoring requirements to reduce risk exposure. Businesses with recurring billing models, digital services, or higher-than-average dispute rates may be particularly affected. 

What about the impact of the new VAMP threshold on customers?

Customers can expect greater protection against fraudulent transactions and improved security when shopping online. Additional verification measures may occasionally add a few seconds to the checkout process, but these checks will help to ensure that legitimate cardholders are authorising the transaction. Ultimately, the safer payments environment that Visa is creating will benefit both consumers and merchants.

The impact on chargebacks and fraud detection

One of the most important aspects of VAMP is that fraud reports and chargebacks are now considered together when assessing merchant risk. This means that your business can no longer focus solely on reducing chargebacks while overlooking fraud, or vice versa. Both now contribute to the same compliance metric, meaning you need to give both these factors your full attention.

As a result, payment facilitators and merchants will need to invest in:

• Real-time fraud monitoring
• Transaction risk scoring
• Behavioural analytics
• Customer verification technologies
• Dispute prevention strategies

The overall objective is simple: to stop fraudulent transactions before they occur, rather than dealing with chargebacks after the fact.

What does this mean for payment facilitators?

For payment facilitators, Third-Party Payment Providers (TPPPs), and ecommerce platforms, the Visa VAMP threshold reduction increases the importance of merchant oversight and compliance. In other words, payment providers are expected to identify high-risk activity early, support merchants in reducing fraud, and ensure that their portfolios remain within Visa's new parameters. 

This creates a stronger and more accountable payments ecosystem, but it also means payment providers must offer robust security and compliance solutions to their merchants.

How does Bob Pay help online merchants stay ahead?

In an environment where fraud prevention and compliance are more important than ever, Bob Pay provides merchants with secure and reliable payment tools designed to keep risk ratios healthy.

Bob Pay integrates 3D Secure authentication, an industry-recognised security protocol. When executed successfully, 3D Secure provides an immediate liability shift on unauthorised fraud chargebacks, protecting your revenues.  

Combined with ongoing compliance measures and transaction monitoring, Bob Pay helps merchants like you build customer trust, all while navigating the increasingly demanding requirements of the modern payments landscape.

What does this mean for you?

Visa's reduction of the VAMP threshold from 2.2% to 1.5% signals a clear industry shift toward stronger fraud controls and greater accountability. While the change introduces new compliance challenges for merchants and payment providers, it also creates opportunities for you to strengthen customer trust, reduce fraud losses, and contribute to improving the overall health of South Africa's growing digital economy.

For businesses that prioritise security, transparency, and proactive risk management, the future of payments remains full of opportunity. Bob Pay is here to help you make the most of those opportunities. 

What should my business do next?

To understand how Visa’s new VAMP threshold could impact your business and what you can do to stay ahead of these changes, contact Bob Pay on +27 (0)12 940 1067 or email [email protected].

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