No joke. Now, let's talk about Visa. Visa overhauled its monitoring into what's called the Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program, or what we call in the industry, VAMP for short. Enforcement started in October of 2025, and VAMP looks at a combined ratio, not just chargebacks, but fraud and chargebacks together. When it launched, the excessive line was 2.2%, and since then, they've tightened it up. As of April 2026, the line dropped to 1.5% across the U.S., Canada, and Europe. That is the standard merchants are held to right now. If your ratio is above 1.5% today, you are already in the danger zone. This isn't a warning about what's coming. This has already arrived.

This is the data that you can use to fight the friendly fraud. You won't win every dispute, but merchants who fight illegitimate disputes systematically recover real money and protect their chargeback ratio. Now, let me tell you about the line you truly do not ever want to cross because this is where a chargeback problem stops being expensive and starts being existential for your business. If your account gets terminated for excessive chargebacks, you can end up on something called the MATCH list. MATCH stands for MasterCard Alert to Control High-Risk Merchants. A lot of people in the industry still call it the TMF or the Terminated Merchant File.