34 min
Fraudology
Beyond the Hype: Agentic AI, VAMP Ratios, and Post-MRC Realities
50 min
Welcome back to Fraudology.
I just got back from the Merchant Risk Council conference in Vegas, so this episode is my full debrief. I want to cut through the conference hype and give you the practical insights that actually matter if you work in fraud or payments.
Agentic AI dominated nearly every hallway conversation. Tools like Sardine are already identifying AI agents by watching for invisible behaviors, like form fields getting filled without any mouse movement. And I want to talk about why OpenAI recently shelved its instant checkout feature. Turns out nobody wants to be the merchant of record holding the chargeback bag when things go wrong.
Here is what the VAMP threshold change means in practice:
· Visa is reducing high risk merchant ratios from 220 basis points to 150 basis points this April
· Many enterprise merchants have not fully priced in how disruptive this cliff will be
· Merchants need to reassess their risk ratios well ahead of the deadline
· This shift is a direct outcome of ongoing MRC advocacy conversations
What you'll hear in this episode:
· My honest highlights and lowlights from the MRC Vegas conference
· How Sardine and similar tools detect agentic AI behavior at the browser level
· Why OpenAI shelved its instant checkout feature and what that signals about liability
· The upcoming VAMP threshold reduction and who it will catch off guard
· Why compelling evidence protocols for AI agents do not exist yet at Visa
You should listen to this episode if you:
· Manage chargeback or dispute strategy at a merchant or issuer
· Are trying to understand how agentic AI is changing liability in commerce
· Need to prepare your team for the upcoming VAMP threshold change
· Want a no fluff recap of what actually mattered at MRC Vegas
· Believe domain expertise still matters more than any LLM
Episode notes & key takeaways
The VAMP threshold cliff coming this April
Visa is dropping high risk merchant ratios from 220 basis points down to 150 basis points this April, and that is a much bigger deal than it sounds on paper. Enterprise merchants who have been operating comfortably under the old threshold could suddenly find themselves flagged under the new one.
· The threshold reduction takes effect this April
· Merchants operating near the old 220 basis point line are most at risk
· This is a compliance deadline that needs proactive planning, not reactive scrambling
· The change reflects Visa's broader push to tighten high risk merchant oversight
Agentic AI and the chargeback problem nobody has solved
Agentic commerce is creating a genuinely new category of dispute. When an AI agent completes a purchase on someone's behalf, is that purchase authorized. Real world examples are already surfacing where merchants lose disputes because Visa has no established compelling evidence protocol for AI driven transactions.
· AI agents are completing purchases without clear consent frameworks in place
· Merchants are losing disputes tied to agentic purchases
· Visa has not yet built compelling evidence standards for this scenario
· This gap will only grow as agentic commerce adoption increases
Why domain expertise still beats the LLM
One of the clearest themes from MRC Vegas was a pushback against over reliance on large language models for fraud strategy. Senior fraud leadership brings pattern recognition and institutional knowledge that simply does not exist in open source training data.
· LLMs cannot replicate proprietary fraud intelligence
· Domain expertise is built through years of pattern recognition, not data scraping
· Fraud leadership decisions require context that AI models were never trained on
· The industry is starting to draw a clearer line between AI assisted work and AI replaced judgment
The VAMP change, the chargeback gaps in agentic commerce, and the ongoing AI hype all point to the same conclusion. The fundamentals still matter, and the people who understand them are more valuable than ever.
Connect with Karisse Hendrick | LinkedIn
- Host of the Fraudology Podcast
- Award-Winning Cyberfraud Expert
- Ecommerce Fraud Prevention Consultant
- Startup Advisor, Keynote Speaker, and
- Consultant to Fortune 500 merchants
