News digest from Monoup: main events in fintech and iGaming

We wrap up May with a roundup of the most important news from the past week, courtesy of Monoup experts. It has been a very active week, by the way. The market was shaken new fraud monitoring rules from the Visa payment system: merchants and acquirers are trying to figure out how to operate under these new conditions. We will delve into what exactly has changed and why in more detail in this article.

Meanwhile, in Turkey, Papara payment system has come under investigation and is accused of money laundering for illegal gambling. The wallet is licensed in Turkey and is an important part of its fintech environment, hence it is under close scrutiny. Read on to find out what was discovered and what consequences the payment system might face.

We review what happened this week in fintech and iGaming, and what you definitely need to know.

New Fraud Monitoring Program from Visa

Let's start with the main news of the week — updates to Visa's monitoring programs. Starting June 1, a new set of rules will come into effect, replacing two outdated ones.

Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program (VAMP) is designed to monitor the activities of acquiring banks and merchants to maintain low levels of fraud and disputes. This issue is extremely important for payment system, as it primarily affects the processing of its cards as secure. Level of trust for the payment system directly influences desire of users to open cards under its brand thus is crucial for long-term business operations. If a merchant or an acquiring bank has an increased level of fraudulent transactions or chargebacks, the result could be oversight by the monitoring program and significant fines. This is why all participants in the payment industry could not ignore these updates that seriously change the approach to cooperation.

The new program eventually combines two old ones (Visa Dispute Monitoring Program (VDMP) and Visa Fraud Monitoring Program (VFMP)) into a single framework, and they will be closed soon. Additionally, a new metric, the VAMP ratio, is introduced, which will be calculated using the following formula:

​ VAMP Ratio = (Count of Fraud (TC40) + Count of All Disputes (TC15)) / Total Settled Transactions (TC05).

The most important change for merchants and banks is that the new metric now includes all chargeback codes, whereas previously, some codes not related to fraud were excluded from the overall ratio. This will result in a wider range of disputes being considered when calculating the metric, and consequently, the figures will increase for many merchants. This means that now it is necessary to work even harder on all chargebacks and reduce the level of all, not just focus on fraudulent ones in this regard.

Visa is also changing acceptable fraud levels relative to the total volume of processed transactions.

For the acquiring bank:

• 0.3%: If the bank's total dispute ratio reaches this value, Visa will pay attention to such an acquirer and ensure that it strengthens monitoring and dispute management. If this helps reduce fraud to acceptable levels, everything remains the same. If the bank fails to implement necessary tools or they do not work, and its fraud level increases, sanctions from the Visa are quite possible.
• 0.5%: The bank may face serious fines. Visa has the authority to thoroughly check individual merchants and take radical measures against them, up to disconnecting them from its network.

For the merchant:

• 0.9%: This figure remains the same as was applied earlier.
• 1.5%: A new, lower threshold has been introduced here. If a merchant allows the fraud level to reach this percentage, they face serious penalties directly from Visa, regardless of the performance indicators of their bank and other factors.

All this indicates a tightening of the rules by payment system and more serious oversight of merchants. Although Visa has always been strict about fraud, today the course is set for more thorough control in this area.

Trio Acquires PayBrokers

A major player in the PIX payments market, the technology company Trio, announced the acquisition of the PayBrokers payment system. This deal occurred shortly after PayBrokers was involved in a high-profile investigation related to the alleged financing of illegal gambling businesses.

The high-profile case, which involved blogger Deolane Bezerra, was quickly closed: she was released soon after her arrest. Sources clarify that PayBrokers played a key role in the rapid conclusion of the investigation, as it actively cooperated with law enforcement agencies. The company provided all the information requested by the police about the individuals involved in the shortest possible time, which allowed it to clear itself of accusations and restore its reputation.

Despite this, PayBrokers was sold. To strengthen its position in the iGaming sector, the company needed to combine efforts with a more powerful market player. Trio itself reports that this acquisition is also strategically important for it, as it provides direct access to the iGaming client base that PayBrokers has managed to build.

Papara Accused of Aiding Illegal Gambling

In Turkey, 13 people were arrested in a case involving money laundering for gambling, including founder of Papara wallet and the chairman of the board.

As it turned out, the investigation into wallet's involvement in such transactions had been ongoing for a long time, and the authorities managed to find out that more than 26,000 accounts in Papara were opened for illegal purposes and used for illegal payments to gambling websites. The fintech is under temporary management, and the investigation is still ongoing. Other details and the potential outcome of this case are not yet known, but the market has already felt a decline and concern about Turkish fintech.

Serbia Joins SEPA

This week, European Commission officially confirmed a positive decision regarding Serbia. The country will join Single Euro Payments Area and will be able to process euro payments through various SEPA schemes. It will have access to SEPA Credit Transfer, SEPA Instant Credit Transfer, and SEPA Direct Debit.

Now financial institutions in Serbia are in the preparatory stages of connection, and first payment will supposedly be processed in May 2026. At the same time, such a connection period can be considered fast, and the country is working to complete necessary improvements for full integration with SEPA.

So, these are the most important news of current week. To stay informed, subscribe to our Telegram channel also. Hot news in a short format is constantly published in our channel, and on the website, you can examine the most resonant events in more detail explained by our experts.