FeeVerify vs cost-recovery consultants
A cost-recovery consultant reviews your payments costs in a single engagement, at a point in time, and hands over its findings. FeeVerify builds a rulebook from your agreements and the scheme schedules around them, checks every transaction against it, and with optional continuous assurance runs it again on each new month of data. The two suit different questions, and many businesses will use both.
How do the two approaches differ?
A consultant brings experienced people to one project: they read your contracts and invoices, find what they can in the time agreed, and help you recover or renegotiate. FeeVerify is software run with experienced payments specialists: AI turns your contracts into fee rules and re-costs every transaction, specialists sign off every material finding, and it can keep running after the first findings. It processes and routes nothing, so its findings carry no commercial agenda.
The difference shows in what remains once the work ends. When a consulting engagement closes, the checking usually stops, and the working models often stay with the firm. With FeeVerify, you keep the rulebook, the variance map and the reports, and optional continuous assurance runs the rulebook again on each new month of data. Fees keep moving in the meantime: Visa raised its base transmission and misuse fees paid by issuers from January 2025 (Payments Dive), and Mastercard is replacing its Acquirer Clearing Fee with a new Network Access and Brand Usage fee (Moneris).
Side by side
The table compares the usual shape of a cost-recovery engagement with how FeeVerify works. Consulting firms differ from one another, so read the left column as typical, and ask any firm you are considering how it handles each row. The rows are the questions a finance or procurement team usually asks when choosing between the two.
| Cost-recovery consultant | FeeVerify | |
|---|---|---|
| Timing | One engagement over a fixed period, with people working through samples by hand | A 30-day diagnostic, then optional continuous assurance on each new month of data |
| Coverage | Varies by firm; manual review often relies on samples or selected fee lines | Every transaction recalculated against the rules that govern it, with no sampling |
| What the client keeps | The findings, the report and any amounts recovered | The rulebook, the variance map and the reports, from day one |
| How fees are charged | A fixed project fee, or a share of what is recovered | A risk-aligned pilot, then a success fee on the value you accept, with no ongoing commitment |
| Evidence trail | A written report, with working papers usually held by the firm | Every figure linked to its clause or data row, and every action recorded in the worklog |
| Who reviews findings | The consulting team's senior staff | AI does the high-volume analysis; experienced payments specialists sign off every material finding |
Engagements of this kind are commonly priced at £200k to £1M. FeeVerify does not publish prices: pilot fees and success-fee percentages are subject to contract, and you see verified recoveries before any recurring fee.
When a consultant is the better choice
A consultant is the better choice when your question reaches beyond your own contracts. FeeVerify works only from your agreements and your data, and it keeps each client's data apart, so it cannot tell you what similar businesses pay or which acquirer would price you best. A firm that sees many clients' terms can.
A consultant also fits when you need people to act for you: running an acquirer tender, leading a scheme negotiation, or advising on a merger where processing costs are one line among many. If you have a single processor, a short contract and modest volumes, a one-off review may answer the question at a cost that ongoing checking would not beat. And if your board has asked for an opinion from an established advisory firm, that request decides the matter.
When FeeVerify fits better
FeeVerify fits better when you pay several processors, acquirers or schemes, under contracts too many or too long to recalculate by hand every month. It reads scanned, redlined and multi-language agreements into fee rules, checks every transaction against them, and traces each variance to the clause it departs from.
It also fits when the evidence has to satisfy someone else. Every rule carries a confidence grade, every action is logged, and a named reviewer signs off material findings before anyone acts on them, which gives auditors a trail they can follow. UK acquirers have a dated reason to prepare: from July 2027 Visa and Mastercard must provide the fee logic needed to reconcile billed fees to transactions (PSR PS26/1, July 2026). FeeVerify is proven on real production data from a tier-one cross-border payments business operating across multiple markets (blended and IC++ acquiring), where it re-costed 44M+ transactions from one month of data against 228 expected-fee rules and traced a six-figure recurring variance to a single clause (anonymised; see the proof page).
Can you use both?
Yes. The two work well in sequence. FeeVerify produces the rulebook and a variance map with each finding tied to its clause and transactions, and a consultant can use that evidence in a renegotiation or a tender. After the new terms are signed, FeeVerify checks that the new rates are applied from their effective date.
This split puts each party where it is strongest. The consultant brings market knowledge and negotiating time. FeeVerify brings a transaction-level check that does not end when the project does. You can share FeeVerify's reports with your advisers, since every figure in them links back to its source. Your contracts and transaction data stay in your own environment and are never used to train a model. If you want to see what the evidence looks like on your own data first, a 30-day diagnostic is the place to start: you see verified recoveries before any recurring fee, and you keep the rulebook and variance map either way.
Sources: PSR PS26/1, July 2026; Payments Dive, Visa fee changes; Moneris, card network fee updates.
Start with one month of your own data.
A pilot begins with the agreements that protect both sides, then your contracts and one month of settlement data, scoped with a payments specialist on the first call. The 30-day diagnostic re-costs every transaction against them and shows each variance with its clause, before any recurring fee.