How FeeVerify works out what you should be paying
FeeVerify breaks your payments billing into its parts and works out what each one should cost, from your agreements and from the scheme fee schedules, side letters and pricing that fill in what a contract leaves out. It validates every transaction against that rulebook, traces each variance to its source, and keeps checking each new month as it lands. AI does the high-volume reading and arithmetic, so you need no new headcount, and experienced payments specialists sign off every material finding before it reaches you.
What happens between your contracts and a signed-off finding?
An investigation runs in six steps. Your data lands in an environment only your organisation can see, you approve how it is read, your agreements and the sources around them become a rulebook, transactions are broken down and validated against it, variances are traced to their clause, and a named reviewer signs off anything material. The rulebook then stays with you, ready for the next month of data.
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Connect your contracts and data
You upload your contracts and agreements, side letters and incentive tiers, pricing, invoices and one month of settlement, clearing or scheme billing files through a secure upload. Each file is scanned on arrival, and any file that contains full card numbers (PANs) is rejected before it lands, so you send masked or tokenised card data only. Accepted files go into a per-tenant environment that belongs to your organisation. Nothing is co-mingled with another tenant's data. From then on your current agreements, addenda and side letters sit in one place, and each new one is added as it arrives.
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Approve a data dictionary
Every processor labels its columns and codes differently. FeeVerify proposes a data dictionary for each source: what each column holds, what each fee code means, which currency and date format applies. Someone on your team reviews it and signs it off once per source. No agent runs on that source until the dictionary is approved, so every later calculation rests on definitions your team has checked.
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Build the rulebook from every source
The Rulebook agent reads each processing agreement and turns every fee it permits into a rule. Contracts are rarely complete, so it also reads the published scheme fee schedules and notices, interchange tables, side letters and pricing files to fill in terms a contract leaves out or states loosely. Where nothing is written down, your team confirms the term before it is used. A rule carries the excerpt it came from in the original language, an English translation, and a confidence grade of High, Medium or Low. Scanned, redlined and multi-language contracts are read the same way. A rule built from a source other than the contract says so, and a rule graded Low goes to a specialist before anything is built on it.
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Break down and validate every transaction
Each transaction is split into the parts it is billed in, such as interchange, scheme fees, acquirer or processor markup, FX and tax, and each part is recalculated against the rules that govern it: the rate, the basis it applies to, volume tiers, scheme and interchange pass-through, FX and tax. The result is an expected cost for every row, set beside what the invoice and reconciliation files say you were charged. Every transaction is checked, with no sampling. Where it applies, interchange earned and scheme incentives or rebates are checked against the agreement too.
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Trace each variance to the clause
Where actual cost differs from expected cost, the Variance agent groups the difference by rule and builds a variance map. Each variance links to the clause it departs from, the transactions behind it and the amount per month. A finding reads as a claim you could put to the provider or scheme: this clause, these rows, this much.
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Specialists steer, a named reviewer signs off
Experienced payments specialists steer the investigation and check the work as it runs. Every material output lands in needs review, and a named reviewer signs it off before it reaches a decision-maker. The agents themselves move through draft, shadow, live and promoted, and a person approves each promotion. You keep the rulebook, and with optional continuous assurance it runs again on each new month of data.
What does FeeVerify need from us?
FeeVerify needs the agreements that set your fees and one month of the files that show what you were charged or paid: contracts, side letters and incentive tiers, pricing, and settlement, clearing, scheme billing or invoice files. Files can arrive in the form your counterparties already send them, including scanned PDFs and contracts in languages other than English.
The exact list depends on where you sit in the payment chain, and the table shows who usually holds each item. A 30-day diagnostic usually starts with the providers, schemes or markets with the most volume or pricing complexity, and needs no integration. Card numbers should be masked or tokenised; files containing full PANs are rejected at upload.
| Data | Usual format | Who usually holds it |
|---|---|---|
| Contracts and agreements: acquirer, PSP, processor and scheme agreements with their schedules and addenda, and published scheme fee schedules | PDF or Word, scanned or native, in any language | Legal, procurement or payments partnerships |
| Side letters, incentive agreements and volume tiers | PDF, Word or email | Payments partnerships, cards or procurement |
| Pricing, including merchant pricing for your top segments if you bill merchants | Spreadsheet or pricing system export | Pricing, product or commercial teams |
| One month of settlement, clearing and scheme billing files | The scheme's or provider's own report format, CSV or spreadsheet | Payments operations, finance operations or treasury |
| One month of invoices from acquirers, PSPs, processors and schemes, and your own merchant billing if you send it | PDF, CSV or spreadsheet | Finance or accounts payable |
What do the agents do, and who is in charge?
The Orchestrator plans each investigation and routes the work to five specialist agents, each with one job. Agents read, recalculate and draft. People decide: experienced payments specialists steer the work, org admins approve agent promotions inside your tenant, and a named reviewer signs off material findings.
When a task falls outside the current agents, the Orchestrator drafts a new skill for it. That draft runs in shadow, alongside the live work and without affecting it, until a person reviews and promotes it. The Orchestrator never promotes its own work, and every action it or any agent takes is recorded in the worklog.
| Agent | What it does | What it produces |
|---|---|---|
| Orchestrator | Plans the investigation, routes work to the specialist agents and collects their results | The investigation plan and worklog entries |
| Rulebook | Reads processing agreements and addenda and extracts each fee they permit | Rules with original excerpt, translation and confidence grade |
| Transaction Review | Recalculates each transaction against the rules that govern it | An expected cost for every row |
| Reconciliation | Ties invoices and reconciliation files to the transactions and rules | Matched invoice lines and unmatched items |
| Variance | Compares expected with actual cost and groups the differences by rule | A variance map, each item linked to its clause |
| Report | Writes up findings with every figure linked to its clause or data row | Source-linked reports ready for review |
What does a finding look like?
A finding names the rule, the clause in its original language with a translation, what was billed, what the contract allows, the transactions affected and the monthly amount. It carries a confidence grade and waits in needs review until a named reviewer signs it off. The example below uses a fictional tenant.
From the finding you can open the clause, the individual transactions and the worklog entries that produced it. The same structure traced a six-figure recurring variance to a single contract clause in an anonymised engagement for a tier-one cross-border payments business operating across multiple markets (blended and IC++ acquiring).
What does FeeVerify do after the first month?
The diagnostic looks back over one month of billing, which is where money already lost can be recovered. Most of the value comes afterwards, when the same rulebook is used to check billing going forward and to make better commercial decisions.
With continuous assurance, each new month of billing is validated as it lands. A scheme fee change, an FX mark-up or a downgrade is caught in the month it appears, before it compounds, and a new contract or addendum is read into the rulebook and reviewed before it is used.
The rulebook also puts the true cost of each provider, scheme and route on one basis. That gives you clear economics for deciding where to route volume, how to price your own customers, and what to ask for at the next renewal or tender. FeeVerify processes and routes nothing, so those numbers carry no commercial agenda.
Questions about how it works
These are the questions payments and finance teams ask most often before a discovery call. For data handling, model training and sign-off in more detail, the governance page answers each procurement and audit question in turn.
Do we need to write SQL or raise engineering tickets?
No. Your team uploads files and approves a data dictionary for each source. From there the Orchestrator and specialist agents do the reading and recalculation, with experienced payments specialists steering the work, so you need no new headcount. Your team reads rules, variance maps and reports, and can open any figure to see the clause or data row it came from.
How long does the first investigation take?
The diagnostic takes 30 days from the data arriving. Every transaction or fee line in scope is re-costed, variances are quantified and linked to their clause, and the findings are reviewed with your team. In the anonymised engagement on the proof page, 44M+ transactions from one month of data went from ingestion to diagnostic in 30 days.
What if a contract is scanned, redlined or not in English?
The Rulebook agent reads scanned, redlined and multi-language contracts. Each rule keeps the excerpt in its original language beside an English translation, so a reviewer can check the wording directly. Where the source is hard to read or the wording is ambiguous, the rule is graded Medium or Low, and Low-graded rules go to a specialist before anything is built on them.
How often are our costs checked?
The diagnostic checks one month of data. Once the value is proven, optional continuous assurance runs the same rulebook on each new month of data, so scheme, FX and downgrade changes are caught as they land. When a contract changes, for example with a new addendum, you upload it and the rules it affects are rebuilt and go back through review before they are used.
Can FeeVerify act on a finding without us?
No. Findings land in needs review and a named reviewer signs off every material finding before it reaches a decision-maker. FeeVerify gives you the clause, the transactions and the amount. Whether to raise it with the provider or scheme, renegotiate, change routing or seek a recovery is your decision.
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.