Where processing overcharges hide
Processing overcharges hide in the gap between what a contract allows and what an invoice bills: scheme fees charged on the wrong region or product, transactions downgraded to a higher interchange tier, volume tiers never applied, incentives never paid, and scheme fee increases never passed on. Each guide below explains one gap and how to check it yourself.
Guides you can read now
Two problem guides are live. One starts from a symptom most finance teams see first, a cost per transaction that rises while volumes stay flat. The other covers scheme fee errors, which regulators in the UK and Australia have put on the public record. Each guide gives a method you can run on your own invoices before talking to anyone.
Why have our processing costs risen when volumes have not?
The usual causes: scheme fee changes, volume tiers not applied, new behavioural fees, pass-through mark-ups, FX and duplicate charges. Includes a month-on-month check you can run in a spreadsheet.
Read the guide to unexplained cost increasesHow do scheme fee errors happen, and how do you find them?
Fees billed in arrears on aggregates, on the wrong region or product, twice, or for services you opted out of. Includes what the Australian and UK regulators found.
Read the guide to scheme fee errorsOther discrepancies we will cover
The same contract-to-invoice gap takes several other forms, and each gets its own guide later. They sit in different contracts: acquirer, PSP, processor and sponsor pricing, scheme and incentive agreements, merchant pricing, payout partner rate cards and scheme rules. Most of them only show up when someone recalculates the bill from the contract, because the invoice itself looks normal.
| Discrepancy | What goes wrong | Where it appears | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Downgrades | Transactions clear at a higher interchange tier than they qualify for, because of missing data, late settlement or terminal configuration. | Interchange on acquirer, PSP and issuer statements | Guide coming later |
| Unpassed scheme fee increases | A scheme raises a fee, and merchant pricing is never updated, so the acquirer or processor absorbs the difference. | Merchant pricing, IC++ and blended price plans | Guide coming later |
| Missed volume tiers | Volume passes a breakpoint but the rate never steps down. | Processor, sponsor and payout partner contracts | Guide coming later |
| Unpaid incentives and rebates | A volume target or milestone in the incentive agreement or side letter is met, and the incentive or rebate is paid late or not at all. | Scheme incentive agreements, acquirer contracts, side letters | Guide coming later |
| FX mark-ups | The spread is wider than the contract allows, or a mark-up is applied twice. | Cross-border flows, payouts, scheme currency conversion | Guide coming later |
| Pass-through errors | A fee paid upstream is marked up on the way through, or never passed on to merchants. | Acquirers, PSPs, sponsors | Guide coming later |
| Inactive card fees | Per-card or per-account fees keep running on closed or dormant cards. | Issuer processors, schemes | Guide coming later |
| Behavioural scheme fees | Fees triggered by processing behaviour are paid without challenge or never passed on. | Acquirers, PSPs | Guide coming later |
| Minimums on top of usage | A monthly minimum is charged as well as usage, when the contract says instead of it. | BIN sponsors, processors, payout partners | Guide coming later |
How FeeVerify finds these
FeeVerify turns each fee your contracts allow into a rule, recalculates every transaction against that rulebook, and traces each difference to the clause it breaks. AI does the high-volume reading and recalculation, each rule carries a confidence grade, and experienced payments specialists sign off every material finding before anyone acts on it.
The rulebook stays with you, and optional continuous assurance runs it again on each new month of data. The how it works page sets out the steps, and the proof page shows what the method found for a tier-one cross-border payments business operating across multiple markets (blended and IC++ acquiring).
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.