FeeVerify for enterprise merchants
Most merchants book card fees as a fixed cost of selling and assume their acquirer and PSP invoices are right. FeeVerify re-costs every transaction against those contracts, so you recover what you have overpaid, stop it recurring, and see the true cost of each provider. We process and route nothing, so the findings have no commercial agenda.
What does card acceptance cost, and where does it leak?
An enterprise merchant pays each acquirer and PSP a merchant service charge, on blended, interchange-plus or IC++ pricing, with scheme fees, FX mark-ups and gateway fees on top. Small pricing errors in those charges recur across every provider and every market, and with several acquirers each one prices differently.
Scheme costs have risen fast. The UK Payment Systems Regulator found that core scheme and processing fees to acquirers rose by more than 25% in real terms between 2017 and 2023, costing UK businesses at least £170m a year (PSR final report, March 2025). Comparing providers is hard: a large merchant told the Reserve Bank of Australia that different acquirers charged it different scheme fees "for like-for-like transactions despite having an interchange++ plan" (RBA, 2025).
| What you pay | Where it leaks | How FeeVerify checks it |
|---|---|---|
| Blended rates | Opaque rates that drift from the contracted price | Re-costs each transaction against the rate and tiers in the contract |
| Interchange on IC++ pricing | Downgrades to a higher tier, wrong merchant category | Checks each transaction's interchange and flags downgrades with their cause |
| Scheme fee pass-through | Marked up, billed twice, or different across acquirers for the same transaction | Recalculates each pass-through from the scheme fee rules and compares providers |
| FX mark-ups | Spread above the contracted FX markup | Compares the applied spread with the contract |
| Acquirer and PSP fees | Fees the contract does not allow, minimums applied wrongly | Lists each fee the contract allows and checks every invoice line against it |
| Volume rebates and incentives | Tiers reached and side-letter incentives never paid | Tracks earn-back against your contract and the credits received |
Sources: PSR market review into card scheme and processing fees, final report, March 2025; RBA summary of submissions, transparency of wholesale fees, 2025
Four ways FeeVerify pays for itself
FeeVerify gives independent assurance of what your acquirers and PSPs charge you, owned by Finance and independent of every provider it checks. Looking back, it recovers overcharges and claims incentives you have earned. Going forward, it keeps your cost of acceptance down and gives you a true cost per provider to take into renewals, RFPs and routing decisions.
Looking back: recover what you overpaid
Recover overcharges
Every transaction is broken down and checked against the exact contract terms. Variances come back quantified, sourced and ready to claim from the provider.
Claim earned incentives
Volume tiers, rebates and side-letter incentives are checked against your contract, so value you have already earned is paid.
Going forward: lower cost, better deals
Lower your effective rate
Downgrades, scheme fee pass-through and FX mark-ups are caught as they land each month, so cost of acceptance falls instead of creeping up.
Negotiate and route with facts
True cost per provider, clause-linked and sourced, as evidence for renewals, RFPs and decisions about where to route volume.
1 basis point on $1B of card sales is $100K a year, and it recurs every year the error does. AI does the high-volume analysis, payments specialists sign off every material finding, and you need no new headcount.
Proof in production
FeeVerify is proven on a tier-one cross-border payments business, anonymised here, that runs blended and IC++ acquiring across multiple markets. That business is a payments provider, not a merchant. Its complexity is the kind a multi-acquirer merchant faces, and the engine that re-costed its acquiring re-costs your acquirer and PSP invoices the same way.
Figures are from an anonymised engagement; the client is not named. The proof page sets out the method.
Getting started
You start with a 30-day diagnostic on one month of your own data, with no integration, and you see verified recoveries before any recurring fee. The first call agrees which providers and markets to scope, who owns the provider contracts (often Procurement, Treasury or Payments), and a date for the data.
Share your data
Your acquirer and PSP contracts and pricing, side letters and incentive tiers, and one month of settlement and invoice files.
30-day diagnostic
Every transaction is re-costed. Variances are quantified and linked to the clause behind them, and the findings are reviewed with your team.
Recover and continue
FeeVerify's fee is a success fee on the value you accept, with no ongoing commitment. Optional continuous assurance then checks each new month as it lands.
Pilot terms are agreed in the contract. The how it works page covers each step in more detail.
Questions merchants ask
How is FeeVerify different from a payment orchestration or optimisation vendor?
Orchestration and optimisation vendors earn from routing or processing your payments, so their view of cost sits next to a commercial interest. FeeVerify processes and routes nothing. It reads your contracts, breaks down and checks your transactions, and reports what each provider should have charged, which is why Internal Audit and Finance can rely on the numbers.
Can an assurance provider paid from its own findings be independent?
Internal Audit is right to ask. Every FeeVerify finding links to the clause, the calculation and the source data, so your team can check each number without relying on us, and only the value you accept counts. A payments specialist signs off each material finding before it reaches you. If your audit policy needs a different fee basis for the diagnostic, raise it when we agree the scope.
We use several acquirers and PSPs across markets. Can you compare them?
Yes. Each provider contract becomes its own set of rules, in its own currency and terms, and every transaction is re-costed against the contract that applies to it. The result is a true cost per provider on the same basis, which shows where the same transaction costs more with one provider than another. That comparison is what you take into renewals, RFPs and routing decisions.
Do we need to integrate anything?
No integration is needed for the diagnostic. You share contracts, side letters and one month of settlement and invoice files, and FeeVerify works from those. Your data stays in an environment only you can see, every agent action is logged, and client data is never used to train a model. The governance page answers the usual procurement and data protection questions.
Our acquirer already sends us a cost report. Is that enough?
An acquirer's report shows what the acquirer charged, in its own terms. It rarely tests those charges against the contract it signed with you, or compares them with your other providers. FeeVerify works on your side, from your copies of the contracts, and checks pass-through, downgrades, FX and rebates on every transaction.
Related reading
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.