FeeVerify for payment processors
A processor earns the spread between what acquirers and schemes charge it and what it charges merchants, so every upstream overcharge comes straight out of profit. FeeVerify breaks that billing down and validates every transaction against your acquirer and scheme agreements, finds what you have overpaid, and keeps checking each month so you can reprice merchants, route volume and negotiate on clear economics.
What does a processor pay, and where does the spread leak?
A processor pays scheme fees, acquirer buy rates, and FX and settlement charges, then prices merchants to cover them with a margin. The spread leaks in two places: an upstream bill that drifts from its contract, and a scheme, FX or downgrade change that lands while merchant pricing stays where it was.
Most processors assume their acquirer invoices are right, and the invoices are hard to test. Non-transactional scheme fees arrive monthly, one to two months in arrears, and are calculated on aggregates that do not map back to single transactions (Adyen). Behavioural fees add more: since April 2025, Visa's acquirer monitoring programme has charged $4 or $8 per fraudulent or disputed transaction above its thresholds (Visa VAMP fact sheet, 2025). The Reserve Bank of Australia found some PSPs absorb fee inaccuracies instead of investigating them, because the fees are complex and change often (RBA, March 2026).
| What you pay | Where it leaks | How FeeVerify checks it |
|---|---|---|
| Acquirer buy rates | Opaque or blended rates, volume tiers not applied as volume grows | Re-costs each transaction against the exact rate, tier and minimum in the acquirer contract |
| Transactional scheme fees | Wrong region, product or card type; pass-through marked up or billed twice | Recalculates each fee from the scheme fee schedule and your acquirer contract |
| Non-transactional and behavioural scheme fees | Aggregates that nobody rebuilds; programme fees that go unchallenged | Rebuilds the aggregate or the triggering transactions and compares the result with the invoice line |
| Downgrades | Transactions clearing at a higher interchange tier than they qualify for | Flags each downgraded transaction and the data, timing or configuration behind it |
| FX and settlement charges | Mark-ups above the contracted spread, or applied twice | Compares the applied spread with the contracted FX markup |
| Rebates and side letters | Volume incentives earned and never credited | Tracks each tier and side-letter term against your volumes and the credits received |
| Merchant pricing | Cost increases never passed on | Checks that upstream changes reached each merchant's price, for example on interchange++ |
Sources: Adyen, non-transactional scheme fees; Visa acquirer monitoring program fact sheet, 2025; RBA conclusions paper, scheme fees, March 2026
Four ways FeeVerify protects your spread
FeeVerify sits as an independent control layer between what you pay your acquirers and what you charge your merchants. Looking back, it recovers what has already leaked. Going forward, it keeps the spread where your agreements put it as costs, contracts and volumes change, and gives you clear economics for every commercial decision.
Looking back: recover what has leaked
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 acquirer.
Claim earned rebates
Volume tiers and side-letter incentives are verified across every acquirer, so value you have already earned does not go unclaimed.
Going forward: protect the spread
Protect your spread
Each new month of billing is validated as it lands, so scheme, FX and downgrade changes are caught in time to reprice merchants before the cost compounds. A cost increase you have not passed on is lost margin.
Negotiate and route on clear economics
Every finding links to the clause, the calculation and the source data, and the true cost of each acquirer sits on one basis. That gives you evidence an acquirer can check, and the numbers to route volume and re-tender acquiring on.
None of this needs new headcount. AI does the high-volume analysis, and experienced payments specialists sign off every material finding, so you do not have to hire interchange specialists in every market.
PSPs, payment facilitators, ISOs and gateways
Other payments businesses carry a spread or a share of one, and the billing behind it is just as hard to check. Each has its own page.
Payment service providers
Acquirer, scheme and provider costs in every market, and merchant pricing that keeps pace with them.
Read more about PSPsPayment facilitators
Sponsor acquirer, scheme and platform costs, and sub-merchant pricing that still covers them.
Read more about payment facilitatorsIndependent sales organisations
Residuals rebuilt from the ISO agreement and checked against every statement.
Read more about ISOsPayment gateways
Bundled acquiring and provider costs validated, and merchant billing checked.
Read more about payment gatewaysProof in production
FeeVerify is proven on a tier-one cross-border payments business, anonymised here, that runs blended and IC++ acquiring across multiple markets and had no AI-led billing reconciliation before. The diagnostic ran on one month of its real production data and was delivered within 30 days of the data arriving.
That business is built like most processors: several acquirers, many markets and two pricing models. Rules were built from its contract packages and the scheme schedules behind them, and every transaction was re-costed against them.
Figures are from an anonymised engagement; the client is not named. The proof page sets out the method and the disclosure.
Getting started
You start with a 30-day diagnostic on one month of your own data, and you see verified recoveries before any recurring fee. A good first scope is the one or two acquirers or markets with the highest volume or the most pricing complexity. The first call agrees that scope and the data we need.
Share your data
Your acquirer and scheme contracts, side letters and incentive tiers, and one month of settlement and invoice files. No integration is needed to start.
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 processors ask
We built our own cost engine. What would FeeVerify add?
A cost engine calculates expected cost from rates someone typed into it. FeeVerify builds its rules from the agreements themselves and links each rule to its clause, so it tests the rate tables your engine depends on. It also catches what an engine rarely models, such as behavioural fees, downgrades and rebates owed under a side letter. The two can run side by side: your engine prices, and FeeVerify checks those prices against the contracts.
How do we prove an overcharge to an acquirer?
A claim holds up when the other side can follow it. Each finding carries the clause, the calculation, the transactions affected and the expected and billed amounts, and a payments specialist has signed it off. Recoveries rarely arrive unprompted: acquirers told the Reserve Bank of Australia that schemes "did not proactively reimburse" billing errors (RBA, 2025). Specific, sourced evidence gives you something to put to them.
What do we pay for the pilot?
You see verified recoveries before any recurring fee. After the 30-day diagnostic, FeeVerify's fee is a success fee on the value you accept, from money back to cost savings and revenue gained, and there is no ongoing commitment. If you want the checks to keep running, continuous assurance is an option once the value is proven. Specific pilot fees and percentages are set in the contract, so the first call is about scope and data.
Do you need our merchant-level data?
For the recovery work, FeeVerify needs the transaction fields your fee rules depend on, such as card type, region, product and volume band. Merchant identifiers matter only if you want to check that cost changes reached merchant pricing. Your data stays in its own environment, every agent action is logged, and client data is never used to train a model. The governance page answers the usual data protection and procurement questions.
What does the UK fee-logic remedy mean for a processor?
From July 2027, the Payment Systems Regulator requires Visa and Mastercard to give UK acquirers the fee logic needed to reconcile billed scheme fees to the transactions behind them, with pricing governance directions from November 2026 (PSR PS26/1). That makes reconciliation possible in principle. Someone still has to run it against your acquirer contracts as well as the scheme rules. The PSR remedies explainer has the dates.
Related reading
Sources: PSR PS26/1, final decision, July 2026; RBA summary of submissions, transparency of wholesale fees, 2025
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.