Payments Optimisation
Verify what you pay to accept payments.
Card and merchant arrangements grow more complex every year, and billing rarely receives independent scrutiny. We change that.
What is payments optimisation?
Payments optimisation is the independent audit and benchmarking of what an organisation pays to accept card and merchant payments, including interchange, scheme fees and acquirer margins, to find billing errors and improve commercial terms.
The challenge
Complexity hides leakage.
Interchange, scheme fees, acquirer margins and ancillary charges combine into statements few teams can fully reconcile. Where billing departs from what was agreed, it often goes unnoticed.
What we examine
Area 01 of 04
Billing verification
Charges checked line by line against contracted terms.
Questions we answer
- 01
Are we billed what we agreed with our acquirers?
- 02
How competitive are our card acceptance terms?
- 03
Where is cost or commercial leakage sitting?
- 04
How do we keep this verified over time?
What you receive
An independent audit of payment billing
Benchmarks of commercial terms
Prioritised recovery and optimisation opportunities
A path to continuous verification
HawkIQ
HawkIQ verifies payment billing continuously, so discrepancies are flagged without waiting for the next review.
How HawkIQ works →Common questions
Payments Optimisation, answered.
What is a payments or merchant fee audit?
A line-by-line check of acquirer and processor billing against contracted terms, identifying overcharges, misapplied rates and hidden fees.
What makes up card acceptance costs?
Interchange paid to card issuers, scheme fees paid to networks such as Visa and Mastercard, and the acquirer's own margin and ancillary charges.
How long does a payments review take?
It depends on data volume and how quickly statements and billing files can be gathered. Large datasets take longer to collect and process; we agree timings upfront.
How does HawkIQ help after the review?
HawkIQ continuously verifies payment billing, so discrepancies are flagged as they occur rather than at the next review.