Services
In addition to the CardTraq platforms, we offer tailored card profitability engagements leveraging our expert practitioners. There are 6 core services we offer:
Network Fee Review (for issuers, acquirers, & ISOs)
Overview: This service involves a comprehensive review of the client’s network fees over the past year. We analyze invoices, fee structures, and incentives to identify discrepancies, unnecessary costs, and potential billing errors.
Benefits: Clients gain transparency over their fee structure, enabling them to remove unnecessary costs and challenge inappropriate charges. This assessment improves budgeting accuracy, helps in planning product profitability, and informs strategic decisions like network selection or contract negotiations.
Our Network Fee Optimization service typically identifies 7%-15% in potential cost savings.
Interchange Review (for acquirers & ISOs)
Overview: This review helps clients optimize interchange by analyzing transaction-level data, merchant and product setups, and fee qualification patterns. It identifies revenue leakage, downgrade risks, and misapplied rates to ensure accurate categorization and improve net interchange performance.
Benefits: Clients typically improve net interchange by increasing revenue or reducing costs, while enhancing pricing accuracy. Greater visibility into interchange drivers helps confirm partner-share allocations, reduce inefficiencies, and improve overall program profitability.
Our Interchange Review typically yields 5%-10% improvement.
Cost Allocation Service (for issuers, acquirers & ISOs)
Overview: This one-time or ongoing managed service offers a structured approach to allocating network fees to merchants or programs. The model ingests fee data, applies customizable allocation rules, and provides transparent calculations for each merchant or volume category.
Benefits: The cost allocation model maximizes cost recovery, improves profitability, and ensures consistent fee allocation practices. Clients benefit from increased visibility and reduced manual intervention, which enhances operational efficiency and supports defensible pricing for merchants.
Pricing Efficacy Review (for acquirers & ISOs)
Overview: Our Pricing Efficacy Review helps clients evaluate how effectively they recover network and interchange fees from merchants. The review combines granular analysis of past billing and cost data with defensible allocation models to identify under- or over-recovery at the merchant level.
Benefits: The review pinpoints margin leakage, informs re-pricing strategies, and strengthens pricing transparency. By mapping actual costs to merchant charges, acquirers can optimize profitability, ensure compliance, and reduce manual billing effort.
Merchant Pricing Model (for acquirers & ISOs)
Overview: Our Merchant Pricing Model allows clients to price merchants accurately by integrating various pricing structures (e.g., blended, interchange++, etc.) with a robust set of revenue and cost drivers, including network fees, interchange, and operational expenses.
Benefits: This model enables consistent, data-driven pricing decisions by calculating accurate P&L and KPIs for each merchant. The tool’s flexibility helps clients adjust assumptions and gain insights into merchant profitability, allowing for competitive and transparent pricing.
Network Incentive Agreement Support (for issuers)
Overview: CRG provides expert, end-to-end support for issuers renegotiating incentive agreements or selecting between Visa and Mastercard incentive agreements. We analyze the full net cost of operating with each network — including fees, incentives, and interchange — and help clients navigate the commercial, financial, and strategic implications of each option.
Benefits: Our structured process ensures issuers make informed, data-driven decisions when securing or renewing network deals. We deliver custom operating models, benchmark key terms, evaluate trade-offs under different growth and performance scenarios, and support negotiations through to agreement finalization.
FAQs
What is a card network fee review and why does it matter?
1
A card network fee review is a specialized analysis of the fees charged by Visa and Mastercard across an issuer’s or acquirer’s portfolio. It helps identify hidden costs, billing inconsistencies, and avoidable charges that are often buried in invoices and fee schedules. For many organizations, it is one of the clearest ways to improve margin without changing core business operations.
How much can issuers and acquirers save with a network fee review?
2
Savings vary based on portfolio size, fee complexity, and how closely network costs have been monitored over time. Most reviews identify savings opportunities in the range of 7-15% of total network fee spend tied to unnecessary services, governance gaps, or misapplied charges. For larger portfolios, even modest percentage improvements can represent substantial annual financial impact.
What makes CardTraq’s network fee review different?
3
CardTraq goes beyond high-level invoice checks by analyzing network costs on a line by line basis and also identifying the specific drivers that shape total spend. The review looks at fee structures, program participation, controllability, and pricing logic to show where action can be taken. That means clients receive not just visibility, but practical insight that supports stronger financial decisions.
How does interchange optimization improve profitability?
4
Interchange optimization improves profitability by helping acquirers qualify more consistently at the appropriate rates and by reducing unnecessary downgrade exposure. It also reveals where merchant setups, product configurations, or processing patterns are limiting performance. The result is better revenue retention, stronger pricing accuracy, and a more informed view of transaction economics. For Issuers, interchange optimization enhances income through optimized product issuance.
Why do bin sponsors and acquirers need a cost allocation model for network fees?
5
Without a clear allocation model, network fees are often at least partially absorbed as overhead or distributed using rough assumptions that distort client pricing. A structured model makes it possible to assign costs across clients, merchants, products, or programs in a consistent and defensible way. This improves recovery, pricing transparency, and internal confidence in how network costs are managed.
Merchant pricing often drifts out of alignment with actual cost to serve, especially as network fees change and portfolios evolve. A pricing efficacy review compares what merchants are paying against the true cost of processing their transactions, including interchange, assessments, and network fees. This reveals where margin is being lost to outdated pricing structures, mismatched rate plans, or unrecovered cost increases. The result is a clearer view of portfolio profitability and a foundation for more informed pricing decisions.
Why should acquirers undertake a merchant pricing efficacy review?
6
Ready to optimize your network fees?
Our team of seasoned experts is here to help you gain control of your payment card costs. Let us show you how CardTraq can optimize your compliance and network fee management to deliver significant savings.
Book a demo or contact us for a personalized consultation.