Interchange, one of an acquirer's largest expenses, can escalate quickly due to downgrades, rule changes, and merchant behavior shifts.

Without active tracking, acquirers face avoidable pass-through costs, margin erosion, and pricing challenges.

Frequent interchange rate changes and shifting merchant behaviors can increase costs unpredictably.
Manual tracking exposes acquirers to downgrade risks and missed incentive opportunities.
Untracked interchange trends make it difficult to optimize merchant pricing and protect margins.

Substantial interchange cost savings can typically be achieved through optimization.

Interchange Optimization

There are multiple levers we can pull for Interchange Optimization

Avoidance of Downgrade Rates

Missing required scheme data (e.g., IRD or Reimbursement Attribute) can trigger costly downgrade rates.

Qualification for Optimal Rates

Ensure correct set-up and adherence to scheme rules to achieve the best available interchange rates.

Benefitting from Incentive Rates

Provision of optional addendum data can unlock lower incentive interchange rates

MCC Reclassification

Identify and validate opportunities to reclassify merchants into categories with lower fee program rates.

Airline Optimization

Using ‘first leg of journey’ routing optimization logic to increase share of domestic vs. cross-border volumes.

Merchant Pass-Through

Ensuring blended and IC+/++ pricing methodologies accurately reflect and recover interchange costs.

CardTraq for Interchange

Our interchange tracking platform is a cloud-based tool which helps acquirers manage interchange costs, prevent downgrades, and strengthen pricing strategies.

The platform ingests clearing data and provides detailed visibility into merchant volume, interchange costs, and downgrade trends by scheme, card product, and merchant category:

Prevent Margin Erosion: Spot cost increases and downgrade risks early and act.
Support Merchant Pricing: Provide insights to inform merchant repricing and pass-through accuracy.
Enhance Reporting: Deliver actionable insights to pricing, risk, and finance teams.
Maximize Incentives: Identify and manage opportunities for interchange fee savings.

How It Works

Control costs and unlock growth with detailed tracking and actionable insights.

Our Interchange Tracking Platform is cloud-based and features:

Daily, weekly, monthly ingestion of clearing data & volumetrics.
Automated flagging of sub-optimal rate exposure.
Extensive reporting and analysis tools providing valuable inputs to pricing processes, margin management, and merchant repricing.
Interchange analysis to transaction type level by merchant, MCC/MCG, scheme, card product, geography, channel, Interchange Rate Designator (IRD) / Fee Program Indicator (FPI).

Our Team

CardTraq, created in partnership with Pinnacle Payment Economics, is based on over 100 years of card scheme economic and real-world compliance experience.

Our experts can work alongside your team to identify and implement savings opportunities and ensure you get the maximum value from the CardTraq platforms.

Meet the Team

CardTraq team reviewing payment card economics

Ready to optimize your scheme 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 scheme fee management to deliver significant savings.

Book a demo or contact us for a personalized consultation.