Payment costs and performance, for when OK is just not good enough.
Independent payment optimisation for retailers and brands. EcomStream renegotiates PSP costs, runs payment RFPs and manages payment performance on merchant mandate, across online, POS and unified commerce.
Ramon Helwegen knows how payment providers sell: before founding EcomStream in 2017 he worked on the provider side. EcomStream works exclusively for merchants. No PSP mandates, no acquirer partnerships and no revenue share with providers.
What EcomStream does
Cut your PSP costs
PSP cost optimisation
Your current contract, renegotiated on your mandate.
No cure, no pay.
Get more from your PSP
Managed Performance Optimisation
Performance and contract terms, acted on every month.
A fixed monthly fee.
How it works
Every engagement starts with the intake: thirty minutes on your payment set-up and what is coming up. What follows depends on the service, and most of the work is paid from the result.
Cut your PSP costs
The data pull
Your invoices and PSP contract, delivered once. From there the work sits with EcomStream.
The position
Every fee line analysed and set against the benchmark for your profile: what you pay, where the benchmark sits and the saving achievable below it.
The renegotiation
Conducted on your mandate with your current provider, or through your own team in silent partner mode. The aim is to beat the benchmark, not just to meet it. Every counter-proposal is valued in euros on EBITDA.
The result
You sign. Integration, checkout and settlement stay as they are. No cure, no pay: the fee comes out of the saving realised.
Run a payment RFP
Strategic goals
The tender starts from what the business has to achieve: the markets, the channels and the payment set-up it needs next.
Requirements and shortlist
Written for your business in a private selection room. Your team reviews rather than writes, and you approve the shortlist.
Evaluation and negotiation
Providers never see each other or your cost base. Every response is scored and every offer valued in euros, then negotiated.
The award
You take the decision and sign. If your current provider proves the right one at the right price, that is a legitimate outcome. No cure, no pay.
Get more from your PSP
The diagnostic sprint
Authorisation by payment method, market and device, declines against benchmark, 3DS and exemptions, retry and routing logic against your issuer mix.
The changes
A prioritised set of changes, implemented directly with your PSP. The sprint is part of the arrangement and not invoiced separately.
Every month
Performance watch, contract calendar, the quarterly review with your provider on your mandate, fraud and disputes.
Reported in euros
Every point of acceptance gained and every fee removed, reported in euros on your own volume. A fixed monthly fee.
Interim payment expertise
Role and scope
Role, scope and term agreed before the start: head of payments, PSP migration lead, unified commerce rollout or re-platforming.
Inside your team
In your governance and your tools, on site where it matters and remotely where it does not.
The same method
A PSP selection or renegotiation within the assignment runs on the same method as a payment RFP or a cost engagement.
The handover
Contracts, decisions and the reasoning behind them written down, so whoever takes over runs it the next day. A day rate.
Results in the clients’ own words
“Our payment setup needed optimising, so we brought Ramon in as our expert, someone who would firmly take our side with the PSPs.”
“Together we managed to achieve significant savings on the costs of the Payment Provider using a rational approach.”
“With EcomStream we are saving 20 per cent on our operational costs regarding payments.”
Rated 5.0 on Google. Ramon’s work on payments has been published by Consultancy.nl, Emerce, Frankwatching and Henry Stewart Publications.
Retail Payment Methods Transparency Index
What providers publish, per payment method and market
An independent, public index of the payment methods retailers and brands choose between. Choose where your business is established, where your shoppers are, the channel and the method, and the index shows which providers offer it there and the price each one publishes.
Every price is read at the provider’s own source and kept current. The index covers a panel of providers that actively serve retailers and brands, and is free to use under CC BY 4.0.
- 101payment methods in the index
- 149providers in the index
- 4,632published prices
Questions merchants ask first
We have run our contract through AI
AI tells you what your contract says. It cannot tell you what comparable merchants pay, because that is not published. EcomStream establishes where you stand against the market benchmark, then negotiates to beat it, not just to meet it.
We are locked into a contract
A remaining term binds the relationship, not the price. Rates sit in a pricing schedule that can be amended without reopening the agreement, restarting the term or touching your integration.
Our provider should not know we brought someone in
It does not have to. In silent partner mode the provider deals only with your team, from the first request to the signed contract.
We have no capacity for this
That is the purpose of the model. In all four services EcomStream manages the project from beginning to end, from the analysis through the provider conversations to the result. What your team keeps is the decision.