01
The firm
EcomStream is an independent payment optimisation practice for retailers and brands, founded in 2017 and based in Zeist, the Netherlands.
EcomStream B.V., Frederik Hendriklaan 25, 3708 VA Zeist, The Netherlands
+31 (0)85 - 00 23 062 · ramon@ecomstream.nl · LinkedIn
The work is four services.
Cut your PSP costs What you pay today, set against the benchmark for your volume, cardmix and payment mix, then renegotiated with your existing provider, aiming for rates below it. No cure, no pay.
Run a payment RFP A full tender on your mandate, from the first data pull to the signed contract, with the providers run in parallel and blind to each other. No cure, no pay.
Managed Performance Optimisation The payment set-up kept under watch month after month, with action taken on what the provider has left undone. A fixed fee per month.
Interim assignments Senior payment capacity inside your team for a defined period, on a day rate agreed before the assignment starts.
All work covers online, POS, and unified commerce payment solutions.
EcomStream is independent. The firm has never worked for a PSP, an acquirer or a payment institution: no PSP mandates, no acquirer partnerships, no referral commissions and no revenue share with providers. Every negotiation and every selection is run on what is right for the merchant.
That independence counts most during a PSP renegotiation, a competitive tender or a performance dispute, where a party with PSP relationships has an interest on both sides of the table.
02
Ramon Helwegen, Founder
Ramon Helwegen founded EcomStream in July 2017 after more than twenty years in B2B sales, the last eight of them in payments, most of that on the PSP side.
That background shapes everything about how EcomStream works. Having sat across the table from merchants as a PSP sales professional, Ramon understands exactly how payment pricing is constructed, where the margin is hidden, which commercial levers PSPs respond to, and which arguments they will use to defend existing terms. That knowledge is the basis for the negotiations and selections EcomStream runs.
PSP and payments background
From 2009 to 2010, at Verizon, Ramon was responsible for corporate payment gateway services within the relationship management and global account direction for the ABN AMRO Bank outsourced account.
From 2011 to 2013, Ramon was Business Development Manager EMEA at Ingenico ePayments, responsible for international sales to tier-1 retail merchants across the EMEA region. Ingenico's GlobalCollect business was one of the leading global ecommerce payment platforms at the time, covering credit card processing and localised payment methods across markets.
From 2013 to 2016, Ramon was at European Merchant Services (EMS), a joint venture between Fiserv and ABN AMRO Bank providing omnichannel payment services across Europe. As Corporate Sales Manager and New Business Manager International, he closed multi-year contracts with international brands including Red Bull GmbH, Zalando SE, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd, and Vodafone Group Services Ltd. Notable projects include the three-year Bancontact processing agreement with Zalando for zalando.be, and the global credit card payment services contract for the Red Bull Wings for Life World Run.
At Newgen Payments from 2016 to 2017, as CCO, business development, sales strategy, and marketing.
Those years on the PSP side gave Ramon a detailed understanding of how acquirers and PSPs build their commercial propositions, where pricing flexibility actually exists, and how contracts are structured to protect provider margins. That understanding now works exclusively for merchants.
Since 2021, Ramon has owned and edited Betaaloptimaal.nl, an independent editorial platform on payment conversion and checkout. It publishes original commentary in English and Dutch for retailers, brands and payment professionals, with no advertising, no sponsored content and no affiliate links. The editorial line runs independently of EcomStream's client work.
Before payments
Ramon's commercial career started in 1996 and covers more than twenty years of senior B2B sales across multiple industries and geographies before he founded EcomStream in 2017.
At TNT Express (formerly Jet Services Worldwide Express), he managed regional corporate accounts across Europe from 1996 to 1999.
At Verizon, over an 11-year period from 1999 to 2010, he held a series of progressively senior roles covering new business acquisition, global account management across EMEA for clients including Daimler Chrysler, Reed Elsevier, Dell, and American Express, and relationship management and global account direction for the ABN AMRO Bank outsourced account. That role included responsibility for managed network services and cloud communication services.
03
Why personal delivery matters
EcomStream deliberately operates as a senior-led practice rather than a consulting firm that scales through junior staff. Every engagement is handled personally by Ramon Helwegen, from the initial diagnostic through to the final negotiation or implementation.
That is a deliberate choice, not a scale limitation. Payment optimisation is a commercial negotiation discipline, not a research exercise. The value comes from knowing how PSPs think, what they will and will not move on, and how to structure a commercial conversation that produces a real outcome. That is not something that can be delegated to an analyst running benchmarks.
Clients work directly with the person who has the experience. That is the model.
04
Recent educational developments
Organisational AI Strategy from Coursera (2025).
Advanced Valuation and Strategy covering M&A, Private Equity and Venture Capital from Erasmus University Rotterdam (2024),
Modern Technology with MACH and MACH Mindset from the MACH Alliance (2024),
Advanced Scrum from the Project Management Institute (2023),
05
Published work
Ramon has published across several leading Dutch commerce and payments platforms, including Frankwatching and Emerce.
Selected publications:
Van iDEAL naar Wero: 4 vragen die elke webshop moet stellen (Frankwatching, 2026),
Gamification in the online checkout process: Enhancing loyalty and conversion (Applied Marketing Analytics: The Peer-Reviewed Journal, Henry Stewart Publications, 2025, DOI 10.69554/nbaa6908, listed under ORCID iD 0009-0002-9075-3083),
Unified commerce-betaaloplossingen: kansen & uitdagingen (Frankwatching, 2024),
Is er een evolutie gaande op de Europese betaalmarkt? (Emerce, 2024),
Economische tegenwind? Focus op je bottom-line groei (Frankwatching, 2023),
Online afrekenen begint al vóór de betaaloplossing (Emerce, 2021),
Hoe ziet het ideale online betaalproces er straks uit? (Frankwatching, 2021),
Gamification van het check-outproces: zo krijg je meer loyale klanten (Frankwatching, 2020),
Weg met de traditionele klantreis, op naar contextual commerce (Frankwatching, 2019),
Voorkom afhakers: quick wins voor je check-outproces en betaaloplossing (Frankwatching, 2018).
One conversation is enough to know whether there is anything here
A thirty-minute Teams call, on your own figures. Nothing to prepare, the outline is enough.
06
Clients worked for
