von Ramon Helwegen | Juni 1, 2026 | EcomStream (DE), EcomStream (Eng)
Are you overpaying your PSP? Most merchants are, and most have no idea by how much. Your invoice is not a fixed cost. It is a negotiated one, and most were negotiated badly. Most merchants treat their PSP costs like a utility bill. It arrives monthly, gets paid, and...
von Ramon Helwegen | März 20, 2026 | EcomStream (DE), EcomStream (Eng)
In many organizations, payments are receiving more attention than ever. There are ongoing discussions about new providers, new technologies, and increasingly sophisticated ways to optimize performance at checkout. Concepts like routing, orchestration, and...
von Ramon Helwegen | Aug. 1, 2024 | EcomStream (DE), EcomStream (Eng)
Retailers who sell both online and in physical stores are increasingly confronting a structural problem with their payment setup: two separate worlds that do not talk to each other. Online, they have a PSP with a payment page, a 3DS flow, digital wallets, and iDEAL....
von Ramon Helwegen | März 19, 2024 | EcomStream (DE), EcomStream (Eng)
iDEAL 2.0 is going to cost merchants more than traditional iDEAL, and that is just one of three simultaneous shifts reshaping payment economics in the Netherlands and beyond. Mastercard Debit and Visa Debit are replacing Maestro and Vpay at speed. EPI is pushing its...
von Ramon Helwegen | Nov. 15, 2022 | EcomStream (DE), EcomStream (Eng)
Most retailers have a payments setup. Few have a payments strategy. The difference matters. A payments setup is what you have when a PSP was chosen at some point, a contract was signed, and the system has been running since. A payments strategy is what you have when...
von Ramon Helwegen | Apr. 18, 2022 | EcomStream (DE), EcomStream (Eng)
Does your online revenue growth feel a little exhausted? You are not alone. Online sales in the Netherlands grew 24% in 2021, followed by a 5.8% decline in 2022. Since then growth has been modest and uneven. The post-COVID tailwind that made top-line growth feel...
