Cut your PSP costs and lift payment performance

Independent PSP cost and performance improvement for retailers and brands

One portfolio, four services, applied according to what your payment set-up is costing you. Every engagement is handled personally by Ramon Helwegen. Merchants only, never PSPs or acquirers.

PSP cost optimisation, the payment RFP and managed performance optimisation are engagements EcomStream executes on your mandate, from the analysis through to the result, and most clients run more than one of them over a contract cycle. Interim assignments sit alongside them, for when the gap is in your team rather than in your payment set-up. Start with whichever one matches what you believe your payment set-up needs. If you would rather understand the mechanics first, the knowledge pages set out what card payments actually cost and why transactions fail.

Cut your PSP costs

What you pay today, set against current market pricing for your profile, then renegotiated with your existing PSP. Purely commercial, so your integration stays where it is.

Analysis. Invoices, contract and settlement data read line by line, including verification of interchange and scheme fees at transaction level. Position. What you pay, what the market pays, and what is recoverable. Renegotiation. Conducted on your mandate with your provider. You sign.

For a contract that auto-renewed, volume that has grown into a lower tier, or an invoice nobody has ever questioned.

No cure, no pay. No upfront fee.

How the renegotiation runs

Run a payment RFP

The full RFP on your mandate, from the first data pull to the signed contract. You approve the shortlist and take the decision, EcomStream does the work in between.

Requirements and shortlist. Scope, criteria and the providers worth inviting. Evaluation. Responses compared on your volumes and your cardmix, not on list pricing. Negotiation and award. Terms closed and the contract signed. Four to five months is normal.

For new markets, a move to unified commerce, a replatform, or a renewal you will only sign once you have seen the rest of the market.

No cure, no pay. Implementation support through the migration is optional.

How the RFP runs

Get more from your PSP

Managed Performance Optimisation. Your payment set-up kept under watch month after month: performance read and corrected, the configuration at your provider checked, action taken on what has been left undone, your quarterly review run on your mandate, and the contract calendar watched so notice periods, auto-renewals and scheme fee bulletins do not pass unnoticed. The outcome is reported in euros of recovered margin. Three arrangements, by the scope of your set-up.

Core. One day a month. One market, one PSP. Extended. A day every other week. Multiple markets or providers, read per market and per issuer. Embedded. A day a week. Multi-market or omnichannel, with ownership of the payment roadmap.

For declines you cannot explain, or a new payment method or market that needs an independent read before launch. A rate cut does not lift authorisation. Run this alongside cost work and the two multiply: a lower cost per transaction, applied to more transactions that complete.

An ongoing arrangement. No upfront fee, a fixed fee per month.

What it delivers each month

Interim work

Senior payment expertise inside your organisation for a defined period, translating stakeholder requirements into a payment set-up that holds up commercially.

Scope. Online, POS and unified commerce, across selection, contracting, implementation and optimisation. Position. Embedded in your team and your change projects, not advising from the outside. Deployment. Fixed or variable, scaled to the project rather than to a permanent role.

For a vacancy, a migration or a launch that needs a payments lead now, without adding permanent headcount.

A rate based on the hours worked.

How an interim assignment runs