Credit/Debit Cards
For many institutions, the cost of using “plastic” to accept payment far outweighs the underlying bank charge cost. Apart from that, the product has moved on in terms of technology and features. Payments are going online, the number of "customer not present" payments has increased, Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC) is increasing in importance and Chip and Pin has been introduced.
For our clients, the playing field has become confused. Even before these developments were introduced, there was a significant lack of transparency over the market cost. The insidious aspect of credit card charging is the commission nature of the price. An excess of 10 bp represents an overcharge of £1,000 per million of turnover. As turnover in credit cards increase it is imperative that the best price is achieved.
We have been able to benchmark the costs and introduce clients to suppliers who will undercut significantly current costs.
Example 1
One of our clients had recently introduced online credit card payments. On investigation, it turned out that the premium charged for online payments was +1% plus £1, way out of the market. With the information provided by Finalysis, the price was challenged and a refund of £10,000 received.
Other Examples
Many of our clients have had benchmarking exercises, the result of which have been reductions in costs of many thousands of pounds. On average, our clients have saved about 40% of current costs.
Through our contacts, we have helped clients accelerate the introduction of online payments has been greatly accelerated with introductions to Payment Service Providers and the application of keen market prices to the payment acceptance.
