Most acquirers are leaving money on the table — and the answer is rarely in the headline numbers.
Running a profitable acquiring business has never been more complex. Scheme fees are rising, interchange rules are multiplying, and the gap between what you're paying to the networks and what you're recovering from merchants is growing harder to see — let alone manage.
The hidden margin problem every acquirer faces
For most acquirers, true margin sits in a blind spot. The headline numbers look healthy, but a merchant-level view tells a different story.
Scheme invoices defy accurate allocation
Scheme fee invoices span hundreds of line items across multiple numerics, products and geographies — making accurate cost allocation to individual merchants practically impossible without specialist tools.
Interchange rules are constantly evolving
Merchant pricing set yesterday may already be misaligned with the costs you're incurring today — and the longer the gap persists, the more margin quietly erodes.
Every pricing model has its own blind spots
IC++, blended and hybrid pricing models each create their own blind spots — under-recovery on high-cost transactions, over-recovery on low-cost ones, and limited visibility into where true margin actually sits.
Re-pricing decisions are made on instinct
Without merchant-level reconciliation of actual costs versus billed fees, re-pricing decisions are made on instinct rather than evidence — putting both profitability and compliance at risk.
Our approach
Structured, evidence-based and built from the ground up — starting with your actual cost data.
Pinnacle's Merchant Pricing Review works from the ground up, starting with your actual cost data and building to a merchant-level view of pricing performance that most acquirers have never had before. It runs across four distinct workstreams, each designed to surface a different dimension of pricing efficacy.
Cost Baselining & Allocation
Before you can assess whether you're recovering costs effectively, you need to know precisely what those costs are. Pinnacle ingests your scheme invoices, interchange data and volumetrics and builds a granular, bottom-up cost allocation model that allocates every fee to a transaction type. This is the foundation everything else is built on — and for most clients, it's already revelatory.
Merchant-Level Pricing Reconciliation
With costs accurately allocated, Pinnacle maps them against your actual merchant billing — line by line, merchant by merchant. This reconciliation is where under- and over-recovery becomes visible for the first time, moving the conversation from intuition to hard evidence.
Pricing Model Assessment
Not all pricing gaps are caused by the wrong rates — many are structural, baked into the design of the pricing model itself. Pinnacle assesses whether your current IC++, blended or hybrid pricing architecture is fit for purpose, and where its inherent limitations are costing you margin.
Re-Pricing Recommendations & Implementation Support
The output of the review is not just a diagnosis — it's a prioritised, commercially quantified action plan. Pinnacle works with you to translate findings into re-pricing decisions that are defensible to merchants, practical to implement, and immediately accretive to profitability.
Results that go straight to the bottom line
Unlike strategic projects where value takes months or years to materialise, pricing efficacy improvements translate directly into margin uplift — often within a single billing cycle. For most acquirers, the findings aren't just surprising; they're commercially significant enough to fundamentally change how the business thinks about pricing.
Immediate margin recovery
Clients typically identify meaningful under-recovery across their merchant portfolio, with re-pricing delivering direct and measurable P&L improvement from the point of implementation — often running into millions of dollars annually.
A permanently stronger pricing foundation
Beyond the immediate uplift, clients leave with a defensible, accurately structured cost allocation model that ensures new merchants are priced correctly from day one — stopping the leakage from recurring.
Reduced compliance and relationship risk
By identifying and resolving over-recovery as well as under-recovery, acquirers eliminate the billing disputes, regulatory exposure and merchant dissatisfaction that come with opaque or inaccurate pricing.
Better commercial decisions going forward
With true merchant-level cost visibility established, pricing teams can model the impact of scheme fee changes, interchange shifts and new product launches with confidence rather than guesswork — protecting margin proactively rather than reactively.
Ready to take control of your scheme fees, announcements & interchange?
Our team of subject-matter experts is here to help you. Whether you're an issuer or an acquirer, an ISO or a PayFac, let us show you how easily and quickly SchemeSense can help you improve portfolio profitability. Book a demo today, or contact us to discuss our advisory and consultancy services.
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