Merchant Service Charge Optimisation

While many retailers have made significant efforts to take costs out of their supply chain, enough attention has not always been paid to optimising card payments related costs – as a consequence retailers often pay higher merchant service charges than necessary.

A medium-large retailer with annual turnover of £500 million will pay around £2.5 million in merchant service charges per year, assuming typical charges and that half of all purchases are made using payment cards.

We believe that not all retailers pay enough attention to their card acceptance and MSC strategies, and as result end up paying more than they need to in merchant service charges.

Indeed, RBR research has found that many retailers can achieve cost savings of at least 10 percent of their MSCs by optimising their MSC strategy. For the abovementioned retailer this would equal potential savings of around £250,000 per year.

RBR has been surveying payment cards throughout western Europe for more than a decade, and has recently completed the first detailed and independent study into interchange fees for card transactions. We have unique insights into merchant acquiring relationships and how merchant service charges are established and applied.

This knowledge and experience has been used to develop the Merchant Service Charge Optimisation (MSCO) service, which helps retailers identify immediate cost savings relating to their acceptance of payment cards.

Please contact RBR if you would like to discuss how the MSCO service could help your organisation.