Recovery OS • Payments Cost Recovery Lab

Merchant Processing Fee Audit

A read-only review of merchant processing statements to find effective-rate gaps, duplicate fees, avoidable acceptance costs, and negotiation opportunities—before you switch processors or build an integration.

Start with3–6 monthly statements or CSV exports after engagement
First outputEvidence-backed fee map and savings candidates
No integration requiredService-assisted scan first; APIs only if later justified

What the scan checks

  • Blended/effective processing rate by card-present, online, keyed and card-on-file activity.
  • Processor markup versus underlying network/interchange components when the statement exposes them.
  • Duplicate monthly, terminal, PCI, gateway, statement or service fees.
  • Rate changes, tier changes, downgrade patterns and unexplained add-on fees.
  • Brazil: MDR by credit/debit/prepaid, installment/anticipation charges, and processor-specific fixed fees where shown.
  • Alternative payment mix opportunities, including ACH/Pix where operationally appropriate.

A lower benchmark is not automatically a billing error. Recovery OS separates recoverable cash from future realized savings in the Verified Value Ledger.

Evidence Pack

1. Fee inventoryEvery recurring, percentage and per-transaction charge we can trace.
2. Effective-rate bridgeVolume → network/interchange → processor markup → total cost.
3. Candidate classificationERROR / DUPLICATE / CONTRACT_MISMATCH / OPTIMIZATION / NEEDS_EVIDENCE.
4. Action packetQuestions for the processor, negotiation points, and verification steps.

Data minimization

For the public intake, share only company/contact details and approximate monthly card volume. Do not submit cardholder data, bank credentials, passwords, PANs, or unredacted sensitive statements through the public form. Detailed statements belong in a secure, authorized intake only after engagement.

Pricing experiment

U.S.: modeled test range of $750–$1,500 for the statement audit, with an optional success component only on verified realized savings or recovered credits. Brazil: modeled test range of R$2,500–R$6,000 for the audit. These are experiment ranges, not a promise of savings.

Why now

Card acceptance remains a material operating cost. Public 2025 Banco Central data shows average Brazilian MDR around 2.10% for credit, 1.08% for debit and 1.47% for prepaid in the second half of 2025. U.S. processors also publish materially different rates by payment mode, so statement-level mix and fee structure matter.

Start with the Recovery OS intakeDescribe your scope and monthly volume only. No sensitive documents in the public form.