Xenia Interchange Fee Performance Diagnostics
Card Payments and Interchange Fee Volumes
There were 30.7 billion dollars of interchange fees collected in 2005 in US alone. Given that the total volume of credit card transactions in US in the period from 2005 to 2016 has risen from 1.8 trillion of dollars to 2.8 trillion dollars in 2016 and that there are more than 1.1 billion of credit cards in circulation nowadays outside US compared to approximately 500 million credit cards in US we can safely assume that the total value of interchange fees paid in 2017 will be well beyond 90 billion dollars.
How do interchange fees make a difference?
For most outsiders and for many banking professionals the process of setting interchange fees is veiled in mystery. Even many of the most experienced card payment professionals are not aware of the fact that all too often there can be many interchange fee type applicable for a given transaction and that the interchange fee paid by the acquiring bank can vary significantly depending on which fee is selected. As usual this is both a problem and an opportunity – giving banks using the smarter varieties of software a significant competitive advantage over other banks and fintech companies.
It All Depends on the Bank’s Software
Acquiring institutions as a whole are in the dark regarding the efficiency of the payment software interchange fee selection logic. The complexity and volatility of the interchange fee selection rules and the lack of information from software vendors on how these rules are managed in their software products creates reasonable doubt that there could be hidden inefficiencies in the interchange fee selection algorithms employed by different payment processing software vendors.
With hundreds of different software vendors offering payment processing software around the world it is reasonable to assume that the quality of the software solutions with regards to such a complex area like selecting interchange fees will vary greatly. This could mean that large sums of money are being paid extra to credit card issuers every day.
The problem is compounded by the fact that there is no available official benchmark tool provided by MasterCard and Visa that can be used by acquiring institutions to measure the performance of their software and it is practically impossible for even the best experts to monitor this process manually.
The Solution
Xenia Interchange Fee Performance Diagnostics is a new service offered by Xenia Solutions offers the first widely available opportunity for acquiring banks to measure their actual interchange fee selection performance. All it takes is to get an outgoing presentment file for MasterCard and Visa and in a few minutes Xenia Analyzer tool will produce a detailed transaction level report giving the exact amounts that can be saved for every transaction. The tool can be used by any member bank of MasterCard and Visa regardless of the payment processing software that is being used.
Integration with Core Banking Systems
Xenia static data and accounting integration module is designed to simplify and reduce as much as possible any integration of Xenia and a core banking system while supporting all available scenarios for such integration. Our employees have many years of experience integrating credit card processing functionality with other bank systems and are ready to guide you through the process of setting up the integration that best fits your organization. With regards to accounting integration Xenia is ready to provide as much detail as requested sub-dividing data in entities, branches, currencies and accounting entry types.
Certification Services
- MasterCard, Visa ATM and POS Certifications
- MasterCard, Visa Chip Issuing and Host Acquiring Certifications
- MasterCard, Visa new BIN and new product certification
- MasterCard/Visa EMV Key and Issuer Public Key Certificates Management
Consulting Services
- Payment systems, project management and new technologies
- Key Management and HSM management
- Issuing/Acquiring EMV parameter management
- EMV Chip Personalization Validation, Chip and Application Testing / control procedures
