As European regulators increasingly scrutinise Visa and Mastercard, a new solution allows merchants and acquirers to accurately estimate transaction costs — without requiring transactional data.
Launch
Torus launched a new product: “Merchant Cost Indicator”. It enables a quick, accurate assessment of key transactional costs, including Interchange and Scheme fees for Visa and Mastercard, for a specific merchant in seconds, without needing transactional data.
Problem for merchants
Previously, such calculations were only available to major banks using internal tools and Excel-based models. The rest of the market—especially merchants—had no access to them. The Merchant Cost Indicator makes this level of accuracy and transparency available for the first time.
What it means for users
For acquirers, it’s a solution to better understand their cost base—a key to building sustainable pricing.
For merchants, it’s a way to choose a partner based on objective calculations, not gut feel, and engage on more competitive, informed terms.
“The payments industry is shifting from guesswork and handshake deals to verifiable logic. In a couple of years, opacity in pricing won’t be an option: every fee will be justified, every rate calculated. We’re building the infrastructure for that future now,” says Torus co-founder and CEO, Kirill Lisitsyn.
“The tool currently covers the majority of European countries, and we continue expanding geographically. The product is available via our desktop SaaS platform, and next, we’re launching a white-label API tailored to clients’ needs,” says Torus Co-Founder and CPO Sergey Lebedev.
