The merchant reality

Many businesses know the feeling: the rate seems fair — but once you try to put numbers into Excel, things don’t add up.

“I’m ready to pay, if it’s fair. But I have no idea if it is.”

That’s a typical comment from the market.

Merchant Cost Indicator aims to close that gap. It was developed by a fintech team with deep user research experience inside European financial institutions. No need for transactional data, integrations, or NDAs. Just basic inputs — country, card types, average ticket size — are enough to produce a precise model of Interchange and Scheme fees, as seen from the acquirer’s perspective.

“Banks often say: ‘it’s too complex’ or ‘you can’t calculate it in advance’. We decided to prove otherwise. Now, any business can estimate the fees they’ll be charged — upfront and with no surprises,” says Kirill Lisitsyn, Co-Founder and CEO of Torus.

Why now?

Regulators are turning up the pressure. According to the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR), scheme fees from international card networks in the UK increased by 25% from 2017 to 2023 — costing businesses an extra £170 million per year. Yet merchants still receive incomplete or unclear fee data. In reality, most pricing is built on manual estimates, handshake deals, and trust-based relationships. (Source: PSR UK-IFR Review 2023)

“There’s a growing demand for transparency and objectivity in payments. Merchant Cost Indicator is our contribution to building a market where both acquirers and merchants can make decisions based on data, not assumptions,” says Sergey Lebedev, Co-Founder and CPO of Torus.

*Merchant Cost Indicator is the new product in the Torus suite. With its launch, the company now serves the full spectrum of players — including acquirers, issuers, BaaS platforms, and neobanks.

Earlier products included profitability analytics for acquirers and issuers, as well as invoice-level fee tracking. Torus is currently developing AI agents to make analytics even more intuitive.