You can reduce payment processing fees by using a payment orchestration platform like Primer, a solution that gives you full control over how payments are processed, routed, and optimised.
Primer is a leading orchestration platform designed to help merchants reduce costs and enhance performance. Backed by well-known investors and over $70 million in funding, Primer is trusted by prominent brands such as New Look, GetYourGuide, and Printify.
It provides merchants with the tools to steer transactions away from high-fee providers, surface cheaper payment methods at checkout, and track processing fees in real-time across all PSPs and payment methods.
Here’s how to reduce processing fees in practice.
How to understand what payment processing fees you are paying
Every transaction you process comes with multiple fees, including:
- Interchange fees: paid to the customer’s bank
- Scheme fees: charged by card networks like Visa or Mastercard
- Processor fees: added by your PSP
- Other costs: such as chargebacks, FX, or fraud-related penalties
These costs vary depending on location, payment method, and provider. Tracking costs is challenging, especially when using multiple PSPs across regions, each with its own reports and pricing structures.
A payment orchestration platform like Primer helps by providing a single source of truth. With Primer’s Reconciliation tools, you can see exactly what each transaction costs, broken down by provider, method, and currency. You also receive cost insights that highlight hidden markups or inconsistent charges, making it easier to identify issues and take corrective action.
It’s also worth reviewing how you’re charged in the first place. If you’re on a blended pricing model, all fees are rolled into a single rate, which can hide where your money is actually going. Interchange++ pricing is more complex, but it provides greater transparency for tracking, comparing, and reducing costs over time.
Negotiate with your processor to reduce payment processing fees
Payment fees are often negotiable, especially if you’re scaling or processing significant volume.
Regularly reviewing your providers is essential to keep costs low. That means looking beyond headline rates and assessing real performance: cost per transaction, approval rates, chargeback trends, and uptime.
With the correct data, you can challenge markups, request volume-based discounts, and hold providers accountable for unexplained charges or fee increases. That’s where Primer can help.
Using Reconciliation, you can track actual cost per transaction across providers and monitor how those costs change over time. This visibility helps you identify where your margins are being squeezed and bring that insight into commercial conversations.
For example, one merchant discovered they were paying significantly higher interchange fees with a particular provider. With Reconciliation, they were able to route transactions to a more cost-effective option while using the data to renegotiate better terms with the original provider.
And if a provider isn’t willing to offer better terms? Payment orchestration gives you options. With Primer, you can test new PSPs and route traffic to the processor that provides the best performance, without requiring any engineering resources for integration. That flexibility gives you real leverage in negotiating contracts.
Encourage low-fee payment methods
Card payments are ubiquitous, but they’re not always the most cost-effective option. Depending on your business model and target markets, alternative payment methods can significantly reduce your average transaction fees.
Options like account-to-account (A2A) payments, local bank transfer schemes, wallets, and direct debit typically involve lower fees and fewer intermediaries than credit or debit cards. In some markets, domestic card schemes offer better rates than international networks.
With Primer, it’s easy to add these methods to your checkout and manage them through one unified interface. You can configure how they’re presented, run A/B tests, and prioritize lower-cost options, all without writing any code.
Use Primer’s payment orchestration to reduce card payment fees
Reducing card payment fees isn’t about one single tactic: there is no silver bullet. It’s about building a system that gives you options. Primer’s payment orchestration platform is designed to do exactly that.
With Primer, you can connect multiple PSPs, automate how payments are routed, and introduce cost-saving strategies without relying on engineering. Here’s how it helps reduce card processing costs in practice:
Instead of relying on a single PSP, you can connect multiple providers and route transactions dynamically based on geography, card type, or performance. This increases resilience and gives you more leverage in commercial negotiations. If one provider’s costs increase, rerouting is straightforward.
- Route through cost-effective providers and local rails
Primer lets you optimize routing rules based on your business logic. That could mean using the Carte Bancaires rails in France (when available), instead of Visa or Mastercard. Rules are easy to configure and update through no-code workflows.
- Promote lower-cost payment methods
Primer’s Universal Checkout makes it easy to introduce alternative methods, such as A2A payments (ACH, SEPA Instant, iDEAL) and wallets. You can test how they perform, tailor their presentation, and prioritize them in the flow, all while tracking their impact on conversion and cost.
- Qualify for lower interchange
In some markets, you can reduce fees by passing richer transaction data to issuers. Primer supports the inclusion of Level II/III data, ZIP codes, and other metadata that helps qualify for better rates, especially in the US and for B2B payments.
- Reduce fraud and chargeback-related costs
Fraud drives up processing fees. With Primer, you can integrate with fraud tools, utilize network tokenization, and establish routing rules for high-risk transactions. This reduces exposure and helps protect your margins over time.
Together, these strategies give you control over your payment costs. And because Primer handles orchestration, routing, and reporting from a single platform, you can run these optimizations without adding technical complexity or slowing down your team.
FAQs: Reducing payment processing fees
1. What is the biggest contributor to card payment processing fees?
The largest part of a card processing fee is usually the interchange fee, which is paid to the customer’s bank. This is followed by scheme fees from the card networks and the PSP’s markup. These fees vary depending on the transaction type, card brand, geography, and risk profile. It’s essential to verify that your processor has the correct MCC code, as this can affect the interchange rate.
2. How does payment orchestration help reduce fees?
Payment orchestration platforms, like Primer, enable you to route each transaction in the most efficient and cost-effective manner. You can connect multiple PSPs, prioritize lower-cost providers, and steer customers toward more affordable payment methods.
3. Is Interchange++ pricing better than blended pricing?
Interchange++ pricing gives you full transparency into what you’re paying for. Unlike blended pricing, which combines all fees into a single rate, Interchange++ shows you exactly how much goes to the issuer, the scheme, and the PSP. This makes it easier to spot inefficiencies and reduce costs. However, it is more complex to manage and harder to project future costs. Blended pricing is more predictable, leading to more accurate forecasting.
4. Can I reduce fees without switching providers?
Yes. You can often lower your costs by routing more efficiently, enriching transaction data, or encouraging customers to use lower-cost methods. Primer allows you to implement these strategies on top of your current setup, without needing to replace existing providers. And if you do need to replace existing providers, the technical integration can be completed in just a few clicks —no coding necessary.
5. What kinds of payment methods typically have lower fees?
Account-to-account payments (such as ACH or SEPA Instant), local bank schemes like iDEAL, and digital wallets often have lower fees than card payments. These methods remove intermediaries, reduce fraud risk, and are increasingly supported by customers in many markets.
