Fee Management

Owned by Miles Graves
Last updated: Jul 19, 2024
3 min read

Fees are costs for specific timeframes elapsing, such as weekly, or monthly; or as actions taking place, such as a transaction authorization, Merchant onboarding, or chargeback management.

These fees are assessed by a Referrer or Facilitator to their child entities (such as Referrer to Merchant, or Facilitator to Referrer or Merchant) when specified actions have occurred or a time interval has elapsed.

The assessed fees out of the transaction and the fees increase the partner’s available balance and then the leftover increases the merchant’s available balance. Usually, the fees in this case are considered the “pricing” of the merchant.

Getting Started

Below are some terms you’ll frequently encounter throughout the fee setup and management:

  • Assessment - A record of fees charged by processors or other third parties to Entities or Groups.

  • Fee Modifier - A configuration to change the entity being charged a fee or add markup to a fee.

  • Fee Rule - A conditional logic setup used to refine the circumstances resulting in a charged fee.

  • Fee Schedule - The time interval or event that determines when this Fee is triggered to be charged.

  • Fee Trigger - Another name for Fee Schedule (as shown by the “When to trigger a fee” field in the Portal.)

  • Fee Listener - A layer of Fees triggered per transaction when an applicable fee type is submitted.

Assessment

These can represent either charges that are levied on a one-off, regularly scheduled, or event-driven basis.

Fee Modifiers

By default when you set up a fee it is applied directly to the merchant and paid to your Available Balance.

Another fee customization is the ability to configure the entity liable for a specific fee. By setting up Fee Modifiers you can change who is paying the fee. As an example, if you have a fee that you want to charge to one client based on the activity of another account, such as if they were linked businesses, you can set up a fee modifier so that when one merchant triggers a fee the funds are taken from a different merchant entity.

Note: If you adjust/modify a fee this can impact how the client is charged. For example, if you have a monthly fee set to apply on the 1st of the month and update it to the 15th, the merchant can potentially incur two monthly fees if you make this modification in between the original and new trigger dates (e.g. you make this change on the 7th of the month).

Additionally, if you wanted to change a fee type from authorization to capture, you would need to time this change after the batch has closed so the client does not incur multiple fees. 

Fee Rule

Fee Rules will apply a fee only when certain conditions are met, such as fees by individual card brand, total transaction amount, CVV/AVS results, etc.

This allows you to set up pricing that is tailored to your clients and offer optimized rates based on payment best practices, such as reduced rates for card-present transactions or transactions that have a full CVV/AVS authorization.

Fee Schedule

Event-specific or time interval-based fees assessed in real time based on the scheduled event.

An example setup would be an Auth fee that is incurred when a transaction is authorized on the platform.

However, when you set up a date-specific fee, such as a monthly or yearly service fee, this will incur on the date specified when creating the fee. 

Fee Listener

A specific configuration of fees triggered from a transaction.

An example setup would be to make an auth fee, and select "transaction fee" in the portal which allows this specific auth fee to be treated as a fee listener. Then, we set it to 100 and make the um (unit measurement) a percentage.

Fee Trigger

See “Fee Schedule” above.

Jump Ahead: If you’re already familiar with the Fee structure and terminology and are seeking new Fee setup steps, skip ahead to the relevant guide for your preferred implementation method: