Key takeaways
- Scheme fee pass-throughs are contractual and rarely announced loudly.
- Re-price annually, and always after a volume step change.
- Keep a dated copy of every rate schedule you have ever signed.
Nobody sends you a letter saying your pricing has got worse. It happens through pass-throughs, added ancillary fees and volume tiers you have grown out of without being moved into.
The three drift mechanisms
- Scheme fee pass-through — permitted by almost every contract, applied without negotiation.
- Ancillary creep — PCI fees, statement fees, non-secure surcharges appearing line by line.
- Stale tiers — you qualify for better pricing at your current volume but nobody applies it retrospectively.
A review rhythm that works
Recalculate your effective rate every quarter, re-shop the market every twelve months, and re-shop immediately after any month where volume moves more than 25%. We do this for clients automatically, but the calculation takes any finance team about twenty minutes with three statements.
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