How to Manage Multiple Payment Systems and Reduce Hidden Fees

The modern world is rapidly moving towards digitalisation and globalisation, forcing companies to expand far beyond national borders. Today, successful businesses are forced to interact with customers from many countries around the world, offering convenient payment methods that comply with local preferences and legislation. By supporting a variety of payment solutions, companies solve a number of important tasks:

• International expansion. Working with foreign markets is impossible without adapting to regional payment characteristics.
• Diversity of customer preferences. Some choose credit cards, others prefer e-wallets or cryptocurrency.
• Security and stability. Backup payment channels allow you to quickly restore operations in the event of technical problems with the main service provider.
• Compliance with legislation. Some regions prohibit the use of international payment services, requiring the use of local solutions.

This approach poses significant challenges: complex technical integration with different providers, hidden fees that reduce profits, fragmented financial reporting, high maintenance and control costs, and risks of regulatory violations (GDPR, PCI DSS, etc.).

The main goal of competent management is not just to have several payment channels, but to manage them effectively, reducing costs, increasing transparency and ensuring the continuity of financial transactions.

What are multiple payment systems: basic concepts

A payment gateway is a technology responsible for the secure exchange of information between the customer, the store, and the servicing bank. The gateway provides data encryption, customer authentication (e.g., through 3D Secure technology), replacement of real card numbers with unique codes (tokenisation), and forwarding of transactions to the appropriate issuing bank.

A payment system, in turn, is an infrastructure for processing money transfers. There are three types:

• global – Visa, Mastercard;
• regional – iDEAL in the Netherlands, Boleto in Brazil;
• niche – crypto services, e-wallets.

Companies are often forced to combine multiple international payment systems and currencies at the same time. The reasons for this are varied:

• Sales geography – each country has its own preferences (UPI in India, Mada in Saudi Arabia).
• Settlement currency – favourable exchange rates require special partners for the euro, dollar, yen and yuan.
• Payment types: cards, e-wallets, bank transfers, cryptocurrency, mobile services.
• Security: emergency switch to a backup service in case of failure of the main one.

This approach allows companies to significantly increase their audience reach, reduce the risk of blocking, and offer customers the most convenient payment method.

Hidden costs: where is the business losing money?

The use of international payment systems and multiple currencies is driven by customer demand for a variety of payment methods, as well as the ability to circumvent regional bans or restrictions. But along with the advantages, businesses face disadvantages that affect overall profitability. Let's talk about hidden fees.

Commission fees

Most providers offer multi-tiered pricing plans, hiding a significant portion of the costs outside of the base percentage. Common expenses include:

• The base commission (usually 1.5%-3.5%) varies depending on the volume and region.
• Fixed amounts for each transaction ($0.1-$0.3), which double when money is returned to the customer.
• Additional fees include chargeback fees, technical support, card data storage, currency conversions.

Even a small difference in fees can lead to significant losses. With a turnover of €1 million/month, a 0.3% difference between providers results in €3,000 in overpayments. If you add hidden fees (chargebacks, conversion), the actual losses can reach €5,000–7,000/month.

Currency losses

Unfavourable conversion rates are a key source of hidden costs:

• Providers apply their ‘own’ rates with a 2–5% mark-up on the market rate (Mid-Market Rate).
• Double conversion (EUR → USD → JPY) multiplies the losses (e.g. 2% at each stage = 4% total).
• Lack of transparency: customers only see the final amount, without knowing the provider's actual margin.

Case study: an EU company sells goods to Japan. When converting EUR→JPY through a payment system with a 3% mark-up, the loss on a turnover of €500,000 will be €15,000. With monthly transactions, this amounts to €180,000/year.

The solutions are simple: insist on fair market quotes, open multi-currency accounts, and use the services of specialised companies.

Operating costs

A lot of time and human resources are spent on manually analysing reports from dozens of suppliers. The weekly hours of employees alone cost the company thousands of euros. Added to this is the risk of errors, penalties and damage to business reputation due to delays in payments to partners.

The only solution is to automate processes using a single data collection and analysis centre and RPA bots.

Technical costs

Separate API interfaces for each service increase the load on IT departments and lead to additional costs for development, testing, and certification. Consolidating technological solutions helps save up to half of the budget for infrastructure maintenance.

Payment flow consolidation strategies

There are ways to reduce hidden costs and increase payment efficiency when using multiple payment systems and different account currencies.

Payment Orchestration

Payment Orchestration Platform (POP) – an intermediate layer between businesses and payment providers. It works like a ‘smart router’. Dynamic routing is the selection of the optimal provider based on the buyer's region (e.g., iDEAL for the Netherlands), card type, current rejection rate (if the provider rejects >5% of transactions, traffic is switched), and processing cost (real-time comparison of fees).

Advantages of this solution:

• Unified API – one integration instead of a dozen (reducing implementation time from 6–12 months to 2–4 weeks).
• Automatic failover – reducing downtime to <1 minute.
• Centralised reporting – a single dashboard for all providers.
• Fraud Management – a unified system for checking suspicious transactions.

Using orchestration platforms reduces commissions by a quarter, cuts the number of failed payment attempts by almost half, and saves developers a lot of headaches.

Payment aggregators

Major market players such as 0xProcessing (for crypto payments), Adyen, Stripe, and PayPal Braintree provide a single point of entry for hundreds of payment methods. They take care of technical support, certification, and statistics collection, offering businesses simple integration, low prices, and broad international coverage.

Choosing the right aggregator depends on your needs: geographical coverage, supported currencies, ease of connection to existing accounting systems, and transparency of terms and conditions.

Want to consolidate your payment flows without the headache? 0xProcessing is your payment aggregator with support for 65+ cryptocurrencies. What you get:

• no hidden fees - transaction fees only;
• automatic transaction routing;
• lower fees compared to traditional payment methods;
• centralised real-time reporting.

For a free consultation, submit a request and receive a response from an experienced specialist.

Multi-currency accounts

The essence of the solution is to open accounts in key currencies (USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, CNY) with banks or payment providers. Benefits for business:

• Elimination of double conversion – payments are processed in the account currency without intermediate exchanges.
• Fixed exchange rates – contractual terms with banks (mark-up <0.5% to the Mid-Market Rate).
• Reduced currency risk – hedging through forward contracts.
• Faster settlements – no delays due to conversion.
• Transparent reporting – all transactions in one currency without adjustments.

This method eliminates the need for multiple conversions, allowing you to receive payment directly in the required currency.

Process optimisation: practical steps

Choosing the top systems for handling multiple payment methods requires a preliminary analysis of business processes. We explain what you need to know before changing your chosen model for settlements with customers and how to improve efficiency.

Audit of current payment flows

Collect data on all providers:

• rates: base commissions, hidden fees, minimum payments);
• transaction volumes by region/currency/card type;
• rejection rates due to insufficient funds, fraud, technical errors;
• history of returns and their cost.

Next, calculate the effective cost. Add up all fees (commission + fixed payments + conversion + chargebacks) and divide by total turnover.

After that, you need to analyse the ‘hot spots’:

• providers with a commission >3%;
• regions with a decline rate >5%;
• currencies with a conversion mark-up >2%.

The main goal of the study is to identify ‘bottlenecks’ and hidden costs.

Centralisation of reporting

Create visual dashboards with key indicators: transaction cost, decline rate, return rate, processing speed, and currency loss amount. Integration with internal accounting systems will ensure the accuracy and timeliness of information.

Automation of routine operations

Automated robots can compare data from different sources and quickly flag potential errors. Setting up daily notifications and regular reports will free your staff from tedious routine work.

Review contracts with providers

Use the scale of your business to your advantage by negotiating better terms. Demand maximum transparency regarding all possible fees, discuss individual calculation schemes, and formalise agreements with official service level agreements (SLAs) that guarantee the quality of services provided.

Errors in managing payment systems

Many entrepreneurs make the same mistakes:

• Focusing only on the stated base rate, forgetting to take into account associated costs.
• Lack of regular monitoring of the quality of work of selected partners.
• Ignoring currency risks and unwillingness to use multi-currency instruments.
• Excessive reliance on manual labour instead of automation.
• Insufficient provisioning of payment channels.
• Incorrect selection of payment routing.
• Violations of information security standards (PCI DSS).
• Concluding contracts without the right to revise the terms and conditions if the situation changes.
• Making management decisions without relying on accurate figures and statistics.
• Failure to comply with local laws and restrictions (especially relevant for China and India).

Conclusion

Effective management of multiple payment systems requires a systematic approach:

• Audit – regular analysis of costs and identification of hidden expenses.
• Consolidation – transition to POP or aggregators to unify processes.
• Automation – implementation of tools for centralised reporting and reconciliation.
• Negotiations – review of contracts with a focus on transparency and volume discounts.
• Reservation – at least two gateways for uninterrupted operation.

These measures will ensure your business reduces costs, increases the share of successful payments, significantly reduces the time spent on preparing reports, and minimises payment infrastructure downtime.

FAQ