01 For ambitious retailers and brands
Your payment costs and performance can both be better. We find out where, and we make it happen. Merchant side only, always.
What you pay today, set against what your volume, cardmix and payment mix should cost in the current market. Established from your own invoices, taken to the finish with your provider, and verified in your own dashboard.
See what your payment set-up should cost, and what better performance is worth
A structured read of your set-up against what it should cost at your volume and your payment mix, with the performance and conversion upside that sits alongside it. Your own figures, your own answer, in under three minutes.
Open the PSP Upside CalculatorThe calculator gives you the direction. What your set-up should actually cost, and what the performance gap is worth, is established from your invoices and settlement data, which is the first thing a call covers.
02 Selected engagements
Client stated results, with the client named.
Sixteen published client cases and twenty one client authored references across more than six years. Cost, selection, implementation and checkout work, not one kind of engagement. Figures appear only where the client stated them.
Versuni
Philips Home Appliances
Provider contracts renegotiated across the direct to consumer channel, alongside payment performance and fraud and dispute management.
Over 30% off recurring PSP cost
Read the client case
vidaXL
Global marketplace and webshop
Commercial optimisation across the entire global payment infrastructure, contract by contract.
Seven figure annual saving
Read the client case
Swiss Sense
Five countries, unified commerce
Unified commerce contract and scheme routing reviewed and renegotiated across five countries.
20 to 25% off monthly provider cost
Read the client case
Vision Healthcare
Multi-brand group
Operational payment cost across the group's brands, with no risk, no extra investment and no technical change.
20% saving
Read the client case
Homefashion Group
Leen Bakker and Kwantum
A full payment RFP across both brands, from requirements through to a scalable payment ecosystem the group can grow into.
Provider selected and contracted
Read the client case
Staples Solutions
Pan-European B2B
Senior payment capacity inside the transformation team, implementing a new pan-European PSP end to end during replatforming.
Pan-European PSP implemented
Read the client case03 The commercial case
Payment cost is one of the few savings that reaches EBITDA in full.
There is no cost of goods against it, no media spend behind it and no additional traffic required to earn it. Take a merchant processing 50 million euro a year at a blended 1.35 per cent, as an example: the provider bill is approximately 675,000 euro, and twenty per cent of that is 135,000 euro of EBITDA, annually, on unchanged volume.
The second lever
Authorisation rate moves revenue, not only cost
A cost reduction protects margin. A point of authorisation rate adds turnover at unchanged acquisition spend. On 50 million euro of volume, one recovered percentage point of authorised transactions represents 500,000 euro of revenue already paid for in marketing.
Authorisation rate is one lever among several. The others are retry and routing logic, 3DS and SCA exemption strategy, TRA use, cardmix, merchant initiated transactions, the payment mix in the checkout, and how the provider is configured to begin with.
04 Why this sits above the payments team
Payments is a margin, revenue and dependency question. It is treated as an operational one.
Most merchants inherited their payment set-up from a decision made years ago under different volumes, in fewer markets, with a different mix, contracting payment providers that were innovative and agile at the time and are now more like dinosaurs. But you are locked in. It is rarely revisited, because nobody owns it at the level where margin, revenue, expansion and dependency are actually felt.
Margin
It reaches EBITDA in full
No cost of goods against it, no media spend behind it, no additional traffic required. On 50 million euro of volume at a blended 1.35 per cent, a fifth off the provider bill is 135,000 euro of EBITDA on unchanged volume.
Revenue
Declines are demand you already bought
Authorisation, retries, exemption strategy, the payment mix in the checkout and the provider's own configuration are among the levers that decide how much of your traffic completes. A recovered point on 50 million euro is 500,000 euro of turnover the marketing budget already paid for.
Expansion
Payments decides where you can go next
New markets, unified commerce, a replatform or a new brand all fail quietly if the payment set-up cannot carry them. The methods, the acquiring and the contract have to be right before the market entry, not after it.
Dependency
Leverage decays unless it is managed
Auto-renewals, notice periods, scheme fee bulletins and unilateral term changes move your cost base while nobody is watching. Knowing what your volume is worth to a provider is what keeps the relationship balanced.
05 Services
Four defined engagements.
Each carries a defined deliverable. One conversation establishes which one fits what you are actually facing, and whether one is enough.
Cut your PSP costs
For merchants who suspect they are paying above market but cannot evidence it. The cost position is established against current market terms for the volume, cardmix and payment mix, and the renegotiation is taken to conclusion.
Your provider relationship comes out stronger. For the first time it is an equal one, because the other side of the table knows you no longer take their word for it.
Run a payment RFP
For merchants replatforming, moving to unified commerce, leaving a provider that no longer fits, or testing whether the current one still does. Requirements, longlist, structured comparison and contract.
Run in EcomStream's own selection room, in your branding, with the providers blind to each other. Your team reviews and decides. The writing, the questions and the comparison are carried from this side.
Get more from your PSP
An ongoing arrangement rather than a project. Your payment set-up kept under watch, month after month: performance, the provider's own configuration, and the contract terms that move underneath it.
Read every month, not once. What the provider has left undone is acted on and reported in writing, with the contract calendar watched. Run alongside cost work and the two multiply: a lower cost per transaction, applied to more transactions that complete.
Interim work
For when the gap is in your team rather than in your payment set-up. Senior payment capacity for a migration, a replatform, a market entry or a vacancy that cannot wait for a hire.
Inside your team rather than reporting to it. On a day rate, for as long as the gap exists, until you have hired.
06 How an engagement runs
You give the mandate. It stays here until the result is in your numbers.
An engagement is not a report for you to take on yourself. The work is taken on by us, run with your provider on your mandate, and held there until the improvement is real and verified. Your team keeps the decisions. It does not keep the workload.
What stays with you
You set the boundaries and give the mandate to act. Nothing is agreed with a provider that you have not approved first.
Which route, which provider, which terms. The preparation, the arguments and the provider conversations sit on this side.
The improvement lands in the numbers your team already reads, and the mandate runs on until it does.
What happens on our side
Invoices, contract and settlement data read line by line. Interchange and scheme fees verified at transaction level. Your position established against current market terms for your volume, cardmix and payment mix. Then the renegotiation itself, prepared, argued and taken to a signed conclusion with your existing provider.
A programme rather than an analysis. Requirements written for your set-up across the full scope of your payments. A cost and performance baseline to judge the answers against. Providers run in parallel in the selection room, each blind to the others. Questions, clarifications and demonstrations managed throughout. A like-for-like comparison on price, performance, strategic fit and contract. Shortlist, award, contracting, and into the migration. The reason the selection still stands when someone asks about it a year later.
Not one metric, and not once. Authorisation, declines, retries and exemption use read every month by method, issuer and market. The provider's configuration checked against what your mix should deliver, and action taken on what has been left undone. Commercial findings reported in writing within fourteen days, with a recommended action. Your quarterly review prepared and run with the PSP on your mandate. The contract calendar watched, so notice periods and auto-renewals do not pass unnoticed. New services and tools the provider wants to bring in are weighed on what they add against what they cost, before anything is agreed. At the wider scope, ownership of the payment roadmap and a seat in your change projects, so migrations, new markets and new payment methods are scoped with you rather than reviewed afterwards.
Different in kind. Senior payment capacity inside your team, on a day rate, for a migration, a replatform, a market entry or a vacancy that cannot wait for a hire. The work is carried in your organisation rather than on your behalf.
07 In the client's own words
Named references, on the record.
Three reference videos recorded by the client, and twenty one written references carrying name, role and company. All of them are on the client cases page, in full.
"We brought Ramon in as our expert, someone who would firmly take our side with the PSPs. He took it all on himself. He ran the conversations with the right stakeholders, sat at the table with the PSPs, and made sure everything was optimised in our favour."
Kamèr Aykaz, Global Direct to Consumer Sales Director, Versuni (Philips Home Appliances), translated from Dutch
"At Swiss Sense we came into contact with Ramon, and in the period between April 2023 and November 2023 we managed to achieve significant savings on Payment Provider costs through a rational approach. He is thorough and continues to pursue until the savings are actually achieved, in a pleasant way."
Stefan Schuyleman, Senior E-commerce and Marketing Manager, Swiss Sense, translated from Dutch
"With EcomStream we save about 20% on our operational costs regarding payments. Without any risks or further investments, and without any changes to our technical infrastructure."
Tim Schelling, Chief Technical Officer, Vision Healthcare, translated from Dutch
★★★★★ 5.0 on Google, based on 18 additional reviews, posted on Google and verified by Trustindex. Read them on Google
Retailers and brands EcomStream has worked for
Sixteen of them are published as client cases, with the client named and the scope stated. Read the client cases
“It is what your payment providers will never tell you.”
08 Common reservations
Addressed before they are raised.
We analyse this ourselves
You can, and it is worth doing. Interchange is capped in regulation and scheme fees are set by the schemes, so neither is negotiated. What is negotiated is your acquirer markup, your per-method rates and the ancillary lines, and none of that is published anywhere. That is where the trap sits, because the figure you open with becomes the ceiling.
We cannot absorb a migration
Most results are achieved without one. No replatforming, no new integration, no development capacity. Cost work is commercial, so in most cases nothing in your technical set-up changes at all.
The provider relationship matters to us
As it should, and it comes out of this stronger. What changes is not the relationship, it is the balance in it. The other side of the table knows you no longer take their word for it, and a provider who knows that tends to get sharper rather than colder.
We have no capacity for this
That is the purpose of the model. In all four services EcomStream manages the project from beginning to end and takes ownership of it, from the analysis through the provider conversations to the result. What your team keeps is the decision.
09 Independence
One interest is served here.
EcomStream works for merchants only. No PSP mandates, no acquirer partnerships, no referral commissions and no revenue share on the contracts it negotiates. Nothing that is recommended earns anything on the other side of the table.
100% yours. Never theirs.
10 Start the conversation
Thirty minutes, and you will know whether there is money in this for you.
You will speak to me, Ramon Helwegen, founder of EcomStream. I have been in payments since 2009, including eight years selling for PSPs before I founded the firm in 2017, which is why the arguments a provider uses to defend its pricing are arguments I have made myself. Every engagement I handle personally, from the first analysis to the final result.
Bring your provider names, your annual volume, spend, and your markets. That is enough for me to tell you where you stand, in cost, in performance, or in the construction of the contract. You hear where the upside sits before I propose anything.
A line or two is enough, and I send you times to choose from by return.
Or reach me directly, ramon@ecomstream.nl | +31 (0)85 00 23 062
11 Questions
Frequently asked
How does the fee model work?
Fees follow the service. Cutting your PSP costs and running a payment RFP are project engagements on a no cure no pay basis, charged as a share of the savings realised. No upfront fee, and no invoice if there is no measurable improvement. Managed Performance Optimisation runs on a monthly fee. Interim assignments run on a day rate, agreed before the assignment starts.
Do you only work with large retailers?
No. EcomStream works with retailers and brands across a wide range of sizes. The starting point is a minimum annual payment volume of around 10 to 15 million euros processed through a PSP, because that is where the commercial leverage exists to negotiate material improvements. You would expect larger merchants to have negotiated better deals, but often they have not. That gap tends to be where EcomStream finds the most significant upside.
We are already live with a PSP. Is it too late to optimise?
Being live with a PSP is exactly the right moment to optimise. The contract terms you signed at onboarding were based on projected volumes and a negotiating position that has likely changed significantly since. There is no requirement to wait for a renewal window to open a commercial conversation with your PSP.
Why does independence matter when choosing a payment advisor?
Most payment consultants maintain commercial relationships with PSPs and acquirers alongside their merchant work. That creates a structural conflict of interest that affects the quality of the advice, whether or not it is made explicit. EcomStream works exclusively for merchants. There are no PSP relationships, no referral fees, no commercial ties to any payment provider.
What does EcomStream need from us to get started?
To run the initial diagnostic, EcomStream needs access to recent PSP invoices, the current contract including pricing schedules, and basic transaction volume data by payment method and market. No internal resource is required beyond providing that information. EcomStream handles the analysis, the benchmarking, and the negotiation.
In one sentence, why should I work with you?
You will sell more and pay less.
Eleven more are answered in full, on scope, data, confidentiality and how an engagement is invoiced. Read the complete FAQ
12 Knowledge
