Enabling Merchant Acquirer Profitability: Turning Payments Complexity into Actionable Intelligence

Join us on Tuesday, September 29 at 9:30AM CST/3:30PM BST, for an executive discussion on how better data and deeper analytics can help acquirers uncover margin leakage, improve billing and settlement accuracy, and gain a clearer view of profitability at the individual merchant level.

Moderated by payments expert Ian Povey, SRM International Advisory Board Member, the session features John Berns, Managing Director of SRM Europe, and Kirill Lisitsyn, CEO & Co-Founder of Torus. Together, they’ll explore the challenges impacting acquirer economics today and share perspectives on how greater visibility and actionable data can help protect and improve profitability.

Attendees will leave with a clearer understanding of:

How scheme fees, interchange, merchant billing, settlement discrepancies, and processing errors can contribute to margin erosion.
How daily and monthly analytics can provide a clearer picture of profitability by merchant, transaction type, geography, and sector.
Ways more granular management information can support billing accuracy, fee reconciliation, settlement processes, and better commercial decisions.
How the SRM–Torus approach brings together payments expertise and technology to help acquirers identify opportunities to protect and improve profitability

John Berns is Managing Director of SRM Europe and brings more than three decades of experience across the global payments industry. His career includes senior vice president roles at Visa and more than 20 years as Founder and Managing Director of Accourt Payments Specialists, which joined SRM in 2024. John has advised central banks, card schemes, issuers, acquirers, and payment providers around the world. His current focus is helping organizations improve acquirer profitability, strengthen operational effectiveness, and develop more transparent and sustainable pricing strategies.

Kirill Lisitsyn is CEO and Co-Founder of Torus, where he helps card issuers and merchant acquirers improve payments profitability through data-driven insights and greater fee transparency. He brings more than 15 years of consulting experience, including roles with Accenture and Mastercard. Kirill co-founded Torus to make advanced payments intelligence more accessible to mid-market organizations. Its award-winning SaaS platform enables issuers and acquirers to better understand and manage Visa and Mastercard scheme fees, optimize profitability, improve transactional earnings, and strengthen product pricing strategies.

Ian Povey is an International Advisory Board member at SRM with extensive global experience across banking, financial services, and payments. He has held CIO Payments Technology roles at NatWest Banking Group and Commonwealth Bank of Australia, where he helped lead the build and launch of Australia’s New Payments Platform in 2018. Ian has also held board and committee positions with Swift, Pay.UK, UK Finance, NPPA, and other organizations. His career spans payments technology, national identity programs, card and rewards innovation, product development, and tokenization across global markets.

Merchant acquirers are operating in an increasingly complex environment, where scheme fees, interchange costs, settlement processes, and limited visibility into merchant-level economics can quietly erode margins.

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