Payment processing inherently comes with costs of all kinds—bank fees like interchange rates, assessment fees from card brands, and processor fees from the payment processors themselves. Understanding what costs you’re accumulating and from where can help your business assess overall profitability and performance. When you know where costs come from, you might even find opportunities to reduce them and improve your bottom line!

Costs contains the following pages:

Important Notes About the Costs Pages:

  • The Date Range filter defaults to a Monthly time interval, because processors provide cost data on a monthly cadence.

  • Any time-sensitive data appears in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

Below is a basic outline of how to navigate around your Costs pages. For more details on a specific Costs page, see the affiliated section.

To navigate the Costs pages:

1

Navigate to Costs

Click Costs in the main navigation, then click the desired Costs page. For Fees and Invoices, choose the appropriate page to view your data broken down by Category or by Subcategory.

  • Fee categories include Interchange, Assessments, Processor, and more. View our Fee Type Category Codes reference guide for a complete list.
  • Fee subcategories further break fees down by details such as value added services, adjustments, processor penalties, and more. View all subcategories in our Fee Type Subcategory Codes reference guide.
2

Select a tab

Click a tab at the top of the page to determine how you want to view the distribution of your cost data, for example by Processor or Network. The tab options are different on each Costs page.

3

Set a Date Range

Use the Date Range filter in the top-right corner of the page to change the time period. You can view data broken down by Month, Quarter, or Year.

4

Apply filters

Click Add Filter to filter for specific segments of cost data. Learn more about the filter options available in Costs pages in the section below.

5

Explore your cost data

Each page contains a graph and a table, demonstrating your cost data for the chosen time period. How your cost data is broken down in these visualizations depends on the page and tab you select.

  • Click the Compare to Previous Period toggle to add the cost data from the previous period to the graph.
  • Manipulate the data using the Dimensions drop-down.
6

Export the data

Click Export on a table to download the data as a CSV. If you’ve filtered or manipulated the data in the UI, the downloaded data will reflect those customizations.

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Fees

There are two separate pages for viewing your fee data:

  • Fees by Category
  • Fees by Subcategory

In either page, the Total Fees value at the top of the page shows the total amount of fees your business faced in the chosen time period, along with a comparison to the previous time period. Select from the following tabs to determine how we’ll organize your fee data:

In the Overview tab, you’ll find the following data visualizations:

  • Fee Distribution - A bar demonstrating the distribution of your total fees by category/subcategory.
  • Fees Category/Subcategory Costs - A stacked bar graph demonstating your total fee amount over time, broken down by category/subcategory.
  • Fees Category/Subcategory Breakdown - A table with rows for each category/subcategory and columns for each time interval; use the Dimensions drop-down to customize the table.

Use the Only New Fees toggle to filter the data visualizations for fees you haven’t seen before.

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Invoices

The Invoices pages only shows data imported from Adyen and Braintree.

There are two separate pages for viewing your invoice data:

  • Invoices by Category
  • Invoices by Subcategory

In either page, the Total Invoices value at the top of the page shows the total amount of invoiced fees from Adyen and/or Braintree in the chosen time period, along with a comparison to the previous time period. Select from the following tabs to determine how we’ll organize your invoiced fee data:

In the Overview tab, you’ll find the following data visualizations:

  • Invoice Distribution - A bar demonstrating the distribution of your total invoices by category/subcategory.
  • Invoices Category/Subcategory Costs - A stacked bar graph demonstating your total invoice amount over time, broken down by category/subcategory.
  • Invoices Category/Subcategory Breakdown - A table with rows for each invoice category/subcategory and columns for each time interval; use the Dimensions drop-down to customize the table.

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Effective Rate

The Effective Rate page only shows data imported from the following processors: Adyen, Braintree, Chase, dLocal, Klarna, PayPal, Stripe, and Worldpay (Vantiv)

At this time, you can’t use the Payment Method Type or Card Brand Data filters to filter Braintree data on the Effective Rate page.

Effective rate is calculated by dividing your total fee amount by your total sale amount. The total sale amount includes your total processed transaction amount, inclusive of even those transactions that were later charged back or refunded; the total fee amount includes all interchange, assessment, and processor fees.

On the Effective Rate page, you’ll find a line graph demonstrating your effective rate over the last 3 months, along with a table containing the same data. Select from the following tabs at the top of the page to view your effective rate for segments of your transaction volume:

  • Overview

  • Processor

  • Network

  • MID

  • Payment Method Type

  • Settlement Currency

The tab you choose determines what customer segments the graph and table show effective rate data for. If you select the Network tab, for example, the graph will include lines charting the effective rate over time for each card brand you’ve processed transactions for. Use the table to remove or add specific card networks to the graph.

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Interchange & Assessments

The Interchange & Assessments page only shows data imported from Adyen.

The Total Fees value at the top of this page shows the total amount of fees your business faced in the Interchange and Assessments cost categories for transactions processed through Adyen in the chosen time period, along with a comparison to the previous time period. Select from the following tabs to determine how we organize your fee data:

In the Overview tab, you’ll find the following data visualizations:

  • Fee Distribution - A bar demonstrating the distribution of your total Interchange and Assessments fees by subcategory.
  • Interchange & Assessments Costs - A stacked bar graph demonstating your total Interchange and Assessments fee amount over time, broken down by subcategory.
  • Interchange & Assessments Breakdown - A table with rows for each Interchange and Assessments fee subcategory and columns for each time interval; use the Dimensions drop-down to customize the table.

Use the Only New Fees toggle to filter the data visualizations for fees you haven’t seen before.

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Penalties

The Penalties page only shows data imported from Adyen, Braintree, Chase, Stripe, and Worldpay (Vantiv).

Managing the many charges and penalties your business faces when processing payments can easily become overwhelming. As such, this page is dedicated specifically to helping you understand and ultimately reduce the penalties you pay. The total amount of penalties paid in the given time period appears at the top of the page, along with a comparison to the previous time period. Select from the following tabs to determine how we organize your penalty data:

In the Overview tab, you’ll find the following data visualizations:

  • Penalties - A stacked bar graph demonstrating your total penalties over time, broken down by penalty type.
  • Penalty Breakdown & Guidance - A table with rows for each penalty type and columns for each time interval. Click on a penalty to view a full description of the penalty, along with practical guidance on how to avoid it moving forward. Click Export in the top-right corner of the table to export the data, descriptions, and guidance as a CSV.

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Cost Filters

The Costs section only shows data related to payment processing costs. As such, not all of the filter options available elsewhere in Visualizations apply to this section. You can use the following filters to segment the data displayed in the Costs pages:

  • Date Range

  • Processor

  • Card Brand

  • Card Type (this filter only applies to the Interchange & Assessments page)

  • Payment Method Type

  • Settlement Currency

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New Fee Filtering

The Fees and Interchange & Assessments pages include a Only New Fees toggle in the top-right corner of the stacked bar graph. Click this toggle to filter the entire page to only show data for the newest fees you’ve faced.

We define new fees as those you haven’t encountered before on a given MID and from a given card network. Because we evaluate fees at the MID and card network level, a fee will still be flagged as new even if it has shown up before on a different MID or from a different network on the same MID.

If you apply this filter and export the data, the downloaded CSV will include a New Fee column. Each fee will be marked as either:

  • yes - A confirmed new fee for the associated MID and/or card network
  • under review - A fee we’re reviewing and mapping

Fees marked under review may appear with the name Unknown until we finalize their details; check back later for updates.

The Only New Fees toggle doesn’t account for:

  • Fee adjustments
  • Fees in the fee category of informational_data
  • Changes in fee amounts or rates

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Dimensions Drop-Down Menu

The tables in the Fees, Invoices, and Interchange & Assessments pages contain a unique Dimensions drop-down menu. Using this feature, you can select the dimensions you want to further break down your payments data by in the table—essentially mimicking pivot tables but within the Pagos Service Panel.

To customize your data groupings:

  1. Click the Dimensions drop-down menu.

  2. Click Select Dimension to pick the first dimension to group your data by.

  3. A + icon will then appear on each row in the table. Click this icon to expand additional rows that subdivide your data by the first dimension.

  4. Click Dimensions again, then click Select Dimension to pick a second dimension to further subdivide your data by.

  5. Each row created by the first dimension will now have a +; click this icon to expand further subdivided rows of data.

For example, say you applied the following dimensions to the Fees Category Breakdown table on the Fees by Category page:

  • First Dimension: Processor

  • Second Dimension: Network

Your chart rows would then look like this:

To remove a dimension from a table, click the Dimensions drop-down menu, click on the dimension, then click None.