By Kirill Lisitsyn Co-Founder of Torus
In payments, it sometimes feels like parts of the industry are still operating on chance.
Many banks focus heavily on growth — launching new products, expanding acquisition, increasing volumes. And when revenue goes up, it’s treated as success. But far less attention is given to how that revenue is structured, what it actually costs, and how stable the resulting margins are.
This creates a pattern that looks uncomfortably close to a lottery.
There is, of course, a type of uncertainty that cannot be controlled. Markets shift, regulation evolves, customer behaviour changes. In some environments — like trading or venture investing — risk is inherent and even intentional.
But most of the financial risk in payments is not that kind of uncertainty.
It is operational.
And operational risk is measurable.
“In modern payments, profitability is defined not just by revenue growth, but by how precisely banks understand and manage their cost structure. Scheme fees, interchange flows, and pricing models directly shape margins — yet in many organisations, these elements are still analysed at an aggregated level, limiting visibility into true transaction economics”.
The strongest banks understand this well. They don’t rely on intuition when it comes to profitability. Instead, they treat it as a system — one that requires constant visibility and adjustment.
In practice, this means:
- forecasting revenue at a granular level,
- calculating net profitability beyond portfolio averages,
- identifying leakages across products, merchants, and transactions,
- continuously adjusting pricing models,
- and managing margin as an ongoing process — not a quarterly outcome.
A shift toward transaction-level analytics allows banks to move from approximation to precision. By reconciling predicted and actual costs, and by allocating scheme fees accurately across products and merchants, financial institutions can uncover hidden margin leaks and build more устойчивые pricing strategies in a highly dynamic payments environment.
Because profit is not something that “happens”.
It is something that is calculated, monitored, and actively managed every day.
When profitability appears unpredictable or opaque, it is usually not because it is inherently unknowable. More often, it points to missing data, insufficient tooling, or a lack of a systematic approach.
In that sense, “chance” in payments is rarely real.
It is simply a placeholder for what is not yet measured.
And the gap between those two states — from uncertainty to control — is where most of the hidden margin still sits.
