Just a week ago, Torus, our transaction economics intelligence platform, received a UK industry award in a data category, and I caught myself thinking — a thought I wanted to share below.
As data initiatives increasingly receive recognition across major fintech awards, a broader shift is becoming visible: payment businesses are starting to compete not only on growth, but on how precisely they understand margin and transaction economics.
Market shift: from easy growth to counting bps
One acquirer improved profitability by 29% after moving from portfolio averages to transaction-level analysis. Many payment teams still rely on the former.
At the same time, the market itself is shifting. More financial institutions are realising that competitiveness is no longer defined only by growth or transaction volume, but by the ability to preserve margin and understand profitability precisely.
Over the past year, transaction-level analytics and payment data initiatives have increasingly moved from niche operational topics into the spotlight of the payments industry — reflecting a broader shift toward precision, transparency, and profitability control.
What do we see in practice
I’m the co-founder of Torus, and for the past few years we’ve been working closely with issuers, acquirers, and PSPs, analysing transaction-level data, scheme fees, and pricing models across markets.
Every change in fee structures, every new pricing rule — we see it immediately in real transaction flows. And that perspective shapes how I see the direction of the industry:
— blended pricing is breaking down;
— scheme fees changes are reshaping margins;
— portfolio averages hide loss-making flows;
— pricing decisions are moving towards customer LTV which is in turn driven by transaction level economics.
What does the payments community say
"How money moves is becoming as critical as how much." — The 2025 McKinsey Global Payments Report
In their latest report, McKinsey describes a shift toward the need to “move intelligence to the edge” (in other words, closer to the transaction itself and real-time decision-making) — as growing pricing pressure in card payments, tighter regulation, and increasingly complex platform-based payment models continue to compress margins across the industry.
One of the key conclusions behind this shift is simple: the next competitive advantage in payments will come from precision, not scale.
Transaction analytics takes centre stage
This shift is not theoretical — it is increasingly being recognised across the industry.
Over the past months, we’ve seen multiple industry awards recognise data initiatives across payment.
Just last week, Torus was named Data Initiative of the Year at the UK FinTech Awards. At the end of last year, we were recognised in the Data Insights category at the FF Awards.
More broadly, since the beginning of this year, we have been shortlisted in multiple industry awards, including the PayTech Awards, Baltic Fintech Awards, Banking Tech Awards, British Data Awards, and Europe FinTech Awards — reflecting a growing focus on data-driven profitability and transaction-level understanding.
Why transaction-level analytics is gaining recognition
The complexity of scheme fees has made it increasingly difficult to understand what actually drives profitability inside card portfolios. As a result, many issues remain invisible until analysed at transaction level.
Portfolio averages create an illusion of stability and often hide:
— regional and cross-border fee differences;
— merchant-level margin leakages;
— pricing mismatches;
— event-based scheme costs;
— transaction flows that are unprofitable despite healthy portfolio averages.
I explored some of these dynamics earlier in “Demystifying interchange fees: Understanding Profitability Dynamics in Card Transactions”.
So what does this mean?
Payments businesses are entering a period where growth alone is no longer enough to absorb operational inefficiencies and hidden margin leakage.
We see that post-pandemic hypergrowth in the global payments industry is starting to normalize: after years of double-digit expansion, Visa and Mastercard are now reporting payment volume growth closer to 7-9%, while broader industry revenue growth is expected to slow toward ~4-5% annually. As growth slows, the focus is shifting from pure processing scale to stronger unit economics and the ability to create value through data, fraud and risk tools, and services built on top of payment infrastructure.
The industry is not lacking data, but it is still learning how to use it effectively. And that is where the next phase of competition is already unfolding.
The material has been posted on Finextra.
