The overall process delivered a number of material benefits including a significant, annual seven-figure card processing cost reduction across the contract term with no internal operational impact.
CMSPI worked with a leading pizza delivery company (Pizza Company A), running over 10,000 corporate and franchised stores internationally. The company operates a multi-channel offering, including fast-growing eCommerce and mCommerce channels and has developed a wide range of food and beverage items to complement its primary offering, pizza.
Pizza Company A was initially introduced to CMSPI when a senior representative attended one of CMSPI’s Payments Workshops. Following discussions on the day, it was clear that CMSPI was able to offer it assistance to review Pizza Company A’s card supply chain. This included its central website, native app channels and separate franchisee face-to-face and telephone order (MOTO) estates. Pizza Company A had a long-standing relationship with its incumbent card processor and had a responsibility to ensure that its own, and its franchisees’ overall costs were in-line with the market, paying particular attention to industry regulatory changes.
Through consultation with Pizza Company A, as well as its incumbent processor, CMSPI identified that the current pricing structure and contractual arrangements were not optimal. CMSPI’s analysis broke down the merchant service charge (“MSC”) structure to give it transparency over what was being paid and expose hidden margin. Each element of Pizza Company A’s MSC was confidentially benchmarked against its peers from CMSPI’s extensive client base, highlighting the total opportunity available.
With the insights garnered from the MSC analysis, CMSPI recommended that Pizza Company A entered into an RFP process to drive the most competitive solution for its card processing arrangements. CMSPI managed the tender process, engaging with suitable suppliers from the card processing market that could service an estate such as Pizza Company A’s. CMSPI requested proposals from six suppliers to service Pizza Company A’s central online operations, as well as its franchisee face-to-face and MOTO transactions.
Returned proposals were then analyzed and negotiated by CMSPI until a solution was offered whereby CMSPI was satisfied that Pizza Company A ongoing costs were competitive with broader market rates.
A key objective for Pizza Company A was to ensure that the group franchise offer was as simple and easy to sign up as possible, with a competitive commercial offer and marketing support to advertise the key benefits. CMSPI also negotiated the best possible overall solution from both a central, and franchise perspective, taking account of these variables.
In addition, to fully understand Pizza Company A card processing reporting requirements, CMSPI helped facilitate an internal workshop for Pizza Company A to gain a better understanding of reporting processes and management information requirements. With some franchisees opting to choose differing charging structures, CMSPI provided a clear comparison of the charges incurred through their current structure, and an interchange++ structure. This allowed Pizza Company A to manage the central and franchise processes as one, despite varying specifications required and fragmented franchise arrangements.
CMSPI’s analysis provided the Pizza Company A team with greater visibility of their payments process, including the newly established industry regulation, as well as the costs and benefits of routing transactions cross-border. The overall process delivered a number of material benefits including a significant, annual seven-figure merchant acquiring cost reduction across the contract term with no internal operational impact.
Further, CMSPI’s work helped improve Pizza Company A’s cash flow and minimized interest costs by working closely with the processor to reduce settlement timescales to transaction day +1. Following the optimization of Pizza Company A commercial arrangements, CMSPI initiated a fresh service level agreement negotiation to protect Pizza Company A against future potential service disruptions. In addition, CMSPI ensured Pizza Company A’s processor provided PCIDSS guidance and chargeback assistance at no additional cost throughout the course of the contract. In order to support the suppliers’ commitment to onboarding new franchisees, CMSPI negotiated a significant, five-figure marketing fund to be made available for promotion of the franchisee group deal.
CMSPI was able to reduce settlement timescales to transaction day +1
Substantial 5 figure marketing fund was negotiated
Annual seven-figure merchant acquiring cost reduction across the contract term