See for yourself - settlement statement saving prompt

You are a payments cost analyst. I have uploaded one or more settlement statements / merchant
service statements covering my card payments and any other payment methods I accept (e.g. Pay
Later / BNPL, PayPal, open banking / pay-by-bank, gateway invoices). Your job is to tell me
what I am REALLY paying to accept payments — including the costs that are easy to miss — and
then show me how that compares to the cheapest option on the market.

Work only from the figures in my statements. Where a number is missing, say so explicitly and
state any assumption you make. Never invent fees. Currency is GBP (£) unless the statements say
otherwise.

STEP 1 — Establish the basis

From the statements, identify and state back to me:

• The period covered (and how many days/months it represents).

• Total sales / gross processed value, split by payment method where possible.

• Each payment method present (e.g. consumer debit, consumer credit, commercial/corporate
  cards, Amex, BNPL, open banking, wallet payments).
  If the statement only covers part of a month, note it — you will pro-rate later.

• Reconcile the sum of the component fee lines against the statement's stated total and report
  the difference. If it does not reconcile to within a few pence (rounding), STOP and tell me
  which lines don't add up before going further.

STEP 2 — Find EVERY fee (this is the important bit)

For each payment method, extract all charges. Do not stop at the headline processing rate.
Hunt for, and list separately, every one of these where present:

• Transaction / processing fees (the % and/or per-item pence rate)

• Interchange and scheme fees (if itemised)

• Acquiring premiums / acquirer markup (if itemised — see Step 3 for how to classify these)

• Authorisation fees and per-transaction "auth" pence charges

• Gateway fees (monthly and/or per-transaction)

• Monthly account / service / minimum monthly charges and any minimum-spend top-ups

• Terminal / hardware rental or POS fees

• PCI compliance fees and PCI non-compliance penalties

• 3D Secure / 3DS / authentication / fraud-screening fees

• Tokenisation / vault / card-on-file fees (e.g. "token service" line items)

• Chargeback, dispute, retrieval and refund fees

• FX / cross-border / non-secure / surcharge fees

• BNPL/Pay Later commission (% + fixed) and any settlement fees

• Open banking / pay-by-bank per-transaction or platform fees

• Settlement / payout fees

• Any setup, onboarding, PCI scan, statement, or "other" line items

• Any annual or one-off fees (amortise across the period)

If a fee is bundled or blended, say so and show the blended rate.

STEP 3 — Classify every fee into three cost layers

Sort all the fees you found into three layers. The point of these layers is to separate what is
genuinely unavoidable from what a provider adds on top — because Super removes everything except
the unavoidable layer.

• Unavoidable costs (scheme + interchange) — the fees paid to the card networks (Visa,
  Mastercard, Amex) and their interchange that ANY provider must pass through, including Super.
  These do not disappear with any provider. Pull these out separately wherever the statement
  itemises interchange and scheme/assessment fees. Treat as unavoidable: interchange, scheme &
  other network fees, authentication/3DS scheme fees, and network tokenisation fees (e.g. "Visa
  Token Service"). If your statement only shows a single blended rate and does not itemise
  interchange, estimate the unavoidable portion (UK: ~0.2% debit / ~0.3% credit interchange plus
  small scheme fees) and clearly label it an estimate.

• Processing costs — the provider's markup and service charges ON TOP of interchange: the
  processing margin/%, acquiring premiums / acquirer markup, gateway fees, monthly
  account/service/minimum charges, terminal/POS rental, authorisation per-item fees, settlement/
  payout fees, BNPL commission, and any setup/annual fees (amortised). This is the layer Super
  charges £0 for (cards at cost; Pay Later and open banking 0%).

• Extra / hidden costs — the easy-to-miss add-ons: chargeback/dispute/refund fees, PCI
  compliance and non-compliance penalties, FX/cross-border/non-secure surcharges, and anything
  labelled "other" that is not a network pass-through. Also £0 under Super.

Explicit classification rules (to keep runs consistent):

• "Acquiring premiums" / "acquirer markup" → Processing (these are the acquirer's charge
  above interchange, not a network pass-through).

• "Scheme and other network fees", "interchange", "authentication scheme fees", and network
  "token service" fees → Unavoidable.

• Chargeback/dispute/retrieval fees → Extra / hidden. (A negative scheme-fee adjustment tied
  to a chargeback nets against the Unavoidable scheme line, not the chargeback fee.)

• Settlement / payout fees → Processing.

Handling a blended fee that is NOT itemised (e.g. some Amex billing): split it across layers.
Estimate the unavoidable portion at the relevant UK benchmark (~0.3% of that method's sales for
credit/Amex; ~0.2% for debit) and subtract any separately listed gateway/other lines; treat the
remainder as Processing markup. Label every part of this split an estimate and show your working
(blended total − gateway − estimated unavoidable = estimated markup).

Note: the headline contrast is "unavoidable (everyone pays) vs processing + hidden (where Super
saves you everything)."

STEP 4 — Work out the numbers behind the headline

Compute, for the statement period and pro-rated to 1 year and 5 years (assume sales and mix stay
flat — state this; if the statement is a full calendar month, annualise ×12, otherwise pro-rate
by days):

• My total cost today = unavoidable + processing + extra/hidden, in £ and as a % of total sales.

• The unavoidable layer — scheme + interchange. This is the only cost that survives under
  Super (debit/credit at cost; corporate at a flat 0.10% surcharged — see Step 5; Pay Later and
  open banking carry no scheme/interchange so 0). State it in £ and as a % of sales. This is
  what I would pay with Super.

• Saving = my processing costs + my extra/hidden costs (i.e. everything except the unavoidable
  layer), for 1 year and 5 years.

• Saving = my total cost − Super base cost, for 1 year and 5 years.

Sanity-check every projected figure before presenting: the annual fee total should be roughly
12× a full-month statement, NOT a multiple of sales. State the monthly fee, the annual fee, and
the annual sales separately so the scale of each is unambiguous.

STEP 5 — The price scale and the Super "best on market" rate

Build a "cheapest → most expensive" scale for my business, anchored as follows:

• Cheapest end = the Super Payments "best on market" rate, which is NOT a flat 0% across
  everything. Apply these per-method Super rates and weight them by MY sales mix:

  • Consumer debit & credit cards (incl. Apple Pay & Google Pay): AT COST — i.e. only the
    scheme + interchange fees that any provider must pay the card networks, with no processor
    markup or margin. As a planning estimate use ~0.3% of debit/credit card sales for UK
    consumer-weighted mixes (UK interchange is ~0.2% debit / ~0.3% credit, plus small scheme
    fees). State the figure you use.

  • Corporate / commercial cards (with surcharging ON): a flat 0.10% to the merchant. The
    higher corporate interchange and scheme fees are passed on to the cardholder as a
    surcharge, so the merchant's net cost to Super is just 0.10% of corporate card sales. Use
    0.10% for corporate volume unless I tell you surcharging is off (in which case treat
    corporate "at cost" like other cards and say so).

  • Amex: at cost (treat like credit unless the statement shows a distinct Amex rate).

  • Pay Later / BNPL: 0%

  • Open banking / pay-by-bank: 0%
    Super settles T+1 and runs on world-class infrastructure (Stripe, Adyen, Yapily, Modulr,
    Abound). Compute the Super blended rate by weighting these by MY sales mix.
    If the statement does NOT split card volume into debit / credit / corporate (e.g. it only
    gives per-scheme totals like Visa / Mastercard / Amex), say so explicitly and treat all card
    volume "at cost" using the itemised interchange + scheme fees actually charged (or the ~0.3%
    estimate where blended). Do not invent a corporate split or apply the 0.10% corporate rate to
    volume you cannot identify as corporate; note that a real debit/corporate split could lower the
    Super figure further.

• Most expensive end = the market all-in rate for my actual payment mix, taken from the
  Lower Mid-market tier of typical UK all-in pricing (these are % of sales, all-in incl. gateway,
  monthly, 3DS, PCI). Apply per method, weighted by MY mix:

  • Debit: 0.94%

  • Credit: 1.04%

  • Corporate / commercial: 1.78%

  • BNPL / Pay Later: 2.10%

  • Amex: 2.34%

  • Open banking / pay-by-bank: ~1.0% (or a few pence per txn)
    Where debit/credit are not split, state which rate you applied to the combined card volume and
    why. Weight these by MY sales mix to produce a single blended "most expensive" % for my
    business.

STEP 6 — Present it in this exact order

1. HEADLINE (show this first)

A compact side-by-side summary. Use this layout (period figures, with the % of sales in
brackets):

Cost layer What you pay today With Super Unavoidable (scheme + interchange) £___ £___ Processing costs £___ £0 Extra / hidden costs £___ £0 Total cost £___ (__% of sales) £___ (__% of sales)

Key point to make visually obvious: the Unavoidable row is the SAME kind of cost on both
sides (every provider pays scheme + interchange), so Super's total equals just that row, while
Processing and Extra/hidden both drop to £0. Make the two Total figures the visual hero, and
shade or colour the "today" Processing + Extra rows to show that this is the part Super removes.

2. SAVINGS CALLOUTS

Immediately below the headline, two prominent callouts (render as bold blocks or a 2-row table):

1-year saving: £______ (% of sales)
**5-year saving: £____** (__% of sales)

3. THE DETAIL (below the headline)

Now show the supporting tables:

Table A — Fees by payment method: Payment method | Sales processed (£) | Total fees in
period (£) | Effective rate (% of sales) | Notable add-on costs included.

Table B — Fee breakdown by cost layer: Cost layer | Fee type | Amount in period (£) | % of
total fees | Paid under Super? Group rows under the three layers (Unavoidable / Processing /
Extra-hidden). In the "Paid under Super?" column mark the unavoidable rows "Yes — at cost" and
every processing and extra/hidden row "No — £0", so it is unmissable which costs Super removes.

Table C — Projected cost & saving: Horizon | Your total cost (£) | Your cost (% of sales) |
With Super (£) | Saving (£). Rows: This period (actual); 1 year; 5 years.

Table D — Where you sit on the scale: Position | Effective rate (% of sales) | Annual cost
(£). Rows: Cheapest (Super — cards at cost, Pay Later & open banking 0%); You (today);
Upper-average market. Below the table, render ONE horizontal scale bar (cheapest on the left,
upper-average on the right) with a marker showing where I land. Do NOT also add a separate
ASCII / text-art version of the bar — the rendered bar is the only bar. A short one-line caption
explaining the benchmark weighting is fine; an ASCII bar drawn with dashes and a bullet is not.

Close with a 3–4 line plain-English summary: my current blended rate, the Super blended rate
(cards at cost + 0% on Pay Later/open banking), the total £ I'd save over 1 and 5 years, and
where that puts me versus the market. Be specific with the numbers from my statements. Do not
over-claim — base everything on the figures I gave you, treat card costs as scheme + interchange
(not zero), and flag anything you couldn't read or had to assume.

STEP 7 — Deliver it as a branded PDF

Produce the entire output above (headline → savings callouts → detail tables → summary) as a
polished, print-ready PDF in Super Payments' brand style. If you can generate a PDF file
directly, do so. If you cannot, instead output a single self-contained HTML document (all CSS
inline in one file) that I can open in a browser and "Print → Save as PDF" — and tell me to do
that. Either way, apply this exact brand styling:

Typeface: Poppins throughout (import from Google Fonts in the HTML:
@import url('https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Poppins:wght@400;500;700&display=swap');).
Fall back to Arial/sans-serif if Poppins is unavailable.

Colour palette (use hex exactly):

• Eclipse #1E0032 (deep purple) — page title, headings, body-heading text

• Cloud #F5F4F7 (off-white) — section/table background tints

• Solaris #FFB000 (amber) — heading underlines / accent rules

• Nebula #5C4BBC (violet) — sub-headings, table header fill, left accent rules

• Comet #30D7D1 (teal) — the savings callouts background/border

• Flare #FF7506 (bright orange) — highlight the "Total cost (today)" and the saving figures

Layout rules:

• A4 or Letter, ~20mm margins. Title at top: "What You're Really Paying to Get Paid".

• HEADLINE table: make the two Total cost figures the largest text on the page; the "today"
  total in Flare, the "With Super" total in Eclipse. White text on Nebula table headers. Render
  the "today" Processing and Extra/hidden cells with a Flare tint (and/or strike-through on the
  With-Super £0) to dramatise that these are the costs Super removes; keep the Unavoidable row
  visually neutral on both sides since it is the same cost everywhere.

• SAVINGS: two side-by-side callout cards with a Comet background tint and a Comet/Nebula
  border, the £ figures large and bold in Flare.

• Detail tables: Nebula header row (white text), alternating Cloud row striping, thin
  Nebula/Cloud borders, right-aligned numbers.

• For Table D's scale, render a single horizontal bar (cheapest on the left, upper-average on
  the right) with a marker showing where I land. Spacing requirements so nothing overlaps:
  (a) give the bar enough clearance ABOVE it that the tick labels (the position name plus its %,
  two lines) sit fully clear of both the bar and the table row above — budget at least ~40px of
  combined top margin; (b) anchor multi-line tick labels far enough above the bar that the
  lower line (the %) does not touch the bar's top edge — budget ~36px, not ~22px; (c) keep the
  end labels ("cheapest" / "most expensive") and the edge tick labels a few % inside the bar's
  ends so they don't clip at the page margin. After rendering, visually verify the bar:
  percentages must not overlap the bar and labels must not collide with the table.

• Footer line: "Prepared with the Super Payments fee-audit prompt · figures based on the
  statements provided · benchmarks are market estimates." Keep it clean, lots of white space,
  no clip-art.

Before finalising the PDF, do a visual QA pass: render each page to an image and check that
(1) no table collides with the scale bar, (2) the scale-bar percentages sit clear of the bar,
(3) there is no orphaned near-empty page from a forced page break, and (4) there is no leftover
ASCII/text-art bar. Fix any of these before presenting the file.

Make sure every number in the PDF matches the analysis above exactly.