This week, Finovate World travels to Lithuania to speak about cost card optimization with Torus’ Kirill Lisitsyn.
The cost card enterprise is among the many best areas of monetary providers. However are among the best alternatives for corporations to revenue being ignored? A rising variety of fintechs have developed methods and applied sciences to assist card issuers and acquirers entry hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in price financial savings and missed income by higher controlling card community charges and enhancing transactional profitability.

Lithuania-based Torus is one such fintech. Based in 2021 and making its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2024, Torus affords a SaaS intelligence platform for banks and acquirers that enhances earnings on card transactions by as much as 50%. The corporate allows card issuers and service provider acquirers to optimize card scheme charges and increase transactional earnings through pricing optimization and profitability evaluation on the card and service provider stage.
To debate this area, and the alternatives it presents for card issuers and service provider acquirers, we caught up with Torus Co-Founder and CEO Kirill Lisitsyn (pictured). Lisitsyn brings to bear greater than 15 years of expertise main funds consulting tasks at corporations akin to Accenture and Mastercard.
Torus most just lately demonstrated its know-how on the Finovate stage at FinovateEurope in February.
What downside does Torus clear up and who does it clear up it for?
Kirill Lisitsyn: Torus is a SaaS platform for in-depth evaluation and optimization of scheme charges (Visa, Mastercard) for issuers, service provider acquirers, and now giant retailers. We automate the gathering, forecasting, and reconciliation of each transaction flows and bill knowledge, in order that our purchasers can see correct price and revenue metrics on the stage of transaction, product, service provider, area—and past.
How does Torus clear up this downside higher than different corporations or options?
Lisitsyn: We offer practically 98% payment prediction accuracy, and our plug-and-play setup allows end-to-end analytics with minimal sources wanted from the client facet. Torus goes past fairly dashboards to ship optimization suggestions backed by trade benchmarks and detailed “what-if” simulations.
Who’re Torus’ main clients. How do you attain them?
Lisitsyn: Our purchasers embody banks, fintechs, BaaS suppliers, PSPs, and enormous retailers throughout Europe, the UK, Central Asia, and Japan. We attain them by means of focused outreach, trade conferences, high-visibility publications, and strategic partnerships with top-tier trade gamers.
We’re additionally constructing a group round card economics. I run a LinkedIn web page the place I share insights on scheme payment mechanics, evaluation pitfalls, and market updates.
Many consumers come to us after seeing only one quantity: $1M+ in annual losses that may very well be prevented with higher visibility.

Are you able to inform us a couple of favourite implementation or deployment of your know-how?
Lisitsyn: One EU-based e-commerce acquirer used to evaluate profitability by portfolio averages—and was shedding as much as 10% on hidden merchant-level losses. With Torus, they switched to granular evaluation, recognized low-margin segments, up to date pricing, and elevated total portfolio margin by 30%. These are actual, realized good points—not slideware.
What in your background gave you the boldness to sort out this problem?
Lisitsyn: We’ve got productized over 100 years of joint staff experience within the card funds trade—coming from totally different segments of the trade, gamers like Mastercard, World Funds, Societe Generale, Worldline, and varied different banks. That is our unfair benefit which provides us a deep understanding of the place the ache factors are. When your staff consists of former scheme insiders, “scheme charges” cease being scary and begin turning into manageable.
What’s the fintech ecosystem in Lithuania like? What’s the relationship between fintechs, banks, and conventional monetary providers corporations in Lithuania?
Lisitsyn: Lithuania is a magnet for fintech startups: a responsive regulator, fast-track licensing, and tech-forward infrastructure. Banks listed here are more and more open to partnerships, and startups are studying to scale responsibly and function beneath real-world pressures.Â
Torus is a superb instance of how legacy banking know-how and fintech velocity can mix into one thing highly effective. We’re proud to each actively contribute to the Lithuanian ecosystem and characterize it internationally.
You demoed at FinovateEurope earlier this 12 months. How was your expertise?
Lisitsyn: This 12 months we demoed our product for BaaS suppliers. We showcased how Torus allows these gamers to precisely calculate scheme charges and interchange per transaction, allocate prices, and construct margin-based pricing for his or her fintech companions.
We demonstrated that BaaS can transfer past quantity video games and turn into a margin recreation.
Finovate is constructed for displaying working merchandise to actual decision-makers—and our demo generated a number of extremely related inbound requests for our BaaS module.
What are your objectives for Torus? What can we count on to listen to from you within the months to return?
Lisitsyn: We’re scaling quick. This 12 months consists of a number of product launches and main function updates. Only a month in the past, we launched our new product, Service provider Value Indicator—a software that estimates transaction prices while not having actual knowledge. It predicts interchange and scheme charges primarily based on nation, MCC, and channel, giving acquirers and BIN sponsors instantaneous, dependable margin calculations.
Coming subsequent is a dynamic profit-based pricing module, embedded analytics for BaaS, and AI brokers to assist profitability management, pricing and determination workflows.
We’re shaping a brand new normal of transparency and profitability controls in card economics. Our power lies in combining deep trade experience with true product velocity. We all know the place the market is heading—and we’re already transferring to clear the trail.
Right here is our take a look at fintech innovation world wide.
Latin America and the Caribbean
Asia-Pacific
The Inventory Change of Thailand introduced deployment of threat and surveillance platforms courtesy of its expanded strategic know-how partnership with the Nasdaq.
Adyen chosen Fiskil as its data-sharing accomplice to boost onboarding and account verification for retailers in Australia.
Vietnam-based securities firm Kafi went dwell with Horizon Buying and selling Options.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Central and Japanese Europe
Center East and Northern Africa
Israel-based BioCatch and The Knoble co-launched an anti-scam information and price calculator.
MENA-based digital property buying and selling platform BitOasis expanded to Bahrain.
The federal government of Dubai partnered with Crypto.com to allow crypto funds for presidency charges.
Central and Southern Asia
Forbes profiled Razorpay co-founder Harshil Mathur.
Pakistani fintech ABHI partnered with UAE-based LuLuFin to boost monetary inclusion and remittance options.
Indian fintech unicorn Moneyview readies for an preliminary public providing.
Picture by Maksim Shutov on Unsplash
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