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 neglected? A rising variety of fintechs have developed methods and applied sciences to assist card issuers and acquirers entry hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in value 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 presents a SaaS intelligence platform for banks and acquirers that enhances earnings on card transactions by as much as 50%. The corporate permits card issuers and service provider acquirers to optimize card scheme charges and enhance 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 initiatives at corporations resembling Accenture and Mastercard.
Torus most not too long ago demonstrated its expertise on the Finovate stage at FinovateEurope in February.
What drawback does Torus remedy and who does it remedy 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 value and revenue metrics on the stage of transaction, product, service provider, area—and past.
How does Torus remedy this drawback higher than different corporations or options?
Lisitsyn: We offer practically 98% charge prediction accuracy, and our plug-and-play setup permits end-to-end analytics with minimal assets wanted from the shopper 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 embrace banks, fintechs, BaaS suppliers, PSPs, and huge retailers throughout Europe, the UK, Central Asia, and Japan. We attain them by 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 charge mechanics, evaluation pitfalls, and market updates.
Many purchasers come to us after seeing only one quantity: $1M+ in annual losses that could possibly be averted with higher visibility.

Are you able to inform us a few favourite implementation or deployment of your expertise?
Lisitsyn: One EU-based e-commerce acquirer used to evaluate profitability by portfolio averages—and was dropping 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 have now productized over 100 years of joint workforce 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 supplies us a deep understanding of the place the ache factors are. When your workforce 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 below are more and more open to partnerships, and startups are studying to scale responsibly and function underneath real-world pressures.
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 symbolize 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 permits 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 develop into a margin sport.
Finovate is constructed for exhibiting 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 come back?
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 Price Indicator—a instrument that estimates transaction prices with no need actual knowledge. It predicts interchange and scheme charges based mostly on nation, MCC, and channel, giving acquirers and BIN sponsors prompt, 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 commonplace 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 shifting to clear the trail.
Right here is our have a look at fintech innovation all over the world.
Latin America and the Caribbean
Asia-Pacific
The Inventory Alternate of Thailand introduced deployment of threat and surveillance platforms courtesy of its expanded strategic expertise partnership with the Nasdaq.
Adyen chosen Fiskil as its data-sharing accomplice to reinforce onboarding and account verification for retailers in Australia.
Vietnam-based securities firm Kafi went stay with Horizon Buying and selling Options.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Central and Jap Europe
Center East and Northern Africa
Israel-based BioCatch and The Knoble co-launched an anti-scam information and value 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 reinforce monetary inclusion and remittance options.
Indian fintech unicorn Moneyview readies for an preliminary public providing.
Photograph by Maksim Shutov on Unsplash
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