Cost Data Uploads

Acceptance is only half of a payment decision; the other half is what the approval costs you. Cost data reaches Athia as a CSV upload rather than an API connection, because contracted rates, per-method pricing and fee schedules are commercial terms held in agreements and spreadsheets — most providers expose no API for them at all. A file is the only complete source.

With cost data loaded, Athia can move from "which provider approves more" to "which provider approves more per unit of cost", price a routing change before you make it, and separate a fee increase you agreed to from one you did not.

The two cost connections

Keep them separate even where a single provider handles both. Card fees decompose differently from non-card fees, and Athia's cost model treats them as different objects.

Before you start

There are no provider-console prerequisites and no credentials for this connector — it is a file upload, not an API connection. What you do need before you open the wizard:

• The Athia CSV template. Download it from step 2 of the wizard ("Need help with the format? Download our CSV template to see the expected structure.") and fill it in. The template defines the columns Athia expects, in the order it expects them. It is the authoritative format definition — a file assembled from memory or from a provider export will usually fail validation.
• The rate card itself, as agreed: your contracted rates, per-method pricing and fee schedule for the period the file covers.
• The operating regions the agreement applies to.

Configuration fields

Setup

The wizard has three steps: Configuration → Upload File → Validate.

1. Go to Settings → Connections and choose + Add Connection.
2. Under Costs Data, select Card Payment Fees or Non-card Payment Fees.
3. Step 1, Configure Connector: enter a Connection Name and tick one or more Operating Regions. Both are required.
4. Step 2, Upload CSV File: download the template if you have not already, then drop your file on the dropzone or use Browse Files.
5. Choose Validate Data.

Validation checks the file against the expected structure before anything is ingested, so a malformed file is rejected at upload rather than surfacing later as wrong cost numbers in an answer. If validation fails, fix the file and upload again — nothing partial is retained.

Sync cadence

Cost data is a snapshot of a commercial agreement, so it goes stale the moment your pricing changes. Upload a fresh file whenever you:

• renegotiate rates,
• add a provider or payment method,
• enter a new market, or
• receive a revised fee schedule.

Treat it as a quarterly review item even if nothing obvious has changed — passthrough and scheme fee changes arrive without a conversation.

Limits and things to know

• Only .csv files are supported. No Excel workbooks, no compressed archives.
• The template is the format spec. Required columns are defined by the downloadable template rather than documented in the product. File-size, row-count and column limits are not published.
• Upload is all-or-nothing. A file that fails validation is rejected whole; there is no partial ingest.
• Supersede behaviour is not stated in the product. Whether a new upload replaces the previous rates or is held alongside them is not defined in the wizard. Name each upload for the agreement and the period it covers, and confirm with your Athia team which rate card is in force before relying on a cost figure that spans a pricing change.
• A rate card is not an invoice. It tells Athia what you should be charged, not what you were charged. Actual settlement and fee records come from the provider connectors, and their fee granularity varies: Checkout.com and Adyen carry the richest fee detail, while Stripe reports fees blended, without granular interchange. Loading both your contracted rates and your provider's actual fee records is what makes fee variance analysis possible. See Athia Connectors for the provider connector catalog.

Troubleshooting