The difference between the file and the truth
Reconciliation exists to answer four questions. Did every transaction we recorded actually settle? Did anything settle that we never recorded? Were we charged what we agreed? And what do we owe the merchant once all of that is accounted for?
SFTPPulled
APIFetched
WebhookReal time
UploadOperator
Every provider, one model
Acquirers, alternative payment methods, wallets, banks and payout vendors each report in their own format and on their own clock. Files arrive four ways - pulled over SFTP, fetched from the provider API, pushed in real time by webhook, or uploaded by an operator - and every route lands in the same reconciliation record. Formats we have not met before do not need a release: an operator maps which column holds the reference, the amount, the currency and the status, sets the delimiter and the approved and declined tokens, and imports. Adding a provider means adding a source, not rebuilding your month end.
See the integrationsMatching, and the exceptions that matter
Rows are matched back to the transaction that produced them on any of the references the platform stored at authorisation - approval number, debit reference, acquirer reference. When a row matches more than one transaction the engine says so and refuses to apply it, because a confident wrong match is worse than an exception. The matched majority reconciles silently and your team gets the remainder, separated by what is actually wrong: rows in the file with nothing behind them, transactions that never appeared in a file, amounts that differ from what was authorised, and the one nobody expects - transactions the acquirer settled that your platform recorded as declined.
Transaction managementDisputes arrive as money, not as a note
When a dispute lands in a reconciliation file it becomes its own financial entry rather than a flag stamped on the original sale. Chargebacks, representments, pre-arbitration, arbitration and every recovery each post their own row with their own amount and their own fees, so the original transaction keeps its history and the ledger keeps its arithmetic. Deterrent and refund-style resolutions post separately too, deliberately kept out of your chargeback ratio because they never counted against it.
Risk and rulesWebhookReal-time changes
SweepEvery 15 min + catch-up
A deadline you cannot miss by accident
An unanswered dispute closes against you automatically, so the platform treats the response window as the organising principle. The deadline for the current stage is stored the moment it is known and escalates on its own at seventy two hours, at twenty four, and at expiry, each announced once. A webhook delivers changes in real time and a sweep re-checks every open case every fifteen minutes with a rolling catch-up, so a notification lost in transit never costs you a case. The merchant supplies evidence and a recommendation through a ticket, your operator keeps the final accept-or-defend decision, and merchants who should always be defended can be set to defend automatically.
The operator consoleWhat it actually cost you
Your real cost is not knowable at the moment you take a payment. It arrives later, in the file. Reconciliation writes it back onto the transaction it belongs to - interchange, scheme fee and the acquirer reference - so cost sits against revenue at the row level rather than as a monthly lump. What that buys you is a coverage number: how much of your settled volume still has no cost attached, broken down by acquirer and currency, with the age of the oldest gap. A month covering sixty percent of volume and one covering ninety nine look identical on a profit line, and only this tells them apart.
How pricing worksBuilt into settlement, not bolted beside it
This is the part most platforms leave to a spreadsheet. Reconciliation is what moves a transaction from unpaid by the scheme to paid, and settlement pays from the paid side, so the two are the same system rather than two systems that agree on a good day. You can go further and have settlement pay only what reconciliation matched, or refuse to run at all while funding movements are still unreconciled until someone approves it deliberately. Each dispute type keeps its own line on the merchant statement, so a representment is never folded into chargebacks and a recovery is never mistaken for a sale.
Settlement management
