Fee and Amounts

Fees refer to the cost of performing a transaction. Depending on the type of transaction, method of execution or the currency of the transaction, different costs may apply. These costs are usually negotiable and varies from merchant to merchant (please contact support) to set your fees.

On the other hand, a fee bearer is an entity who bears the cost of executing a transaction (transaction fees). On Shutterscore, there are 2 fee bearers - Merchant and Beneficiary. The merchant generally refers to you, the business that operates an account on Shutterscore and integrates Shutterscore into your application or business. The beneficiary is your customer or any entity that will receive a withdrawal from your Shutterscore account (via API or the Dashboard).

By default, all fees are collected from the merchant. However, a transaction can be configured such that the fees are paid by the beneficiary. This can be done by passing the fee_bearer property to the transaction request. Irrespective of the configuration, the fee bearer for a swap or deposit transaction is always the merchant.

Relative and Absolute Fees (Fee Types)

Fees may be relative or absolute. Relative fees are usually arbitrary values given as a guide to help the merchant pre-calculate the fee before the transaction is executed. Usually, how they are calculated are determined by fee_type property.

When a rate is retrieved, a transaction has not been executed until a swap is performed. So, the fee returned before by the API on the rate is a relative and it describes the cost of the transaction, if a swap is executed. To calculate and display the fee, the fee type property is required. A flat fee type simply means that the fee will be taken from the amount to be received without any further calculation. That is, if amount to be received is 500, fee is 50 and the fee type is flat, 50 will be subtracted from 500.

Again the same scenario occurred, but with a fee type of percentage, then further calculation will be required. So we will have (fee/100) * amount to be received. Which is (50/100) * 500 = 250. This means that 250 will be subtracted from 500.

On the other hand, the fee on a swap, deposit or withdrawal transaction is absolute in that, the transaction has been executed and a fee has been collected for the transaction. The fee property at this point describes the amount of the transaction that was collected as fees.

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Note

On swaps, the fee is always charged on the to_currency. This means that the fee will be taken from the amount received by the merchant.

Amount, Amount Charged and Amount Settled

Amount, amount charged and amount settled all refer to different amounts on the transaction, depending on the bearer of the transaction fees.

Amount refers to amount sent to Shutterscore by the merchant (either via API or the Dashboard) to be processed. Amount Charged is the total amount and fee (amount + fee) charged for the transaction. Amount settled is the amount received by either the merchant (in a swap or deposit) or the beneficiary (in a withdrawal).

Let's consider an example where the merchant swaps 100 USDT for NGN at the rate of 1 USDT = 100 NGN, a fee of 1% and a fee bearer of merchant (default for swaps and cannot be changed). Since this is a swap transaction, the fee will be applied to the NGN (since this is the currency the merchant wants to receive). The values for amount, amount charged and amount settled are given below.

Amount = USDT 100 * 100 = NGN 1000
Fee = fee/100 * Amount = 1/100 * NGN 1000 = NGN 10
Amount Charged = Amount (for swaps)
Amount Settled = Amount - Fee (for swaps)

Let's say the fee type was flat, then
Fee = NGN 1,

Again, if the transaction was either a deposit or a withdrawal, with an amount of NGN 1000 and fee of NGN 10, then the amount charged and amount settled are given below,

For Deposit
Fee Bearer = Merchant
Amount Charged = Amount = NGN 1000
Amount Settled = Amount - Fee = NGN 990

For Withdrawal
Fee Bearer = Merchant
Amount Charged = Amount + Fee = NGN 1000 + NGN 10 = NGN 1010
Amount Settled = Amount = NGN 1000

Fee Bearer = Beneficiary
Amount Charged = Amount = NGN 1000
Amount Settled = Amount - Fee = NGN 1000 - NGN 10 = NGN 990