Thanks for the tip on this- certainly helped! Here is what I ended up moving towards... admittedly a bit strange, but is working nicely...
1. Set Shadowcatcher to 'Always Transparent' ... NOT compositing
2. Use rayswitcher to have 'Direct Override' set to WHITE on Shadowcatcher
3. Beauty and Alpha pass saved with NO alpha
Two layers in Photoshop
1. Mask Beauty Render with Alpha Render (seems to get no fringe and allows for transparency)
2. Have Beauty Render with no mask underneath the masked layer and set to multiply**
** This is why I am using Rayswitcher so that the beautiful shadows are captured on white so it can simply be set to Multiply blending so it can be placed on any surface at the client. Since it is denoised and no relying on any alpha channels for the shadow, which doesn't get denoised-- I can get away with only a couple render passes. When set to compositing, it takes longer and the results are not as good.
Anyways, thought I would share