The Payments Experts Podcast
Expert payments attorneys discuss the electronic payments industry from a legal perspective.
Episodes
115 episodes
Visa's Secret Shoppers Cost This Merchant $25K: How Merchants Get Hit With Compliance Fines | PEP116
Processors promise “set it and forget it,” then the ISO is on the hook when a merchant gets fined. We dig into registration, enforcement, and how to protect trust with real support.A single pricing tag can cost a merchant $5,000, and so...
Your Business Is Probably Overpaying - Learn Why | AI-Powered Cost Audits with Bill Kurtzner PEP115
What if the fastest way to grow your business isn't increasing sales, but eliminating the hidden costs you're already paying?In this episode of the Payments Experts Podcast, hosts Christopher Dryden and Jeremy Stock sit down with Bill K...
Merchant of Record: The Compliance Model Everyone In Payments Is Talking About And Why | PEP114
“Merchant of record” sounds official. The problem: card networks don’t even define it the same way. That ambiguity can get businesses shut down overnight. Want the bright line between MOR, PayFac, and PayFac Light?California can be the ...
The Biggest Opportunity in Payments 2026: Why Distribution May Be Your Last True Advantage | PEP113
What if the real moat isn’t your software, but your distribution? James Shepherd breaks down why vertical SaaS is exploding in payments and why agents can win if they bring the right solutions to market.AI is not your new coworker. It i...
Five Things That Give The Merchant Processing Industry a Bad Name and How To Fix It | PEP112
Five things that give the merchant processing industry a bad name.A payment processing statement should never feel like a magic trick, yet too many merchants get hit with fees they never truly agreed to and increases they do not notice ...
The AI Platform Helping Businesses Cut Costs Everywhere: Cost Savings | Bill Kurtzner PEP111
What if your invoices could tell you exactly where you’re overpaying? We talk agentic AI that audits spend, finds hard savings, and even unlocks wholesale pricing for SMBs. If you’ve ever looked at an invoice and wondered, “Am I pa...
Merchant of Record vs PayFac: MOR Explained: What Everyone Gets Wrong - Know The Difference | PEP110
“Merchant of record” gets thrown around nonstop, but it changes who owns the customer, the descriptor, and the liability. We break down what it really means and what it is not.“Merchant of record” sounds like a neat shortcut in payments...
Why Merchants Get MATCH’d After Fraud They Didn’t Cause: Inside the BRAM Fine System | PEP109
Negotiation changes when you have leverage. Our playbook: lock out debits, demand the underlying basis, and force real answers, sometimes by filing a complaint.A six figure “brand fine” lands out of nowhere, nobody will show you the und...
The Secret to Merchant Stickiness? Rewards Instead of Rate Cuts with Guest Tuzo Rewards | PEP108
Payment processing often feels like a tax and when every ISO sells the same terminals, the same funding speed, and the same basic promises, the only lever left is price. That is how the industry ends up in a race to the bottom, with merchants s...
Why Processors Freeze Accounts (And How to Avoid It) | How Merchants Survive & Even Thrive | PEP107
Stripe approved the merchant… then froze funds and refunded customers anyway. How do you protect your business when the processor owns the relationship?One day your payments are flowing. The next day a platform decides it “doesn’t suppo...
Dual Pricing Done Right: 2026 Practical Guide To Cash Discount And Surcharging Compliance | PEP106
Surcharging caps. Debit card limits. Fines that flow through banks. If you’ve ever wondered who really profits from card payments, this conversation will change how you see Checkout is turning into a trust test. Customers hate surp...
AI Hallucinates a Refund Policy (It Didn't Exist) & The Business Paid: Rogue AI in Payments | PEP105
Software that negotiates prices and completes payments for you sounds convenient until it hallucinates a refund policy.Software that can shop, negotiate, and pay for you is no longer science fiction, and it is already colliding with the...
PayFac vs Merchant of Record: The Risk No One Explains | Guest Deana Rich of Infinicept | PEP104
“Merchant of record” sounds easy, until you realize it isn’t a defined term. We break down PayFac vs MOR, why rules exist, and how people accidentally step into money transmitter risk.PayFac is one of those payments terms people toss ar...
How Dual Pricing and Surcharging Changed ISOs Forever: Payments Now Residuals Risk & Growth | PEP103
A single receipt can change how you see the payments industry. When Naveed from KV Payments notices a 4% card charge at a mechanic shop, it triggers the question every small business owner eventually asks: where is all that processing margin go...
Two Giants Control Payments: The New Truth About Debit Routing and Hidden Processor Fees | PEP102
Outrage alert: a government ambulance merchant was charged 9.49% in fees. We unpack how hidden debit routing and “pass-throughs” spike your effective rate and what ISOs and merchants can do next.Ever wonder why your “great” rate still t...
2026 Reality Check: The Truth About “Junk Fees” in Payments & CBD Peptides MATCH News | PEP101
Ever had a $100 ticket morph into $260 at checkout and wondered who’s skimming the difference? We use that universal frustration to open a candid tour through payments in 2026—where junk fees, policy experiments, and AI-driven fraud collide wit...
The Illinois Swipe Fee Shockwave: Who Really Pays? | Illinois Bans Interchange on Sales Tax | PEP100
Card fees on sales tax? Illinois just lit a fuse. We unpack who really pays, how ISOs get squeezed, and why “compliance” might mean three prices at checkout. When lawmakers target “junk fees,” the payments engine doesn’t stop—it re...
Honor All Cards Explained: Visa & Mastercard Settlement Breakdown for Payment Professionals | PEP099
Merchants are told they have “choices.” But do they? We unpack the Visa–Mastercard settlement, the honor all cards rule, and why surcharging still trips up pros. Listen now and tell us: does this help small businesses or not?What happen...
Tokenized Deposits vs Stablecoins: The Real Payments War | Stablecoins Become Payment Rails | PEP098
Stablecoins aren’t a side conversation anymore — they’re knocking on the front door of the payments ecosystem.In this episode of the Payments Experts Podcast, we sit down with Adam T. Hark, managing member of Wellesley Hi...
Residuals Rate Hikes & Reality: Inside ISO Economics | Payments Due Diligence Hack That Saves Money
Ever wondered why that “free” POS hardware ends up costing so much later? Christopher Dryden, Esq., sits down with Magnolia Ventures’ Jessica Casto to pull back the curtain on modern payments strategy: how software-led distribution reshaped acq...
Data Is King: Building Real AI Guardrails in Payments: The AI Readiness Checklist For 2026 | PEP096
AI is no longer a chatbot. It is an agent that can move data and make decisions. In this in-studio conversation, Leo Arzumanyan, Matthew Luciani, and Jeremy Stock cut through the hype and get practical about using AI in payments. W...
Peptides, MATCH, and VAMP: Surviving the Crackdown & High-Risk in 2026 with Soar Payments | PEP095
Banks don’t close accounts for sport; they close accounts when risk stories don’t add up. James Huber, managing partner of Global Legal Law Firm, sits down with Adam Carlson from SOAR Payments (https://na2.hubs.ly/H033tL00) to unpac...
How AI Compliance Controls & A Unified Portal Cut Lending Time In Half with DealHub 360 | PEP094
Visit our guests DealHub 360 here: https://na2.hubs.ly/H030plB0Tired of chasing documents and updates across spreadsheets, inboxes, and shared drives? We bring together the creators of DealHub 360, Deepika Shahani and Paul Man...
Real-Time Rules That Keep Merchants Live: VAMP Portfolio Risk And Transparency | Qredible | PEP093
Payments leaders love to say risk is everywhere, but most teams still chase it with spreadsheets, screenshots, and crossed fingers. Our conversation with Noah Fitzgerald of Qredible (visit Qredible: https://na2.hubs.ly/H02-3Md0) cuts through th...
The CPayO Mindset: The Eight-Step Payments Framework Every Payments Professional Needs | PEP092
The CPayO Mindset: Turning Payments From Cost Center Into Competitive Edge.Three percent can quietly devour fifteen percent of your profit. In this episode, we strip payments down to the levers that actually move margin: rails, contract...