The Payments Experts Podcast
Expert payments attorneys discuss the electronic payments industry from a legal perspective.
Episodes
108 episodes
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...
Building An ISO in 2026: The Hard Truth from the Field With Guest Frank Pagano of VizyPay | PEP091
The conversation opens on a blunt question: can a solo agent or a small team still build something meaningful in payments, or is the market a race to zero? Frank Pagano of VizyPay (https://www.vizypay.com/) doesn’t flinch. He argues it’s still ...
The CPayO: Chief Payment Officer - The Role Which Doesn't Exist (but should!) | Book Talk | PEP090
The CPayO: Making Payments a First-Class Function (with Viktoria Soltesz)Payments isn’t a line item. It’s the circulatory system of your business. In this episode, we sit down with Viktoria Soltesz (https://www.solteszinstitute.com/), au...
Contracts That Make You Bankable: Portability, Tokens, Termination | Adam T. Hark WHF | PEP089
Banking Meets Payments: Capital, AI Reality Checks, and the Tokenized-Deposit ShakeupHosted by Leo Arzumanyan and Jeremy Stock. Special guest: Adam T. Hark, Managing Member, Wellesley Hills Financial (https://www.wellesleyhillsfinancial...
Stopping Deepfake Fraud: Identity at the Exact Moment Money Moves | How Payments Fight Back | PEP088
Stopping Deepfake Fraud: Identity at the Exact Moment Money MovesA familiar voice on Zoom. A “known” face on video. A routine request that moves millions. Today’s most dangerous attacks look like business as usual—until the funds are go...
Compliance-as-a-Feature: How ISOs Keep MIDs (and Sleep) | Website Compliance That Sticks | PEP086
ADA, Chatbots, and Compliance-as-a-Feature: Turning Lawsuit Traps into Portfolio Stickiness (with Michael Williams, Clym (https://www.clym.io/)Cash is disappearing, card rails rule, and “set it and forget it” legal copy is now a liabili...
Lending Against Residuals: How ISOs Really Scale with Super G Capital | Darrin Ginsberg | PEP085
The payments world didn’t just change—it rewired who holds the power. Christopher Dryden, Founding and Managing Partner of Global Legal Law Firm, sits down with Darrin Ginsberg of Super G Capital (https://www.supergcapital.com/) to chart the pa...
VAMP Caps & Chargebacks: The New Rules to Survive in 2026 | Guest Maurice Griefer of MyCPO | PEP084
The payments game has changed, and winging it is no longer an option. James Huber and Jeremy Stock sit down with Maurice Griefer of MyCPO (https://www.getmycpo.com/) to unpack what it takes to scale a high-risk ecommerce brand without getting c...