The Payments Experts Podcast
Expert payments attorneys discuss the electronic payments industry from a legal perspective.
The Payments Experts Podcast
Navigating Merchant Match Violations: When Banks Don't Play By Their Own Rules | MATCH | PEP046
Credit card processors and banks are putting merchants on the Match List without proper investigation or due process, even when merchants comply with removal requests for prohibited products.
• Merchants being placed on Match List for having inventory of prohibited products, even with no sales
• Banks failing to provide evidence of actual rules violations when challenged
• Match List fines starting at $200,000 are negotiated down through the chain while merchants still pay full amount
• Peptide research facilities being "blanket" matched despite operating transparently
• Banks and MasterCard showing indifference to wrongful Match listings
• Legal action often necessary as banks ignore reasonable requests for evidence
• Merchant processing agreements prohibit class actions, making legal recourse difficult
• Documenting all compliance efforts critical when facing potential Match listing
If you're facing Match List issues, document all communication, challenge banks to show evidence of processed payments for prohibited items, and consider legal representation to navigate the process.
**Matters discussed are all opinions and do not constitute legal advice. All events or likeness to real people and events is a coincidence.**
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A payments podcast of Global Legal Law Firm
Merchant pays, but ultimately if the fine started out at $200,000 and it got reduced to $10,000, $100,000, then the ISO negotiates $60,000,. Processor negotiates $30,000, up to $10,000,. Right, everyone's making their own rules.
Speaker 3:Everybody's making a spread, except the merchant.
Speaker 1:Off a rules violation and that is a bad thing to begin with. But if you couple that with a faulty investigatory process and an arbitrary decision-making process, yeah man, it's just problematic.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Payments Experts Podcast, a podcast of global legal law firm. We hope you enjoy this episode. Really excited, today we have in studio joining us our regulars to the podcast. We got founding and managing partners so excited Christopher Dryden, as well as Bryce Vandermoor, senior associate attorney. Gentlemen, one of our favorite topics match list. We've got a unique situation that we're going to be discussing today. Let's jump right in.
Speaker 1:Well, actually, what I want to say first is that when this thing comes out, I want Ambrosia's how I Feel to be like the lead in. I will look, Chris, If it's not copyrighted.
Speaker 2:I will, but copyright gets in the way of things sometimes. Don't love this, don't worry about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're doing good deeds here. Yeah, totally All right, so we're back.
Speaker 3:To talk about our favorite topic, which is Match. Because Match List yeah, Match List because we learn new things every day and so I want to report them, get this information out there so that you guys know how to deal with it and why you need legal probably need legal representation to navigate it, Probably.
Speaker 1:They almost make it mandatory sometimes. Yeah, they do.
Speaker 3:But there are some things that have come up that I think that merchants can actually try before they come to us.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you what I had. Somebody hit me up the other day, somebody in the industry, and they were like no, I'd rather just you do it. You know who to go talk to. You're going to get there a lot faster and we'll at least get a response.
Speaker 2:I've talked to so many clients, you guys, who have literally come to us after 15 hours in in two weeks trying to get somewhere on the phone, being bounced around from this customer service agent to some manager, you know whatnot, and they eventually give up, and that's usually at the point they're calling us you know yeah yeah but here here's what's going on.
Speaker 3:so so a little background for those who haven't watched every one of the other podcasts.
Speaker 3:The match list it member to Control High Risk is a list that is for merchants that are suspected of violating one of the 14 card brand slash MasterCard rules, and if you end up on that list, you're not going to be notified. Your ability to process payments with credit cards is going to be revoked for five years, ability to process payments with credit cards is going to be revoked for five years and more than likely, you're going to go belly up because nobody really accepts cash or checks anymore. But the one realization that I keep coming to because I do this match work quite a lot is that ultimately, I don't think that the banks actually really understand match, stand, match, and I also don't think that mastercard even understands how how to like wield its power, because there, there, there is just a there's just a disconnect. When I talk to them, they really they don't. What I'm learning is that they don't know what they're doing, but, more importantly, they don't care no, it's what you said the other day, though, though it's like what is risk?
Speaker 1:It's the bank's risk of loss, right, yeah? And if anybody's familiar with a bank, the bank's acceptable risk of loss is nothing at any time for any reason, and so I'm not sure if that equates to. I don't care, because I agree. I think it's kind of two things. I think one they don't necessarily understand the small merchant at all. I don't think that they understand the impact that they have. I also don't think that they understand necessarily that people aren't just looking to circumvent their rules. The one thing that I don't know if Bryce has mentioned this on a previous podcast, but when you get matched, it's every data point associated with the business with totally different people. The minute you disclose that you're a part of that business, that business can't get payment processing. So just the data points are so extensive as to what gets barred.
Speaker 3:Yeah but the angle that I guess I've kind of come up with and I'm hitting these guys with and they have no response, is that match is to punish payment processing violations, a transaction that involves a credit card for a prohibited product, and so in order to be on match, you have to have a process payment, and time and again these mergers are just going to be matched and they have no record of a process payment to support it, like for instance. So one thing that's been going on with a lot of merchants that are coming to me is that, like a bank will call them up and say, hey, you need to remove this product from your website. We'll call them up and say, hey, you need to remove this product from your website. You can't sell this product anymore because of whatever reason. Like the FDA declared it prohibited or something like that, and they'll say and I have it in writing they'll be like, okay, we'll make the change today. Like we will pull the product from market today, we'll comply with you completely, and the bank says fine. Then a couple weeks later they just match them anyway, and so they come to me, or the merchant comes to me and I go to the bank and I say, okay, show me where they processed the payment for the prohibited item after you told them to make the change. And they can't do it. But, worse, they don't care to correct their mistake at all. They would rather like wait for me to actually make it, take an affirmative action, or the merchant take an affirmative action and sue them. And then they have to get an attorney involved who hopefully will have some sense in his head and will listen to reason. I spent hours.
Speaker 3:Okay, another instance. So I have a client who had a weight loss product on the market and the FDA came out and said hey, don't buy this weight loss product on eBay or related sites Did not mention the merchant's site. Don't buy this product on eBay because people are taking this weight loss supplement and they're adding this chemical to it which causes a high heart rate, blah, blah, blah, blah, and so don't do it. And so my client was like, ok, well, we better just pull this product from the market anyway, because we can read the writing on the wall Somebody's going to mess with this product and we're going to get blamed for it because our name's on it. And that is exactly what happened, but-.
Speaker 1:Bryce actually went in search of that product online.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, I mean, look at me, man, I got to use whatever angle I can find. But my problem with these banks is like what does the FDA have to do with credit cards? What does the FDA have to do with payment processing? It's not illegal to have an inventory. There's not a violation of car brand rules to have an inventory that somebody deems now prohibited. If you continue to sell it after they say don't buy this, don't, don't market this product, well then you're in trouble. But I, I mean it's like talking to a wall with these people. It's like show me where they process the payment for this item after you told them not to do it and and like I'm just, it's just deaf. They're just like slack-jawed.
Speaker 1:What's going on. That's what prompted this particular podcast, which is not going to be a very long one, but I was watching some communication because I end up on a lot of the communication that Bryce has with the outside vendors and sometimes there's just nuggets in these communications that I don't even know and I do this every single day. But the one that really stood out to me was and I think, the one that kind of inflames Bryce. I just kind of take it as normal and I can't really do anything about it, except hopefully you'll get somebody to listen to you somewhere. It's the idea that of what he just said I go out and, in good faith, I try to do business and eventually I do some business, but somebody comes along that has the authority to say you know what? This isn't safe or you can't do this or don't no longer do this. And now I go and I comply and I'm being the good merchant that I am and making sure that I'm following all applicable laws.
Speaker 1:And because the apparatus is so big and so not well-defined, I would say Because, bryce, like he picked up on this you've got to sell something using a credit card in order to be in violation of the card brand rules. If there's no activity that's noncompliant, then you can't be punished for past practices. Especially when it was brought to your attention, you addressed it, you addressed it to satisfaction. To me it was that I attention, you addressed it, you addressed it to satisfaction. To me, it was that I mean, this is like a minute distinction. Never in our entire match process had I thought about it from this perspective of but you got to actually sell the product, and because we With a credit card, with a credit card and the fact that we do all this match work.
Speaker 1:you know it's like um, you know, crazier than fiction A lot of times, just like things that happen in our job, like you couldn't write it, it's like it's unbelievable of something that just happened, like naturally. But we get so much matchwork and and there's so many variations of why people get matched and the circumfactual circumstances surrounding it that this was one of those ones that's come along recently with things that are being sold in the marketplace. I mean, the one that bryce was working on was peptides. I'm not even sure I know what a peptide is, but I do understand that there are alternative type things being sold out, especially e-commerce and social media, and I see that out there. But the fact is, is that you really do have to do something in particular to cross the line, to even be in a space where they can place you on match. For that reason and it wasn't- even there.
Speaker 3:Well, and this is also how I know that mastercard is I don't want to say complicit, because I view it more as just willful ignorance. But on that FDA case, mastercard still dinged them for $50,000. It matches their rules and they don't make the distinction that the FDA has nothing to do with MasterCard. They don't know that my merchant didn't sell the product, didn't use their credit card. They still took the $50,000. And what do you think? The chances are that I can get MasterCard to give it back.
Speaker 1:How long ago was it? Because we could sue them for the $50,000. They wouldn't want to wrangle with that at all. I'll just tell you that I do believe that MasterCard and the FDA do have something to do with one another. The FDA is telling you what's prohibited and what's not. Mastercard then has to police what's prohibited and what's not. I don't think this is the FDA's failure. This is MasterCard's failure.
Speaker 3:Oh, totally.
Speaker 1:And MasterCard. This is again we go through the conflicts of interest of the card brands no-transcript freeway and it has a real impact and people are automatically deemed to be guilty and they don't have to provide any proof. And that's the thing that really, like I mean, bryce had one instance that he described where we showed like hey, they, they complied, and then later they got matched and they never sold a product. It was the people with the inventory right. The acquiring bank came back to us and said, yeah, you guys really know a lot about this. It would probably be good to get your take on some of this, which I was like you know, for us, being a smaller firm, even though we do payments, like you know, most large entities look at us and they they don't think twice as to what our competencies are. But here was a large acquiring bank saying, yeah, it would probably be good to get your guys' feedback on this.
Speaker 1:And I've had other people recently, you know, hit us up about surcharge that are pretty not in our normal footprint of client, and obviously it's because we're kind of dissecting something that I don't think anybody's really dissected ever. I mean, I I challenge you to find people outside of a processor, the card brands or an ISO. That's sophisticated Cause. I won't even give it to the banks to know more about Match than Bryce knows. I challenge you because I can name on my hand, maybe like five attorneys that I think know it to this degree. But even they might not even know it to this degree because they don't focus on it.
Speaker 2:Chris, we happen to know. Is it Chase? Was it Chase Bryce? They literally brought on an attorney just to handle Bryce. No, that was MasterCard.
Speaker 1:That was MasterCard, oh no because we made so many queries to MasterCard and, look, we always try, but at the same time there are certain instances where there's going to be pushback to the degree that you're not going to get compliance. Where there's going to be pushback to the degree that you're not going to get compliance If you don't have a reason for excessive chargebacks. And a lot of times the excessive chargebacks get exponentially increased because of the way that it gets handled. And look, it's one of those things where it's how do you find a balancing point? Because on the bank side, if you've got excessive chargebacks happening, you don't want to leave capabilities open for that merchant account whatsoever. But when they shut off the merchant account capabilities, a lot of times they shut off the agent or ISO's capabilities to manage it and they cut off the ability to do returns, which makes the return rate go skyrockets, even when there's money available to satisfy people. I mean it's crazy like let them all become chargebacks they don't go, they don't care, I don't know.
Speaker 3:Well then, they can get their 25 bucks per that's that's another thing is that becomes like a profit motive.
Speaker 1:It's crazy. I'm working on a case today that where the processor don't know if it's a legitimate processor or they use tesis and I'm not going to say their name yet but ultimately there was a furniture store in the Oakland area that went out of business and they're trying to hold their agent responsible for the chargebacks. Like nowhere in the agreement does it say this. And what it does say is that there's a and this is standard contract term for an agent does say is that there's a claw and this is standard contract term for an agent there's a claw back, and that claw back is if you got paid residual compensation on transactions that subsequently get reversed, you got to give that compensation back. That's called equity. That's a normal thing right there. They want to claw back every dollar he's ever earned off the merchant for the entire time that the merchant has. Oh, oh yeah. And nowhere in the agreement does it say this.
Speaker 1:They conflate it and I think, kind of what I'm trying to say is that there are a boatload of bad actors in our industry and the architecture of the industry has allowed profit centers in places that promote bad behavior. Bad behavior to. You know it's like look, we're supposed to be pushing down chargebacks, but hey, I make an extra 15 bucks every time there is a chargeback, so if there's 5500 of them, do the math right. I mean, it's it kind of it, it. You know it has these again far-reaching impacts and unintended consequences sometimes, and I believe that it's just so profit-driven that people look at it as and like what you said about the fines. They just don't make sense to me.
Speaker 3:But it's not like They'll never explain them either.
Speaker 1:I know. I said it's not like anybody, it'll be like $25,000 to $250,000.
Speaker 3:just don't make sense to me. They'll never explain them either.
Speaker 1:$25,000 to $250,000. I don't know. Well, here's a crazy thing, that happens right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I saw a bunch of fines a couple years ago and uniformly they all seemed like they started at $200,000. Now the fines were issued by MasterCard and they actually cited the MasterCard rule. That was violated A lot of. It was like e-commerce sales, where people were getting qualified for one thing but then selling something on their website that they weren't qualified for.
Speaker 1:Now that's on the advertiser merchant like that's bad, they're bad behavior, right. So they've got, you know, web crawlers out there that are doing, you know, some sort of oversight to make sure that people aren't bending the rules or breaking them. And so I saw these fines and what I didn't know was that those fines are negotiable. So I think what ends up happening is that you go to the merchant with the fine and you see how much you can get, and then the ISO gets that commitment to the merchant, and then the ISO goes back to the processor and it negotiates a lower amount than that. And then the processor goes to the card brands and it negotiates a lower amount than that. And then the processor goes to the card brands and it negotiates a lower amount than that. I've seen these fines negotiated down to five thousand dollars.
Speaker 3:So if, but no money ever goes back to the merchant right on the no, the merchant pays, the merchant pays.
Speaker 2:But ultimately, if the fine started out at two hundred thousand and it got like say, the merchant paid a hundred k yeah, or it got reduced to ten. Like say, the merchant paid 100K yeah or 10. It got reduced to 10. Yeah 100K.
Speaker 1:Then the ISO negotiates 60,. Processor negotiates 30, up to 10,. Right, Everyone's making their own.
Speaker 3:Everybody's making a spread, except the merchant.
Speaker 1:Off a rules violation and that is a bad thing to begin with. But if you couple that with a faulty investigatory process and an arbitrary decision-making process.
Speaker 2:yeah, man, it's just problematic. A question, gentlemen, so this issue, where it's in inventory but not a single sale was made of some FDA-prohibited, recently prohibited material.
Speaker 1:My dad owns an AK-47. It sits in his garage. He can't buy one in California anymore, but he owns it, he possesses it. It's there. I won't give you his address. He's got Czech assault rifles, like my dad is a former military naval aviator and he's got weaponry and it's stuff that he can't even get in the state that he chooses to live in Right, but he's allowed to possess it Right.
Speaker 2:And so the question is in scenarios like this, what is going to be the answer, you guys, Is this going to have to go to litigation and courts are going to start having to make these decisions, which is going to take years?
Speaker 3:Well, look, actually I don't think it will, because I want to assure everybody listening that I do everything I can to keep us out of litigation. I try to be as clear and informative to these people as I can, but sometimes you just have to file a lawsuit. They're just going to be like, okay, well, maybe he's right, but let's see if he actually does anything about it. So we have to file a complaint. So we have to file a complaint. My goal is just like that they will assign an attorney, an outside counsel who hopefully has a brain in their head that I can actually like sit and reason with, because nobody over at MasterCard, over at, cannot do that. That the case is going to settle, but we you have to. I'm finding more and more that you know you write a letter and then you have to make, you have to take the affirmative action. It's the only way they're going to take you seriously. But back to your deal with MasterCard. Yeah, mastercard assigned an attorney to basically handle me, because I was writing MasterCard like every day, like asking like what's the deal here? And time and again they'd be like we don't know, we don't know, we're just the custodian of the list, and like I would identify merchants to them and they'd go I don't know who you're talking about. Well, you placed them on match. But I digress.
Speaker 3:I was writing MasterCard because I was new to the game and I didn't really realize, or I believe the banks when they would say go ask MasterCard, go ask MasterCard. I learned now after we started, you know that match business owner at MasterCardcom, where they will verify whether or not you're match placed and take note of that. Listeners. And so I was MasterCard like will identify who the bank is. But then they'll have a disclaimer that says we can't do anything, you have to go to the bank and they have to make the change.
Speaker 3:So I'm now going to the banks and like you know what's the—remember the movie Finding Forrester, where he's like you're the man. Now, dog, I'm like bank, you're the man. I don't give a shit if you don't know who they are. I don't give a shit if you don't think that that you, you have no evidence that you placed them. As far as mastercard is concerned, your, the buck stops with you. And if you really don't know who this merchant is, then I think you should probably write mastercard and say like hey, you have us listening here, yeah you made a mistake, yeah, and do you think they ever do that?
Speaker 1:no, no, so we have, we have to sue, I mean yeah, I mean it's crazy that they would rather refer to outside counsel, especially when we're presenting it in a way. I mean this is the thing that frustrates me most. I mean I had an exchange today and it's like, look, I'm not going to just posture, I don't have time to waste in life. Okay, I'm not going to just posture for the sake of posturing.
Speaker 1:My job is to give my client the best legal advice. If the best legal advice is you have an infinitesimal amount of a chance to win here or to prevail, and this is what it's going to cost you fold and just keep going, then that's the best advice that I can give. Because I'm busy enough. I don't have a problem. I don't need to sit there and advocate for poor positions because I need to bill. I don't care right like, I am more interested in just getting to it and I have a short like tolerance level for going back and forth with, like I told, opposing cancer today. I'm like, look, I can agree to disagree and I'd prefer to do that rather than playing encyclopedia brown right like.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's like amateur sleuth hour here. I don't. I don't care to like sit and go back and forth on stupid arguments. If I'm putting it in a cogent way, it's the same thing we had with chase dude. Do me a favor, just tell me why you're behaving the way that you're behaving and let me analyze to see if it has merit, because it may, and it's not even if I care if it has merit. Will a judge or 12 people in a jury box consider it to have merit? Right, Like it's not even about me and so I just it's the same sort of thing. It's like look, let's just have a frank discussion.
Speaker 1:And why do we have to like go through the expense of a lawsuit? And part of it is, and this is crazy to me. But it's because the people we don't talk to anybody who's a decision maker ever. It's easier for them to kick it around and not make a decision. Or maybe it's a fear of accountability, Because I can't believe it's in the employee handbook, a MasterCard or a bank that says operate this way and eventually get it kicked out so that they have to start paying a council money for something like because we only pushed to a lawsuit. Well, we know we're going to win in this subject matter.
Speaker 3:And it really becomes the only play that we have left, and it's now the play that I prefer. I don't like dicking around with it anymore. Let's just sue and get this out in the open and make them address it. But should we talk about peptides now? Sure, okay, so the new darling of MasterCard.
Speaker 1:Hold on Is the grind. My gear session over.
Speaker 3:No, I'm sure we'll find time to come back to it. I can grind gears all day long, but so peptides? So there seem to be like waves of prohibited products. So for a long time you'll remember, jeremy, it was male enhancement, like everybody was what's that? Boner pills, for want of a better term. So they were-.
Speaker 2:Never heard of them.
Speaker 3:No, but chemicals that are related to that were like sneaking into products and the FDA and most of the time the merchants didn't even know that it was in the product. But then it was maleenhazard, Then it was semi-glutide, like Zempic and the Wagovi. That was a new one. Are people buying generic of that? Oh yeah, oh wow, oh yeah, yeah, there are ways to get these drugs that don't involve your physician.
Speaker 1:Even though they're injectable.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but there'll be a doctor involved, like in the process. But now what's happened? Because peptides naturally occur in the body and there's like a whole host of different peptides. And then there's also the distinction between human consumption and research purposes. Human consumption requires a doctor's prescription. Research purposes do not at all. However, what I see happening is that MasterCard and therefore the banks, are just treating the human consumption and the research people exactly the same and they're match-placing them like blankets.
Speaker 1:Okay, but how would you qualify a research person if there's no licensing, if they're not working for a research institution? If Bob living down in IB decides that he wants to spend his day taking peptides, but he's researching the effect of peptides, how do they know? I mean just a quick counterpoint.
Speaker 3:Well, because the interesting thing about these peptide vendors is, to a man or a woman, they're selling the exact same product now that they were when they were onboarded and accepted by the bank. There's been no change at all. And they tell them, like we're a research lab and this is just peptides in general, we're not even really discussed by talking about the Ozepix and the Wagovi specifically. They're treating all the peptides the same. So they're nailing these guys for, I guess, an illegal transaction or what they call a violation of standards, because they think that a doctor's prescription needs to be involved. It doesn't, and we have ample evidence that these research facilities do not have that prerequisite. Do they care?
Speaker 1:No, and I mean, and so I don't. What qualifies you as a research facility?
Speaker 3:I don't know, but whatever they did when they were onboarded and when they filled out the application and when the bank did its due diligence in determining, like, what it does and what they sell and what they really sell, I mean it was good enough for them then. So what's changed? Or why do again? And it's like what we discussed at the beginning, because this keeps happening too. They say, hey, this peptide needs to go. They'll be like okay, today gone, Not selling it anymore. Two weeks later, matched anyway.
Speaker 1:Well, what's that?
Speaker 3:I mean, what's the basis for? The peptide needs to go Because the FDA or some government agency determines that it's harmful. Okay, eli.
Speaker 1:Lilly Eli.
Speaker 2:Lilly released a lot of. There's a lot of evidence out there that Eli Lilly, for various reasons, doesn't want peptides at large and so they've put money behind certain ones saying, hey, we don't want these out there, and people are listening.
Speaker 3:Well, we don't know. No, it's not that we don't want them out there, we don't want them available without a doctor's. Okay, there you go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the thing.
Speaker 1:But these are research facilities. But who's manufacturing the peptide? Like, how do you manufacture a peptide?
Speaker 3:That I don't know, but does it involve the processing of a payment for a prohibited item? How, again, is match implicated here?
Speaker 1:Well, I'm more interested in because I go back to like nutraceuticals, right, because that was like that's always been a problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah, always been a problem, yeah.
Speaker 1:But it's the compounding of the nutraceutical right. They want to know. I mean this is an FDA thing. I mean this is an FDA thing. I mean this is, this isn't abnormal. They don't want things widely sold that haven't been tested, that could cause some sort of like mass problem. You know, I mean I, and I don't discount that. I mean there may not be an FDA two months from now, but we'll see what happens. But the but the fact is, is that I'm interested in okay, well, how are these even getting into the marketplace? Why aren't they controlling those guys? Right? And how am I getting it, as a merchant, to sell? Are you saying that the labs are selling it? Because the labs don't resell, they're just buying it, correct?
Speaker 3:Oh, I really haven't gotten that specific. All I know is that they are telling me what they told the bank, which is this is for research service. I don't know what research service is.
Speaker 2:It's a great question, chris. It's a great question, and it's actually something. What's their source?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's actually really something that I need to delve into. But again, from the payment processing, they're not in violation of anything. They're not selling a prohibited product to human beings. It's not a legal transaction. These are for research purposes and they have been upfront the entire time, but MasterCard doesn't seem to care. The banks don't seem to care. They just collect their fee, ask no questions, do no investigation, and then you're out $50,000 for something that you didn't do and and you got no, no way out.
Speaker 3:So my suggestion is that, especially with regards to these research facilities, when they get matched and it looks like it's going to happen, because I mean, I signed up for peptide merchants for litigation yesterday I mean they're they're just blanket nailing these, nailing these people without any due process, any investigation, any questioning. Yeah, so ask them to. You know, like, show them the correspondence. You told me to pull this. I did. Now you're matching me. Show me where I processed a payment that violates the match and they're not going to be able to do it. Now are they going to even respond to you? Probably not, and that's when you call someone like me. But at least, like, call them on it Like, do you really even understand? Like what you've done Like you're putting people out of business and you don't even understand the product they're selling or how they're selling it, and you don't care, and you don't care. They just don't care, they just keep making money. It's like in your thing yesterday.
Speaker 3:Credit cards are just a massively unregulated industry. They're a monopoly. They're the only monopoly that I'm aware of that's allowed to exist unless you buy that. All the banks are in cahoots, but I mean they don't care because they don't have to care, I guess is the message that I'm getting, and the only way you can make them care is to sue them, and so that's where we're going. Like I said, I will try like hell to get it resolved amicably. I will try like hell for you to get somebody to actually listen to me, but sometimes you just got to kick somebody in the teeth to really make them look at you, that's not dating advice by way, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, match.
Speaker 2:The match searches right. It's a little confusing sometimes.
Speaker 1:You search match uh, what comes up? Yeah, this isn't the match list we're talking about.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it's like, maybe kicking the teeth is a bad seo term, but I, uh, that's just the way I feel these days. Yeah, I'm tired. I'm just tired of messing with them, understood. I'm tired of being ignored. So I'm going to make them pay attention to me.
Speaker 2:As we bring this to a close, your thoughts on it, because I hear this a lot. When I'm talking to these guys on the front end, they're saying, hey, I'm a peptide merchant. I know 12 other guys in my same situation. They always bring up class actions. Now I know 12 other guys in my same situation. They always bring up class actions. Now, can you? I know and I understand, but can you for the audience, can you explain why that's not usually an option?
Speaker 3:Because we would love it if it was the terms of your merchant processing agreement specifically say that you have to.
Speaker 1:it's a one-on-one situation and you can't bring a class you can't be part of a class. It's beyond that, though, because we just got our we just got a ruling back on a case against Visa. This is another thing that I think is interesting. You don't have standing, not just to not bring a class action. You don't have a standing to bring anything against Visa or MasterCard, even though those are the people's rules that are being followed for this agreement, because your contract is actually mean, you do. There's a couple of things that you can bring. They're statutory.
Speaker 1:It's like violation of the sherman act is you know, they're monopolistic or there's a unfair trade practice or business practice, but trying to get to Visa, mastercard through the contract is impossible. The only thing that's really impacted them has been the interchange suit. That's because everybody gets charged interchange and it's whether or not it was fair. But the contract itself, the court. When we filed in the Visa case, they said, yeah, like you can maybe correct this, but really you should be filing against your processor and bank, and how great is that going to be, you know. So Wow.
Speaker 2:Well, all right, gentlemen, is there anything else? Any closing thoughts? We just want to wrap this up.
Speaker 3:No, I'm sure I'll be on here talking about the same thing. I'll be on here talking about the same thing. I'll be back. I'll be back with more BS that the banks are pulling, so that you know what I know and you can act accordingly. Yeah.
Speaker 1:We're still lucky, we got them.
Speaker 2:When the singing starts, it's time to end the podcast.
Speaker 1:So thanks, Jared yeah.
Speaker 2:Thank you for listening this long to the Payments Experts podcast. Today we've had in studio our founding and managing partner, christopher Dryden, as well as senior associate attorney Bryce Vandemore, our match specialist, yeah.
Speaker 3:Bryce.
Speaker 2:Matchless Vandemore.
Speaker 3:That's it, that's it.
Speaker 2:All right, guys. Have a great day. We'll see you on the next one. Bye-bye. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Payments Experts Podcast, a podcast of Global Legal Law Firm. Visit us online today at globallegallawfirmcom.