The Payments Experts Podcast
Expert payments attorneys discuss the electronic payments industry from a legal perspective.
The Payments Experts Podcast
Change Drives Payments & Your Choices Decide Survival | Smart Growth Safer Deals | Special Ep PEP073
This special episode flips the script.
Instead of hosting, James Huber, Esq.—Managing Partner of Global Legal Law Firm (https://www.globallegallawfirm.com/podcasts/) and co-host of The Payments Experts Podcast—steps into the hot seat as the guest, interviewed by Rob Hoblit, Chief Revenue Officer at NMI (https://www.nmi.com/), during one of their internal Fireside Chats, now shared publicly for the first time.
🔍 The conversation is candid, tactical, and tailored for operators in the payments ecosystem—ISOs, PayFacs, fintech teams, and software platforms alike. It’s not about contracts for the sake of contracts. It’s about understanding how and why deals actually fail: because of misaligned incentives, shallow diligence, or premature handshakes—not because a clause was missing.
James pulls back the curtain on:
How payments litigation really unfolds, where ego often drives escalation as much as dollars
The cost of educating outside counsel vs. working with payments-fluent legal teams
Why underwriting discipline and real-time oversight are more essential than ever in the VAMP era
What the next wave of surcharging enforcement could mean for ISOs and platforms
Why dual pricing models, “compliance-in-a-box” kits, and proper signage remain hot-button issues
The litigation-laced future of crypto, stablecoins, and alt-rails—and why Visa and Mastercard aren’t going anywhere
Plus: If you’re scaling toward an acquisition or preparing to raise capital, James shares actionable advice on structuring deals, diligencing counterparties, and avoiding the regulatory landmines that can nuke valuations before a term sheet is signed.
⚖️ Whether you’re onboarding your first 100 MIDs or navigating multi-million dollar disputes, this conversation delivers sharp insights on how to protect your margin, reputation, and roadmap—before things go sideways.
**Matters discussed are all opinions and do not constitute legal advice. All events or likeness to real people and events is a coincidence.**
Subscribe, follow, and leave a review if this helped sharpen your risk radar. And if your team wants to hear more Fireside Chats like this one, drop us a note with the topic you're wrestling with—we’ll put it in the queue.
A payments podcast of Global Legal Law Firm
Every company is has an exit point, right? Nobody's gonna do it forever, except for me and Jeremy. And, you know, you've got to be looking at what's the out for everybody when you're getting into this, you know, and and what's the goal, you know, when you're going to this agreement? What is NMI's goal in this partnership? You know, we're just gonna take deals from these guys. Okay, let's look at their business. What type of deals are they doing? Are they cramming stuff through that shouldn't be here? Um, and ask around. And I mean, the good the good thing is there's a lot of now, there's a lot more at least, there's a lot of ways to educate yourself on the industry. Our, you know, I've been told our podcast is a great source for that.
SPEAKER_00:Welcome to the Payments Experts Podcast, a podcast of Global Legal Law Firm. We hope you enjoyed this episode.
SPEAKER_02:Uh, James Huber is an expert payments litigator, cryptocurrency consultant, husband and father of two, and works heavily in the compliance field, helping electronic payment processing companies avoid getting fined, arrested, violate rules, or get sued from internal or external threats. Drawing on experience from white-collar criminal defense, civil litigation, and general business advice, including heavy litigation in the payment space, James successfully advises his clients how to avoid litigation. But some clients contact Global when it's too late to avoid litigation, and many clients have learned that litigation can also be used as a powerful sword when you have the right attorneys. James, therefore, litigates often. That includes defending and pursuing electronic payments companies. James is also well versed in mergers and acquisitions, compliance, contract review, internal operations, regulatory defense, including FTC, CF, CFPB, DOJ, AG, Class Actions, and all the legal aspects that affect a business. James is also the host of the Payment Experts Podcast that I had the pleasure of being on uh a few weeks ago. And I think our our episodes uh are just being published uh this week. So, James, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for joining us uh this morning. And uh let's start with your journey. How did you first get involved in the payments industry and what has uh what's kept you going over the years?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, thanks. The uh how I got started in this, it was we we we had a law firm and it was basically an open-door law firm, which is you know, whatever walks through the door you take. But we had one ISO client, and they were the worst of the worst as far as sales organizations. They would go in and you know, lease you five VX20s for a thousand bucks a month, tell you they're gonna save rates, and then when they try and cancel, they'd have to talk to me. And so, you know, I'm doing all this law and I'm seeing this one client grow. Why we had them, they grew from like 16 people to like 300. And I'm the basically this one client is supporting our whole firm, and I'm talking to the clients and they're going, hey, if you want to pick up more of these clients, go to the ETA. And I go to the ETA and I'm walking around and I see all these guys, you know, back in like 2010, you know, dressed to the nine, quadruple fisting beers, talking about what they do, you know, with their merchants and everything. I'm going, oh my gosh, we have one client supporting, you know, our small firm. I just met two thousands of these guys. So we saw the opportunity because I'm going around talking to people and I'm going, you know, who's your attorney? Who's your attorney? And they all mentioned the same three guys. And I'm going, well, three is not enough. So we made the decision to just get rid of everything except for payments. And it's been great. And the thing that's kept me here is I like working with really smart people. I mean, the payments space, no matter what happens in this area, you guys always figure out how to keep going and do stuff. And that's, you know, what we have to do as lawyers. You know, the laws are changing or the laws are what they are. We have to figure out how to make them not apply or make them apply. So it's it's very complimentary. Nice.
SPEAKER_02:Well, t tell us just a little bit about yourself, just by way of introduction. What do you like to do when you aren't doing solving payments legal problems? And before you answer that, let me just uh remind the folks on the call that we have a QA uh link in the chat. Feel free to add your questions, or if you want to ask them live, we'll have an opportunity at the end. But tell us about James. What what's uh what what do you do when you aren't doing this?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, I I do a lot of this. Um so outside of it, I've got two young kids, seven and ten, um, and they're pretty much taking up all the time outside of here. But when I you know get out, I get I like to go surf. I'm right here, we're what three minutes from the beach, right here at the office. Um, so that's really my recreational activity. And then Jeremy's work in the the uh, he's the real host of the podcast, and we like to uh frisbee golf from time to time.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, Jeremy is uh the guy behind the guy here uh who has helped us out this morning. Thank you, Jeremy, for the help. So talk to us about Global Legal Law Firm. Um first off, how did you come up with that name? And how do you how do you support clients in the payment space?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, we uh we came up with that name. This was that one client who, like I said, they were just the worst possible sales organization. It was great for us, though, because you know, right at the end of their reign of terror, they're getting sued in like three class actions a month. So we learned class action defense, and we, you know, we we we hired some you know, quote unquote real attorneys at the time, because in the early in your career, you kind of have to just pretend like you know what you're doing. Um, and they showed us the ropes, and then we were able, you know, and been able to do it. Um, but the name that it was his idea is he's like, you want to sound like your clients. And so the original name was Global Legal Resources. Then some guy came and he's like, it sounds like a like a staffing company or something. And we're like, well, let's make sure there's no confusion global legal law firm. Um, and maybe we would change the name, but at this point it's too late. So we and we never wanted it to be Huber Dryden, uh, because that's not really the idea of our firm. Our idea is, you know, separate ourselves so that we don't have to be, you know, the one of people are always like, Well, I want to talk to the partner. And they'll be like, usually it's to me because I'm, you know, swearing and yelling at the attorney, and they're going, I want to talk to the partner. And I was like, Well, you got him, motherfucker. Deal with it. Wow. Okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:You find that goes well when you when you take that approach?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. It it it depends on the case, it depends on the person. Sometimes you have to be, you know, the raging asshole, you know, pit bull attorney. And it's funny because you bump into those guys and you're like, ah, I get your shtick, and then you hang up, you know, you see them outside the courtroom, and they're still an asshole. And I was like, Well, I'm just playing a part, you know, I can turn it off and on, but some of these guys, they've just got one gear, one mode, yeah. Yeah, but no, our our you know, it's a small pool still, you know. Like when I said when we got into the space, there was maybe five attorneys. Now, you know, there's probably 20, 15, maybe law firms that no payments. Uh, and most of us get along. And when we run into each other, which we're running into all the time, except for like these two guys I'm talking about and their firms, which run that playbook, we all get along and we save the clients tons of money because we're going, look, we know what the dispute is. We're not gonna make big issues over everything. The idea is to get you out of this for the least amount of money as possible. And because we're so entrenched in the space, we're it's not a one and done where, you know, I'd love to pick up some cases every once in a while where it's just this dispute. I've got this guy and I'm gonna bill them like crazy, get them a great result. And then maybe three years from now, when they forget about how much they hated the litigation, they'll give me a call. In our case, it's usually existing clients or it's clients that we want. We want to help them with their contracts and their compliance and everything ongoing. So we have this extra incentive and the requirement to do things efficiently. And sometimes it's more efficient to be the you know, snarling pit bull attorney that won't do anything. But most of the time it's collaborate, work it out, get everyone to the table and settle. But some people just don't want to.
SPEAKER_02:Do you do you litigate then around the country? Are there areas that you generally go to more than others? Or yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Well, we our our main office is in California. We had we have an office in South Florida. Um, but yeah, we're nationwide because it's there's just not a lot of payments attorneys. You know, we hear all the time we'll pick up a case halfway through, and they're going, I spent 80 grand teaching my lawyer how to do this. And he still doesn't get it. I mean, kind of gets it, and he's a good attorney, but you you kind of need to know the interest key intricacies and the players and who to subpoena and the pressure points and all of that. But yeah, we're nationwide and you know, our litigation, we have a lot in California, we have a lot in Florida, we have a lot in New York, but it's also pretty spread out. Oh, then a ton of Texas too.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, South Florida is a good place, I think, for uh for uh your space. Uh so definitely not a surprise to hear you guys are operating there. What why do you think payments is or what drives the industry, I guess I should say, in terms of the the legal issues? And do you think there are you got any you got any tips for us on any under the radar issues that we should be thinking about or you think are are gonna rear their ugly head here in the coming, in the coming uh days?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean we talked about this, I think, a little on your uh when you came on, but I think Vamp is uh a huge issue coming. And I'll I'll back up because the first part of your question of what drives the industry, it's change. Um, and then you know what drives litigation, it's egos, mostly for ours. You know, that one of the reasons we love payments litigation is we're not fighting over somebody losing a leg or a kid or anything like that. It's usually about money, and then it's not even that much about money, it's about setting an example and you know being right. So, um, but what drives the industry this is change and growth. I mean, when we got in, there were people still, you know, running the knucklebusters. Um, you know, and then when we saw clover come out, you know, that was the big, you know, unveiling. I think I I went to some clover event and the first day, the old guy's dancing down the aisle with his clover. I I think I went home right then, actually. But um Yeah, you you just left. Yeah, I think I just got out. I was like, I'm good, this isn't for me. Um, but the uh yeah, no, the change and I think Vamp, uh if it rolls out, which it has it rolled out already? I I mean I don't know, it hasn't started yet. I think supposedly it's starting any minute, may it may have started, yeah, but you know, not not clear yet. Not clear yet. And I've talked to some people at the you know, the mid to small size banks because I think they're the ones that are gonna get pushed out. Um, and nobody's doesn't nobody seems to be that worried about it, but I still don't think anybody really gets how it's going to be rolled out because it keeps changing. So I think that's a that's a huge one coming down the pipeline.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And so so what are some common legal mistakes that you see people and do you have like uh uh I'm sure you have plenty of examples. Do you have an example of somebody who just got in deep trouble? Um, and it it was you know avoidable, or they if they'd just done something simple, they could have they could have not uh not been in such big trouble?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean that's that's basically all all we deal with um is people that you know could have done things differently. I mean, the biggest mistake is the big overarching one is this Warren Buffett quote is you can't make a good deal with bad people. You know, people come and they're going, oh, you know, I've got this contract, I'm gonna make it airtight. Doesn't matter how good your contract is. Now it helps once you get there, but these, you know, there's players in this space that just want to fight and they like it, and they cheat, and they hire attorneys that cheat and you know, lie and all of that, and they like it. And that tactic doesn't work forever, but it might work in your dispute. So the idea is stay away from the bad players. And who are the bad players? You gotta ask around and do some due diligence. You know, when new people pop into the space these days, they're usually pretty good because they're from outside of the industry, but there's there's some old blood flowing through the industry of these people that are, you know, have have these bad reputations. So that that's the first one is just stay away from toxic people. Yeah, it's everywhere.
SPEAKER_02:Um, and then the second one what's a red flag if you're a noob who's you know, just you know, new on the scene, how how do you how do you tell someone is is trouble or what do you what do you what do you look for?
SPEAKER_01:I mean, you've got to ask around because it's hard. I mean, the people that are these bad dudes or and bad, you know, ladies and all that out there, they're really good at convincing you that they're not. So, you know, really the thing is you've got to ask around. And, you know, we're a great source for that because we run into all the bad people, of course, right? So people will hit us up and they'll be like, hey, what do you know about this company? And I'll be like, nothing. They must be good. You know, because we do it, we've been doing this for, you know, going on 15, 16, 17 years or so. So, you know, we've seen it, but um, yeah, it's hard to tell. I mean, you know, get get your poker player skills out. But we actually I have a client who is a ranked poker player, and yeah, he didn't he didn't read these guys either.
SPEAKER_02:Wow. All right, well, you know, it just goes to show you never uh you got you gotta get some advice here.
SPEAKER_01:You know, our main clientele is is the ISOs, you know, now are all tech companies according to them. So um, you know, yeah, yeah, nothing, nothing bad to say, only hesitant good. Okay, good.
SPEAKER_02:Uh that's you know, thank you. Uh that's uh that's good to know. And yeah, I guess the less you know the better uh in your line of work. Um if you were advising our team, I think you touched on it and saying, you know, sort of avoid toxic people, but what would you advise us? Anything beyond that in terms of staying ahead of legal or regulatory challenges, and as we're thinking through contracts, compliance, partnerships, that kind of a thing. You know, if you were just to say, hey, NMI, you know, you should really think about you know this, well, is there something you would you you would uh you would call out there?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean the there's a big thing of I mean, NMI every company is has an exit point, right? Nobody was gonna do it forever, except for me and Jeremy. And you know, you've got to be looking at what's the out for everybody when you're getting into this, you know, and what's the goal, you know, when you're going to this agreement? What what is NMI's goal in this partnership? You know, we're just gonna take deals from these guys. Okay, let's look at their business. What type of deals are they doing? Are they cramming stuff through that shouldn't be here? Um, and ask around. And I mean, the good the good thing is there's a lot of now, there's a lot more at least, there's a lot of ways to educate yourself on the industry. Our, you know, I've been told our podcast is a great source for that, but uh the ETA cranks out um educational tracks, but I think it's actually started charging for them, so I don't know about all that. Um but yeah, you know, is keep your ear to the track. One of the reasons we've been so successful in this space is because we have to stay up on everything going on because as we're looking at contracts and MA stuff, or going, oh, hey, in five minutes, you're not gonna be allowed to do this anymore. You know, when surcharge and cash discounting came out, Visa dropped that bomb on everybody. It was a scramble. Everybody was doing it wrong. And now companies are getting fined, you know, millions of dollars from secret shoppers going around and tagging this stuff. So I I mean, there were hints that that was coming. I don't think anyone saw it coming the way they dropped it. Um, but there there were signs, and if you'd been ahead of that, you could have you could have really cleaned up.
SPEAKER_02:Do you think on surcharging dual pricing, are are we at an equilibrium right now? Or is is there another shoe that's about to drop on that topic? Or, you know, stay tuned, hard to say.
SPEAKER_01:It's hard to say. I mean, the states have gotten in on it and they've started uh dropping different regulations on that, and some of them are inconsistent with Visa and MasterCards, most of them are inconsistent in uh quote unquote our favor, meaning they're higher caps and looser regulations. Kind of California's got a really, a really uh squishy one. Um, but I think that the regulation in that space will will come through litigation. I don't think you know, visa, you're not gonna force them to do anything, they spend more on lobbying than any anybody. He said not God. So don't say God. Yeah. Yeah. Because they don't that I guarantee spends more than Visa.
SPEAKER_02:So uh does Jeremy come does Jeremy come into court too with you and and just you know whisper things in your ear, like to make sure you don't say the wrong thing? No, he probably needs to. Uh you should think about that, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Well, no, his main thing is is he's trying to censor me for SEOing the podcast. There's certain things he can't say or it drops to zero. Exactly. So I see.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, got it. Okay, well, this is don't worry. I mean, this distribution uh that we're on right here is totally clean, and you know, you you it you can say whatever you want. So tell it like it is.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_02:Um now I forgot what we're talking about. All right, well, whatever. Yeah, I think it it was it was surcharging, I think, something on that along.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah. So so surcharge, I think it's gonna come through. I think the merchants need to start suing um for regulation. Then the problem is every single merchant they have an arbitration agreement. So, you know, but maybe if they are suing the states again, you remember the first time that worked where they overturned New York's law, but then you know, Visa did it and that that didn't work. So I think to get Visa to move on that um is gonna be difficult because they they've said outright. I moderated a panel a couple years ago with Rob Johnson from Visa, and he said straight up the reason we're doing this is we don't want people surcharging because we don't want cardholders complaining and we don't want more regulation. And we're all sitting here going, huh? We would love some regulation in this space because there's so uh we have clients all the time operating in the gray because there's no set rules. If we would lay down some some harder rules, now we've got the visa rules, those are so selectively enforced.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, okay. Sounds like we we will you know the the the future is not written yet. Uh it is not constantly, constantly changing. Sounds like it's changing. All right, another topic I know you're a fan of is cryptocurrencies. Uh seemingly the wave of the future in payments and may always be the wave of the future. Do you have any uh prognostications on how that'll settle? Like whether we're actually gonna be using Bitcoin to buy things, or we're gonna be using government-backed crypto, like where or are we just gonna keep talking about this and and you know investing in you know speculative uh assets uh to try to uh to try to make money? Like what what's what's going on here? Like what's your what's your take?
SPEAKER_01:As far as the non-stable coins, I'm I'm with your second statement. I don't think those are going to be used for anything other than speculative investment. Um so you know that that's that. I think that the the stable coin, I mean look, the administration is in flux, you know. I'll say it. Hopefully there's you know a change in a couple years. Sounds like there might not be, but um, you know, this is a very pro-crypto administration, but they haven't pushed the their, you know, the Fed now stable coin as hard. When that was coming out, you know, a bunch of us were kind of going, ooh, if our money is all trackable and everything like this. And I had, I think it was, was it Patty Murphy from the Green Sheet? She was like, What if they put an expiration date on your money? Like you have to spend it. Alan Koppelman. Oh, that was Alan Koppelman. Yeah, okay. So you have you have to spend it. Or, you know, they're just they're just tagging you for your parking fees, they're tagging you for your alimony and everything like that. I mean, I think there's some big brother scarcity there, but they haven't really pushed it. I I mean, I do think stablecoin will hit. Um, I don't think it's gonna be overnight, even though again, it could be, it could be, you know, right. Hey, all dollars are going out of circulation. Shouldn't they stop making pennies?
SPEAKER_02:I think it costs more to make a penny than it costs more than one penny to make a penny, is the problem there.
SPEAKER_01:Right. So, I mean, look, if they start stop printing cash, yeah, let's go. And I don't, I mean, everybody has a a phone at this point. Um, you know, it could a little tricky, but you maybe have to have like a separate little thing that has your uh money on it and still be a card, but I don't think it takes uh Vista and MasterCard out of the picture.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, all right, good. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Payments Experts Podcast, a podcast of Global Legal Law Firm. Visit us online today at Global Legal Law Firm dot com. Matters discussed are all opinions and do not constitute legal advice. All events or likeness to real people and events is a coincidence.