The Payments Experts Podcast
Expert payments attorneys discuss the electronic payments industry from a legal perspective.
The Payments Experts Podcast
Real-Time Rules That Keep Merchants Live: VAMP Portfolio Risk And Transparency | Qredible | PEP093
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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 the haze. Our guest traces a path from pre-internet POS software to big-processor leadership and into startups that zero in on the same unsolved pain: compliance takes too long, costs too much, and fails too often at scale.
The core idea is simple but often ignored—high-risk is usually operational risk, not product risk. When merchants change products weekly and rules shift daily, human checks can’t keep pace. That’s why continuous audits, product-level validation, and transparent data sharing between merchants, processors, and banks now matter as much as good underwriting.
The CBD and hemp space highlights the problem. Onboarding a merchant with dozens of SKUs and lab reports used to mean manual COA review, endless back-and-forth, and slow time to revenue. With OCR and structured data extraction, those COAs become searchable fields. Processors can instantly locate banned cannabinoids, confirm potency claims, and flag mismatches against rule sets dictated by their bank or card brands. The win is not just catching risk; it’s enabling compliant businesses to stay live without disruption. Instead of black-box decisions that punish merchants after the fact, a shared layer of visibility gives them alerts before they trip wires. That turns compliance from a source of fear into a daily habit.
This shift extends far beyond cannabis. Any enhanced due diligence sector—gaming, adult, firearms, online alcohol and tobacco, nutraceuticals, functional mushrooms, cosmetics, and online lending—faces similar pressures. Municipal rules stack on state and federal mandates. Card brands push VAMP and portfolio scrutiny. Without a living map of requirements tied to real merchant behavior, providers rely on hope. Worse, merchants bear the brunt: reserves, MATCH listings, and sudden shutdowns. When a platform continually crawls product pages, pulls certificates, and matches claims to approved lists and rule sets, it empowers both sides. Banks get traceable evidence. Merchants get early warnings and clear steps to fix issues. Portfolio risk drops while revenue stays predictable.
Pricing opacity is the other quiet drain. Interchange shifts, processor markups, and “notice” of price changes buried inside statements leave busy operators flying blind. Two restaurants using the same processor can pay wildly different rates simply because one negotiated and the other didn’t. Statement analysis as a service fills that gap, translating six-hundred-line statements into actionable decisions. The takeaway is blunt: every company needs a payments brain—whether a chief payments officer or a trusted advisor. The goal isn’t to chase rock-bottom rates; it’s to align pricing with risk, ensure rules are followed in real time, and stop leaks before they become losses.
AI is not a courtroom litigator or a replacement for paralegals. Here, it’s a quiet, relentless assistant that reads faster than teams can and never gets tired of forms. Use it to extract, normalize, and monitor. Keep humans for judgment. Marry those strengths and you change the game: faster onboarding, fewer fines, fewer surprises, and a portfolio that grows because risk is managed in daylight. When compliance becomes a product feature—not a punishment—good actors thrive, bad actors stand out, and the entire ecosystem gets stronger.
**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
Setting The Stage: Industry Gaps
SPEAKER_02We started this out. We were going because you know, we're interviewing people or we're hiring somebody and they're going, where do I go for information about the industry? And I'm like, I don't know. Here's a couple expert reports. There's just not a lot out there. There's a couple podcasts. James Shepard's a great podcast. Yeah. Been doing it for years, but it's mostly related to sales, I think. Very sales focused. It's sales focused, which is great because that's, you know, that's his audience, and that's a ton of our audience too. Um, but there's, you know, what's happening in real time with the regulations and the rule, the laws, and everything. So I'm glad that there's more out there and that you stole our idea. You're welcome.
Meet Noah And Credible’s Origins
SPEAKER_03Welcome to the Payments Experts Podcast, a podcast of Global Legal Law Firm. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Today we're really excited. We have in studio joining us managing partner of the law firm, James Hubert, as well as our special guest, Noah Fitzgerald of Credible. You can find Noah over at credible.com. That's with the queue. James, we're looking forward to this one. Jump right in.
SPEAKER_02I forgot to say uh we also have my 10-year-old daughter in the room as well. Awesome. That's exactly right.
SPEAKER_03Get to see your dad as the star.
SPEAKER_02All right, Noah, it's been a while since we well, not too long, but uh, you know, we've had uh interesting interactions over the years with various companies, but I know that you've got uh a new outfit, so why don't you uh actually I'm always interested, and I don't know if I necessarily know your story of how did you get how'd you end up in payments?
From POS Roots To Residuals
Big Processor Experience To Startups
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you know, I went to school, studied for payments. No, you know, it's it's one of those things that everyone just kind of falls into. No one goes out looking for it, but you end up falling into it. So my story in that started in 1992. Um, my father was operating a software company, a point of sale software company. This is all pre-internet days. So we were selling through magazines and uh we were you know national, a nationwide distributor of of POS equipment like barcode scanners and cash rose receipt printers, and we sold a software package, and then with that software package, we sold IC verify and PC charge and other ways to be able to integrate payments. And so I was introduced through payments in that very early on in '92. I was just out of high school. And uh I had a payment processing company come knock on my door uh and say, we'll give you a referral for every client that you send over to us to get their payment processing. So I started doing that. He started showing up with uh donuts every other week and a check, and I was like, tell me more about this payments industry. What's going on here? He's like, he was like, well, I'm gonna give you a secret, and you know, this may change your life. And sure enough, he did. And you know, I learned about residual earnings, and you know, this is before SaaS-based software and internet-based software was ever a thing. I mean, literally before the internet was even a thing. And um, from there, I I left the point of sale software company and uh went into went to First Data, who happened to be in my backyard in Coral Springs, Florida, and worked for Nabanco, which was the precursor to Chase Chase Merchant Services, which was a precursor to Chase Payment Tech. And um, you know, basically kind of survived the number of restructures and organizations of that company and learned really the the big corporate world and organizational structures, um, and then realized that my true calling was entrepreneurship. And since 2009, I've been a part of over 14 different startups, um, either as a founder, co-founder, or you know, very early stage employee. Uh, I've I've learned that I've I thrive in that first two years of a of a of a of an operations startup. I I kind of have a jack of all trades with ideation to creation to business requirements to all the operational infrastructures, CRM management. Uh very you know adept at the commercial side of things. And over the past, I think, couple of iterations of my career have been really focused more on the revenue growth side of things, and that's where I find myself thriving the most. So credible was I was introduced to Credible um just last year, October, so 2024, October. And uh once I connected with the CEO, um I I we immediately had a kinship and uh you know I saw exactly what the opportunity was with their technology. And uh yeah, that's kind of where I'm at now.
What Credible Actually Does
SPEAKER_02Nice. Yeah, I mean, that's quite the background in particular, getting to see the inner workings of what is probably first data back then of the big corporate structure. And it always interests me because when I talk about like our law firm, for example, I'm always like, oh, you know, we're so much better than big law firm, but I don't have anything to base that off of because this is the only job I've ever had, sure, aside from like delivering pizza and teaching kids how to ski. But um so that yeah, I mean, I think that would make that would make you personally highly valuable to anybody in the space. And I do admire, you know, what you haven't done is you see the people, and no offense to any of them, you know, they see them at the conferences and they're just changing their shirt every couple of years, standing in a different booth. And they do really well for themselves. But I'm, you know, having that, yeah, like you said, the entrepreneurial spirit, it's one of the things that keeps us so excited about this space because yeah, you can do the same thing that you know, all of these companies they literally do the same thing. Um, but then somebody, you know, puts a calculator on a pen and we're off to the races. Not to say that's what credible does, but why don't you tell us what credible does?
SPEAKER_00We put the piano on a key on a on a key on a tie. So you know, yeah, there you are. Yeah, excellent. It's a really good 80s reference.
SPEAKER_02But no, that was Zoolander, wasn't it? That's what they're saying. Yeah, Mufasa invented that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03I do want to touch at some point, gentlemen. You mentioned magazines. I want to find out what a magazine is at some point on this podcast.
Founder’s Compliance AI Background
The CBD Onboarding Problem
Beyond Cannabis: Broader Use Cases
SPEAKER_00I don't remember. The only ones I remember are Car and Driver and Surfer Magazine. That's it. There's not nothing else in my world of magazines that existed. So um, but um you know, Credible is a really very forward-thinking and ahead of its time uh company in technology. Uh the founders of the company were led by a gentleman by the name of uh Brian Fitzpatrick, no relation, close name, obviously. We're both from the same island in Ireland, but uh um he comes from a background in developing technology for compliance and regulatory management, uh, where he built three different companies uh that were supporting um basically the residential lending landscape and mortgage landscape. And he built the first uh AI and machine learning technologies to basically parse and read through 700-page loan documents to be able to handle all the placement and organization of them. And he had clients like Wells Fargo and Freddie Mack and Penny Mack, and he's and that his technology is still operating. I think over 85% of all uh mortgage loans, um residential mortgage loans, run through his technology. So he's kind of you know the I would you know the father of AI when it comes to utilizing this technology for compliance. And uh in my journey, that the last, you know, the last kind of idea that I had was building a solution for the hemp and CBD industry, as I saw in trying to onboard clients in this space, saw the struggles of just getting a merchant onboarded into a payment processor. It was an arduous task of back and forth, of constantly scrubbing and screening the websites for content, uh, getting access to COAs, product details, all the different bells and whistles and dots and I's and T's that have to be crossed. Um, and it was just riddled with a lot of human-level intervention at the underwriting side. And I'm so you know, me in my mind, I go, there's a there's a technology gap that exists here. I need to help find and build a solution. That's what I like to do. I'm a builder. So, you know, I was building this company called Can of Commerce, and it was about creating a marketplace to connect businesses, the wholesalers and the distributors and retailers, and had a POS solution and an e-commerce offering. But the one gap I kept on coming up to was compliance management and how these businesses could actually use a tool to organize all of these documents and help them stay ahead of regulatory changes and shifts versus being a firefighter and fighting it from behind. Uh, one of my colleagues connected me with Brian, and as I was kind of, we were talking for about an hour, I'm like, and he started showing me some of the technology. I was my head was spinning. I'm like, this is this is the solution that is going to help revolutionize, enhance due diligence and compliance management, not only for the merchants, more so for the banks, the insurance providers, the payment processors that all have to provide services to these businesses. And they need some way of being able to manage the compliance of the product at the product level, at the website level that they're doing manually today. So that's really what credible is about is creating it's created a very unique technology that's not, you know. I think most compliance technologies are a black box like a G2 or a legit script, and they're used by the bank and processors to basically do what they do, but they're not shedding giving that utility back to the merchants so that they can use some components of technology to help themselves. And that's where Credible is a bit different. We're creating an ecosystem that's used by the merchants that basically helps them perform complete audits of their business and then connects all of that data and all that audit to the processors, to the their supply chain, to insurance providers, the banks, and the regulators so that they can live in transparency and operate their business without the threat of interruptions.
SPEAKER_02Is this just for CBD and marijuana businesses, or does it apply across the board?
Why Banks Struggle With Local Rules
SPEAKER_00No, it does apply across the board. I mean, you know, obviously where my focus was at the time was the CBD and hemp and cannabis space because that's where I saw a lot of struggles. But it's for anything in the regulatory and compliance space, whether it be gaming, adult uh firearms, you know, online tobacco, online alcohol, uh, online lending, um, digital services, um, you know, even you know, now we're getting into other aspects of product um uh compliance from cosmetics to um nootropics, functional mushrooms, all anything that has some kind of enhanced due diligence element or additional compliance, a regulatory oversight um component that makes it difficult for these businesses to operate.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, I know that from a processor standpoint or a bank standpoint, you if you're looking at a cannabis business, you really have you're basically just trusting the business that they're doing it because you can't go out and check every single regulation down to the municipality short of having somebody go to every you know city council meeting and deciding what they're gonna do on this. And I know early on, some people were trying to build a tool. Uh, and that I think we actually got tapped into it, but the amount of data that you had to pull, it was before you know AI was AI. It was, it became it was endless.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
VAMP, Portfolio Risk, And Transparency
SPEAKER_02And you were you're you just couldn't because you're going, oh, what if this person, what if they deliver over here? Now there's a different rules and all of that. So that was a nightmare. Um, but I see it, you know, like you said, it's it's every business in large part, but the some of the ones you said, you really are just relying on the merchant, and that can leave you in a really bad spot, and it can leave the merchant in a bad spot. You know, we talk about it a lot on this podcast of you know, weak underwriting hurts the merchants. They end up getting put in on the match lists, you know, they get their reserves held and all of that. So I'm interested, you know, with VAMP coming up or a VAMP happening now, I mean, the the big risk here is one, you don't want to, you know, if you're in this space, you don't want to get fined, you know, you don't want to have a merchant selling, you know, more than cannabis or something, or you know, some new strain that, you know, makes people jump through car windshields. But you you the the big the big issue is the banks don't want to ever take losses. So how does credible help with chargebacks, fraud, declines, all of that?
Practical AI: OCR And COA Parsing
SPEAKER_00I think it's it's really about creating transparency. So you know, for for you know, these businesses are serving these types of merchants, you know, what we do know is you know, merchants are you know, they're gonna be sneaky. They're they're not they're not stupid, they'll figure out how the what the operating rules are. And what happens all the time is that you know they'll get approved by a processor for their products at that point in time, the day a week later, they add 15 new products that you know are not approved by the processor, all of us, you know, they're out there processing products and changing, maybe adding a subscription level of uh uh subscription services that they didn't inform the processor about. How's a processor, you know, if you've got a portfolio of a thousand, two thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand merchants, how are you gonna sit there and be able to find those uh those anomalies or go back and do analysis? And you know, there are the existing tools that are out there that um are supporting with that, they just they don't have they're not looking for the right things. And so there's so many gaps in that tech in these technologies today. Um, and where you know, this is why things like what happened to FFB a couple of you know a year and a half ago happened. You know, there's these gaps. The car brands find them just by doing inadvertent searches themselves and then find, oh, well, this merchant selling 15 products that we don't have on our approved list. Now we're you know, now we're gonna go and do in a full portfolio audit or and or you're gonna have to shut that merchant down and they're gonna get put on match, and all these things happen. So from a from a VAMP perspective, I think what we do is well, I know what we do is provide that transparency, and not only at a one-time point in time, but it's an ongoing, real-time monitored service that is looking at their website constantly, constantly pulling products from the website, constantly pulling down COAs and other reporting or evidential information about those products to make sure that there's coherence with the rule sets that are stipulated by that bank or by that processor. And if there's a violation there, it sends not only them an alert, it also sends the merchant an alert so that they know that there's something that they have that they're doing that is against the rule set that and the repercussions of that is potentially getting shut down or put on match at worse.
Surcharging Rumors Versus Reality
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Well, I love it. I get excited again hearing about your system and how it actually works. And it makes sense with AI because you know, we saw the um, who was it, the the the famous uh stock fund guy bet against AI, the guy that said uh Michael Berry. Michael Berry betted against AI. And I was looking at that because we have been slamming our head against the wall to get AI into our law firm. And you hear all the time, you know, paralegals are gonna go away. And I'm going, how how could a machine do what my paralegal does? Now we have some like quasi-AI tools and we've shopped like the big expensive one. Yeah, but I'm going, look, a paralegal just giving sure the thing can kick out a shell, yeah, but so can a paralegal that's been doing it forever, and she's not even kicking out a shell, she's just pulling one. You know, we have the templates for most everything, you know. We've been doing this close to 20 years. So I don't see it in my industry. And then I'm like, you know, everybody use chat, use chat, use chat. And then I start seeing them use chat for research, and I'm like, it's all wrong. You can't, it doesn't work for illegal things. You're absolutely right. Yeah, but more than half of it for what I mean, it's all just wrong. But you know, so we use it our AI so far is we use it for, you know, a thought partner, like, hey, pretend you're a judge, attack all of my arguments. Here's what I here's my speech I'm gonna give to the judge. What's he's what's he gonna say, or proofread this tone because I'm about to tell the client what I really think. Right. So tone it back. Yeah. Um stuff like that. But yeah, as far as you know, going out and finding stuff. I mean, I guess one thing in the legal field, we could be like skim every case and tell us where the law's going, but West Law already does that. They've got their AI. So, you know, when I saw that, I was like, I knew it just because we can't figure out a way to use it all that well.
SPEAKER_01He's right.
Content Ecosystem And New Podcasts
SPEAKER_00Still on point. Yeah, I mean, to me, AI, you know, it has its time and place, and it's not, you know, I don't see it replacing things like a paralegal. I think it's it's an augment tool to help them with the mundane tasks. Yeah, but you know, they they're still an absolute necessity. It just allows them to be more efficient in a lot of ways. Um, for for us, we're using AI in ways to be able, you know, as OCR, for example, like we are actually scanning the COA documents from the lab reports and basically digitizing all of that data set into a into a into a database structure that is now ingestable so you can actually now report and create reports against it. So if your portfolio now, instead of if you're of a portfolio of merchants that is, you know, you know, a thousand merchants and each one that has 20 products, you have 20,000 products worth of data that you can now report against. So if you're looking for a specific cannabinoid because now THCA or THCO, or in this case with the new band that's happening, Delta 8 is no longer a viable product that you can have in your COA. Now you can search all those products within those COAs and find which merchants in an instant products in an instant. So, you know, we're using AI in that way, uh, not really in decision-making processes, it's more in you know, functional processes of being able to pull data and scrub data.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that makes sense. Actually, I did use it yesterday. I pulled uh there is a big news flash Visa and MasterCard settlement. It might change surcharge rules. And I saw all these articles and I was like, it might change surcharge. So I pulled the settlement down from the court websites 300, 300 something pages, just the settlement, and there are all these declarations and stuff. Sure. And I put it into AI because I I did find surcharge 118 things, and I'm reading, and then I pumped it into AI. It goes, what does this say? What does this do to surcharge? And it gave me what it said. It's a whole lot of nothing, doesn't change it at all. So all of these news sources said they just didn't they didn't take the time to read it because it just happened. So they all said it might change surcharging. So I get like eight emails in the morning because people know, you know, I have access to court documents and they're what's it say? What's it say? What's it say? Whole lot of nothing. But my thought was when I thought about it too, I was like, even if they had changed the surcharge discounting rules for Visa, they got all the states to make their rules like their own with the three percent cap. So I was going, even if Visa changes their mind, I you you know, the states probably won't wouldn't follow suit because they're going. Time soon, that's for sure. No, and they're gonna keep taking that lobbying money that they pay them to hold it in place. So very true. Um, anyways, now we're way off topic. But uh what uh you have a you have a credible podcast? Am I on it right now?
SPEAKER_03No, you will be though. Oh I think in December.
Payments As A Core Business Function
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we have a so um Brian Brian Fitzpatrick, our CEO, has been operating credible live broadcast. Uh last we have it every Friday, and just this last Friday we had 9,200 live viewers. Um so that was which is pretty incredible. It's a big test to to the marketing team and to you know the content that he's really driving on. And a lot of the focus has been on you know nutraceuticals and supplements and a lot on the CBD and hemp space, the cannabis space, right? We've been have regulator regulators. We have obviously the legal legal uh review podcast we're gonna be doing with with you. Um yeah, I mean it it's it's it's a really good place for us to be able to promote the company and really really get into you know ideas and concepts around what's happening in this space in real time. And it's a really valuable resource for us and and for the for the audience, obviously.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, we notice when we started this out, we were going, because you know, we're interviewing people or we're hiring somebody and they're going, where do I go for information about the industry? And I'm like, I don't know. Here's a couple expert reports, there's just not a lot out there. There's a couple podcasts. James Shepard's a great podcast. Yeah, been doing it for years, but it's mostly related to sales, I think. Yeah, yeah. It's very sales focused. It's sales focused, which is great because that's you know, that's his audience, and that's a ton of our audience too. Um, but there's, you know, what's happening in real time with the regulations and the rule, the laws, and everything. So I'm glad that there's more out there and that you stole our idea. You're welcome.
SPEAKER_01Glad I can help.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. No, but it's one of those things where the there's more out there. So people are going, okay, yeah, let's listen to I'm listening to yours, I'll listen to mine. And you know, people just eat the content up. I mean, yeah, I listen to a few different podcasts. Me as well.
Pricing Chaos And Statement Analysis
SPEAKER_00There's and there's a there's a lot of up-and-comers as well, and now that's really starting to push. I've got a good colleague, Michelle Bayo, that's starting a podcast um on open banking. I mean, there's and you know, as as the landscape continues to shift, and of course, more audience is looking for content like in this format, uh, I see these types of things continuing to thrive. And it's a it's a good way to get unbiased uh or potentially biased, but at least it's obvious.
SPEAKER_02We're pretty biased.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's it's obvious bias, though, right? So yeah, yeah, it's not under the under the cover bias crap. So yeah, it's good stuff.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. I mean, I I I think one of the the challenges is people still don't understand this industry. I know me personally, I learned something. I won't say new every day about the industry, but at least every week, um, probably more. You learn more and more about the industry. And what people now are starting to realize is every company is highly affected by this. And what was it? Somebody said uh every company needs a chief payments officer. Yeah. Was that correct? Yeah, yeah. And so, and they do. I mean, look, if you're, you know, it no, if you're any any business, you should really be looking at this because think if you have a restaurant where your margin is 10%, hopefully you're losing four at least in payments. Yep, yep. Yep. Because nobody's paying by cash.
SPEAKER_03Right. Like Chris says, payments has become the center of the universe, you know, as far as business is concerned. I think that's absolutely right, James.
SPEAKER_02And since we help make the rules, essentially that puts us at a deity level.
SPEAKER_01I love it.
Hidden Increases And Merchant Impact
SPEAKER_00We have to send it to God level. I love it. Right. That's amazing. I love that connection. And you know, you're you're but you're absolutely right. I mean, listen, the the capitalism is run by money. I mean, that's that's what we're here to do. And you know, if and the money, the money system is today very credit card and it's payment focused. And there's every single interaction, there is a transaction that's happening, whether it be some energy or money. And in most cases, it's money. So, how is that happening? Well, we're talking trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars every year through credit card processing. And you know, because of that, you know, you're absolutely right. I think businesses are should be re-re-looking at what their what their makeup is and definitely need to have, if not on staff, at least a good payments advisor that they can go to as a source of truth. Uh, because you know, there's too many people that are biased when they're coming to you with a sales perspective. And I will say the other thing that I that I in another company I'm a part of, uh, we do uh statement analysis work and we provide uh merchants with essentially a CPO as a service offering. And the one thing about the payments industry is that there is no set pricing. You can't, you know, anything else, you go and it's like it's this per per whatever unit in payments, it's all negotiated unless you go to Square Stripe or what have you. But everything else, it's all negotiated. So one restaurant could be completely paying a completely different rate than another restaurant working in the same exact payment processor. So, you know, if you're not if you don't understand the mechanics of it, which how can you? There's 800 different rates of interchange, the complexities are are silly, the processing statements are you know six to seven to eight hundred line items of information, and it it CPAs can't even figure out figure it out. It's like, how do you expect a business operator to figure out it? It does require a tremendous amount of faith and trust that you're not getting completely screwed over because of you know, you can't understand and articulate what's in there. And good luck throwing that into AI, it'll it'll probably break its break the system. No, I don't think it would figure it out.
“Compliance Officer In A Box”
SPEAKER_02You'd have to teach it. I did see in the the settlement that came out, they are going to be lowering interchange like a I don't know, tenth of a basis point or something over five years. I didn't get into it too much, sure, but as I was thinking about it, I was like, most merchants that they won't even, they're not affected by that. Yeah, you know, unless you're on Interchange Plus.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02But most merchants are they, you know, they've got a rate and interchange moves around and as it goes up, maybe they get it, but you know, they probably don't. So yeah, I mean, it's something to look at of what your pricing program is because you know that they can price it however they want. And, you know, they're not gonna price it at a loss. Sometimes they do, even um for you know, certain certain types of business to offset. But uh yeah, I mean, it's it's something where that service, every single business should be hiring you for it. What's the name of that company?
Making High-Risk Low-Risk
SPEAKER_00It's called Expense Defense, uh, expense defense.com. And you know, the other thing that we find and see constantly is that you know, processors, and and you know, the the funny thing about this is that I used to work at the processor side, helping them build these programs to find ways to manipulate these systems to be able to generate more revenue. So I know the inner workings of that on that side of it. And then and I just had a battle with my self-integrity and started shifting to the merchant, more focusing on the merchant side, probably about 15 years ago. And you know, in the fine print of most merchant processors' terms and conditions is that so long they will provide you with a they can adjust pricing so long as they provide you a 90 days written notice. Well, where do they provide that notice? On the processing statement that no one reads, and it's buried within the other changes that the car brands have, and and in there it's like we're going to adjust your rates by 0.05% or and five cents a transaction uh in the next in by October, whatever, unless you call us. And people don't they don't see that, they don't do anything about it, they just it's it's just the cost of doing business. I worked with a merchant that was a moderate-sized gas station group, and they had a contract with a with a very well-known provider, and over the course of seven years their rates quadrupled.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's yeah, and if you're not looking at it, I mean, and but on a lot of times, all it takes is go complain. Yeah, you know, that's all it takes. I always I always laugh as one thing is when people are in a dispute and I'm going, well, you're being overcharged on your fees. How do you prove it? And I can do it easy every single time. I go to the kilobyte fee. Yeah, yeah. It is by definition a dynamic, you can't even set it. Right. And and I've gone to task with this, and they're like, Well, we round, you know, it you know, you know, because it's a dynamic fee, we have to round it. And I was like, have you ever rounded down? Yeah, no, even the point zero zero zero zero zero zero one rounds up, so yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's it's crazy. And it's just a little space, but yeah.
Final Takeaways And How To Reach Credible
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, it's good. I mean, it sounds like you know, your your multiple companies are solving multiple issues that I love doing. Yeah. So what what are the biggest challenges that your clients face and how do you solve them?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, I you know, a couple different ways. So, first it depends upon who the specific client is because we're working with the merchants as well as the payments providers and the banks, um, we solve multiple challenges for for you know dynamically for each one of them. Uh, but ultimately it's it's really about helping them be able to manage their compliance uh with technology rather than having to rely on human eyes and human resources. Um, so we really I really like to think of from the merchant side of things as as a compliance officer in a box. Obviously, you can never replace a compliance officer just like you can't replace a le a paralegal, but you can give that compliance officer a tool set that allows, yeah, that will scrub your website, make sure you don't have any violation of content there, scrub your products, making sure that you don't have silly claims on any of your products and you have all the required elements there, making sure that your COAs have a place to be stored that are not that have been validated and off and authentic and connect to the products that you're selling. Um, making sure that your business licensing is up to date and doesn't expire. So our tool set provides the merchants with these resources to to so they can focus on doing what they need to do, which is manage their business and not be a compliance officer. And for the payments companies, you know, they have all their tool sets that they're using today, but when it comes to the enhanced due diligence, they're that's where their human capital restraints really show up. And uh the onboarding time of taking a merchant you know from a that has 30 different products that are that needs COAs and having to open up every one of those COAs, review it, make sure it hits requirements, respond back to the merchant, all the back and forth, the speed to revenue that we can provide for them with while also automating that entire onboarding review. I mean, it's it's invaluable. So we're solving a lot of those challenges and those pain points that the entire industry is having. The bigger goal for us is to really help these businesses become low risk because in and of themselves, these aren't high-risk products. I mean, a business industry is not high risk because of what they're doing or it's of the products they're particularly selling. In some cases, it is, but it's more about the operations. You know, most payments processors look at high risk as those that have high risk of chargebacks, fraud, etc. from a financial risk. Then but the compliance risk side of things, that should be easily be able to be managed. And today it's just not. So we're bringing a tool set that makes that stuff way easier to manage so you can focus on the financial risk of a business.
SPEAKER_02Right, right. Yeah. If you so if you look at like a bank's, you know, prohibited lists versus you know the warning list, you know, all those the restricted is yeah, all of those merchants, and that's where that's where the margins are made.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. And that you know, if we can help them improve the margin, like because they're not having to spend as many resources to get them onboarded and make them more profitable at the same time while doing that, I mean it's a win-win for everybody. So, and then also re mitigate the times that they have to shut down the portfolio or shut down a merchant because that affects the entire revenue stream, not just for the merchant, but for the processor as well. So if you're well ahead of that and the system's telling you and informing you of these things before they happen, it's it keeps us the revenue sustainable as well.
SPEAKER_02So yeah, yeah, that's great. Well, you get the last word. What's the what do you want to leave us with? What would she would you like to uh our millions of viewers to walk away, you know, and my mom?
SPEAKER_00Uh that you know our competing podcasts are gonna be are gonna be a battle for a while. No, I'm I'm um I'm really excited that that I had the opportunity to to jump on with you with you, James and and Jeremy. I really appreciate the opportunity. From a takeaway perspective, um, for business merchants out there, you know, pay attention to you know compliance. Uh you know, most businesses that are selling compliant-based products, they think that they're not they're just a business. You're in the compliance business. If you're selling CBD, hemp, cannabis, firearms, tobacco, alcohol, you are a compliance-based business. And as such, you really should focus on compliance because just like what's happening now with the CBD and with the hemp ban that's being pushed through Congress, you know, this is going to decimate an industry. Certainly, it's going to have a massive and a significant impact. And, you know, there's ways to be able to protect not just your business, but really the sustainability of an entire industry if you're if you're doing things right. And our job is to help the good actors thrive and draw light to the bad actors and get them out of the way so that they don't taint the rest of the market for everybody else. So that's the biggest takeaway that I can leave you with.
SPEAKER_02All right, love it.
SPEAKER_00So, how do people uh get in touch with you? Uh, it's credible.com. It's it's with a with a Q instead of the C, but spelled exactly the same. And uh, my email address is noah at credible.com. So look us up. Uh love to be able to connect with anybody out there, uh, even just to ideate or just to just to bounce uh conversation. So I appreciate you again.
SPEAKER_03Thank 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.