The Payments Experts Podcast
Expert payments attorneys discuss the electronic payments industry from a legal perspective.
The Payments Experts Podcast
The AI Platform Helping Businesses Cut Costs Everywhere: Cost Savings | Bill Kurtzner PEP111
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What if your invoices could tell you exactly where you’re overpaying? We talk agentic AI that audits spend, finds hard savings, and even unlocks wholesale pricing for SMBs.
If you’ve ever looked at an invoice and wondered, “Am I paying a fair price, or am I just too busy to fight it?” you’ll feel this conversation in your bones. Christopher Dryden of Global Legal Law Firm sits down with Bill Kurtzner with Cost Savings (https://costsavings.com/), a payments veteran turned cost containment expert, to unpack how businesses quietly overpay across everyday categories like shipping, telecom, waste removal, utilities, bank fees, and even merchant processing fees and how a new wave of agentic AI is changing the math.
Bill shares the path from door knocking as an ISO to building Util Auditors, then zooms in on the breakthrough: a granted patent for automated auditing and recommendation systems that turns manual invoice review into a scalable, self service workflow. We talk about the difference between “soft savings” (time saved) and hard cost savings you can actually measure on the bottom line, plus why that matters when you’re selling to SMB owners who need results, not vibes.
We talk with Bill about turning expense and invoice data into measurable hard cost savings using a patent backed, agentic AI platform. We dig into how GPO pricing, payments partnerships, and SOC 2 security controls can make enterprise grade savings accessible to small businesses.
• Bill’s background in payments and building credibility the hard way
• Util Auditors and the shift from enterprise cost containment to scalable software
• Agentic AI and a granted patent for automated auditing and recommendations
• Why hard cost savings beat soft savings claims
• GPO economics and why SMBs usually get left out
• Integrations with QuickBooks, ERPs, and major vendor accounts for apples to apples comparisons
• Self service onboarding, dashboards, and optional invoice uploads for analysis
• Data privacy concerns, SOC 2 compliance, encryption, and API based access
• Distribution through payment processors, banks, and associations
• Embedded finance direction including lending, checking, and payroll
• Employee member deals that bring corporate discounts to SMB teams
We also dig into the practical model: connecting tools like QuickBooks and other ERP and accounting platforms, pulling invoices through APIs, and showing apples to apples comparisons that can unlock steep discounts through a tech enabled group purchasing organization. Since data access raises real concerns, we cover privacy and security head on, including SOC 2 compliance and encryption. Finally, we explore distribution through payment processors and other partners, plus the bigger ecosystem direction: embedded lending, checking, payroll, and employee member deals that bring corporate level discounts to smaller teams.
Payments companies are hunting real value adds for merchants. This episode breaks down a $50/month savings platform, GPO pricing, and why “hard savings” beats “soft savings.”
Subscribe for more conversations at the intersection of payments, fintech, and real world business operations, then share this episode and leave a review so more operators can find it. What’s the one recurring bill you’d love to cut down first?
QuickBooks integration sounds great until you ask: where does my data go? Hear how SOC 2 compliance, encryption, and API based access shape trust in cost savings platforms.
**Matters discussed are all opinions and do not constitute legal advice. All events or likeness to real people and events is a coincidence.**
PEP Links:
https://www.globallegallawfirm.com/podcasts/
A payments podcast of Global Legal Law Firm
Privacy And Data Security Assurances
SPEAKER_00How about privacy concerns with having all of this information? I mean, I obviously we're dealing with businesses, but you know, if I'm integrating my QuickBooks to you, uh what you know, what kind of uh at least what assurance that can you provide that I'm not going to potentially be leaking out information that I don't want it out into the world?
SPEAKER_01Sure, of course. I mean, we're we're we're working with them through their APIs. Um, our whole platform is SOC2 compliant. Um, you know, it's fully encrypted for when the information is shared. So um we we have a lot of those uh processes and procedures in in in place. Um our CTO is brilliant. He's a CISO, certified information security officer. Um ran a software business that had 500 developers. Uh they sold. Um he was consulting the Department of Defense. And so he he's very big on security.
SPEAKER_02Welcome to the Payments Experts Podcast, a podcast of Global Legal Law Firm. We hope you enjoyed this episode.
Bill’s Path Into Payments
SPEAKER_00Yeah, thank you for coming on, man. We really appreciate you being here. Uh wanted to jump in and touch base. Where are you where are you located, Bill? Uh Cleawater, Florida. All right. So so, you know, it's interesting because like uh everybody has a background uh as far as like how they you know found their way into payments. Usually it's falling backwards into something. That's definitely how I got here. Um but uh you know how how long you've been in payments and uh how'd you get how'd you get into payments?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I've been in and around the payment space for about 15 years now. Um originally started with an ISO out of Colorado and was uh you know door knocking and pounding pavement, signing, you know, signing merchants directly, and um exited the payment space actually in 2012 and went to the consumer side, uh consumer advocacy side, um, watching out for people overpaying for uh utility bills and other expenses. And so um, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And so so after 2012, did were you just out of the scene for for a long period? I mean, how long are we talking?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so so in 2013, I founded uh Util Auditors, which is a leading cost containment consulting company um at utilauditors.com. And for for the last 13 years, we've uh we've been consumer advocates in analyzing and identifying errors and inefficiencies in business billing, um, not just on uh utilities and other things, but merchant processing fees, uh bank fees. So we we kind of worked on the other side of the fence, if you will.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and how did how how did you so you were started with utilities and it kind of transitioned into doing some sort of like you know, invoice analysis for merchants because you knew that you could probably back into that and and and try to identify some cost-saving structures?
From Utility Audits To AI
SPEAKER_01Exactly. So we started with a focus on core utilities, um electricity, natural gas, and water sewer. We organically grew and expanded based on the needs of our client base to uh 12 different areas of spend. So we audited um contract services like telecommunications, waste removal, shipping, uh merchant processing fees, bank fees, uh payroll administrative fees. So we we cast a pretty wide net. Um and what what ended up happening as kind of a natural progression is we started to recognize that AI was going to change the way that our business performed. Um, you know, computational AI, uh, you know, things that involved mathematics like accounting, we're gonna be impacted drastically by AI. Uh in April of 2021, we filed for a patent entitled Automated Auditing and Recommendation Systems and Methods. Uh in January of 2024, that patent was granted. And so we began to build out multi-layered agenic AI that essentially took the process that we did manually as cost containment consultants in analyzing uh expense invoices and automated that using AI. So you were costing is important.
SPEAKER_00You were just doing this for general business services to look at all the spend that was associated with it, just to make sure that there was there weren't cost savings or like, well, I mean, maybe not, you know, identifying straight up just like overbilling potentially, but also identifying cost savings so that you guys could go and renegotiate potentially with all the various providers just for a business. That's what I'm hearing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so so historically we've done it for mostly enterprise level companies. Um, with Utel auditors, we focused on pretty much the Fortune 500, I would say, Forbes 500. We've audited companies like Walgreens, Home Depot, Enterprise Rent ACAR, AMC Theaters, Burlington Bay, or CMEX. So the list goes on and on. Um, but what we realized was that you know our services were mostly only beneficial to those enterprise level organizations. And so the delimiting factor was even though mom and pop's pizza shop really wants to save, you know, 25% a month on their $200 waste bill, it wasn't worth our time and effort to save them $50 and then bill them on a contingent fee basis, $25 a month, have to get the invoice, verify, and validate the savings and all those
Making Cost Savings Work For SMBs
SPEAKER_01things. So our goal with cost savings is to expand the total adjustable market to uh allow cost containment consulting to be leveraged by businesses of any size.
SPEAKER_00So, how are you able to is it is it paring it down by paring down the labor expense through the agentic AI? And now you're able to actually offer it a level where it it makes more sense because a lot of the computational analysis is happening in the background versus like before it was more like human human labor driven.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's exactly right. Um, so so uh with UTL auditors, we would, it was more white glove, where we would actually implement the cost savings for them. Uh larger enterprise organizations outsource that service because it's a niche service, firstly. Uh and also it's uh they they don't have the resources internally to be able to implement the savings across, let's say, hundreds or thousands of locations. So uh with with cost savings, we're providing the the business owner with the same information that we would typically find through the audit process using AI. And then we give them that that information to approach their vendor on their own. So it's a self-serving, it's like a DIY cost savings process. Yep.
SPEAKER_00And so is is cost savings now, even with the focus with merchant processing, is are you changing anything that you're doing to maybe focus more on merchant processing as a lost leader or to show that the cost savings with the current uh the current provider could actually be uh facilitated and achieved through somebody that you're working with?
GPO Discounts Through Accounting Integrations
SPEAKER_00I mean, what's the value prop when you go in?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, actually, so what we realized was, you know, based on what I just kind of shared regarding like waste removal from mom and pop's pizza shop, right? Like a lot of these businesses may not benefit from the cost containment consulting that we historically delivered for these enterprise companies. So what we did with cost savings was we created a cost savings GPO, and that GPO is tech enabled. So just like cost containment consulting that typically can't be utilized by smaller businesses, uh, where we expanded that with AI, GPOs usually provide uh group purchasing organizations provide discounted pricing on products for larger companies. So these enterprise level businesses benefit from their aggregate purchasing power by getting wholesale discounted pricing. SMBs don't have that advantage. And the reason that they don't is because a typical GPO only makes about 2% on spend. So if I sign up a company that's a small business that spends $10,000 a year on uh staple at staples, I'm gonna get $200 a year. Right? So to go through that process to sign them up, it's not cost beneficial to me as a GPO. So what we did was we took and we made that scalable by connecting with 70 different ERP and accounting platforms, everything from QuickBooks and Microsoft Dynamics to Acumatica, Oracle, Sage, Bill.com, et cetera. And when our customers go into cost savings AI, um they connect those accounts and then we connect with the integrated vendors so that we can pull their invoices. And we do an apple to apples comparison. So every business of any size that's buying anything from any of these major vendors, they're probably getting retail pricing, maybe discounted somewhat because they're business, but we're providing them with access to a GPO that they can sign up for and purchase things they're already buying for at a steep discount.
SPEAKER_00So, so walk me through. Like I'm an SMB, right? Our law firm is. So who's contacting me and what are they pitching me? You know, like I like if if you know somebody, I I don't know if it's a cold call, if it's an email, whatever it is. And then once I'm pitched and I say yes, right, what does it look like for me as far as, you know, is this a platform? I got user credentials, like walk me through the process. It's always helpful.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. So I I think part of the reason why we're on this call is I've I've spent a lot of time um over the last 12 to 18 months at payment conferences. And uh one of the things that we found was that you know, payment processing organizations are always looking for ancillary products or services that they can offer that add value to their merchant base. And obviously, if they can monetize that relationship in another way, uh it makes a lot of sense for them. So with cost savings AI, uh one of the unique things about what we're doing is our AI provides hard cost savings. It's measurable, finite cost savings using AI. So we productize that. Um, most AIs now uh preach that they're offering soft cost savings, right? So saving you time on marketing, saving you time on sales, et cetera, but you have to measure that in soft cost. We actually deliver measurable hard uh cost savings to the to the business bottom line. And we can do that for you know companies of any size. So what we're doing is partnering with uh payment processing organizations as a value ad, where they can introduce us to all of their merchants, and uh we can either add the fee on to the merchant's statement or we can uh charge them via credit card for our $50 monthly fee.
SPEAKER_00So you're you're actually using the payment processing as your distribution panel. Correct. Okay, that makes sense because everybody needs payment processing, just like everybody needs the lights on. So I get that. So if if I'm gonna get contacted by somebody at cost savings, what does that look like? What's your sale process look like? Or is that gonna be the ISO rather than direct? I mean, I I I bet you have both channels, but you know, what does it look like? Say I wanted to participate, and then for my participation, what does it look like when I when I'm actually engaging with the user interface?
Simple Onboarding And DIY Dashboard
SPEAKER_01Sure. So so when a user comes in and they sign up for the platform, they actually get a walkthrough of the platform. So it's going to show them what to do. Um, it really is as simple as just connecting like your QuickBooks account, your Staples account, your Amazon Business Services account, your Office Depot account, et cetera. They connect those things and then we provide them with a dashboard where they can see apples to apples what they would save if they had bought those products through our wholesale contract. So it's it's really very simple uh and it's very self-service. So it's it's not a complicated process. Um they can upload an invoice if they have an electricity invoice, a shipping invoice, other things that they want an analysis done on through our AI tools that are also in the business suite. So it's very self-service and very self-explanatory. It's super easy for them to leverage.
Tokenization Questions And Data Handling
SPEAKER_00How about how about privacy concerns with having all of this information? I mean, I obviously we're dealing with businesses, but you know, if I'm integrating my QuickBooks to you, uh what you know, what kind of uh at least what assurance that can you provide that I'm not going to potentially be leaking out information that I don't want it out into the world?
SPEAKER_01Sure, of course. I mean, we're we're we're working with them through their APIs. Um, our whole platform is SOC2 compliant. Um, you know, it's fully encrypted for when the information is shared. So um we we have a lot of those uh processes and procedures in in in place. Um our CTO is brilliant. He's a CISO certified information security officer. Um ran a software business that had 500 developers uh they sold. Um he was consulting the Department of Defense. And so he he's very big on security.
SPEAKER_00No, no, that's great. I mean, like these days, uh it's interesting to me because um I'm I'm talking to people about tokenization and all sorts of like data information exchange and where like the rubber meets the road on all that stuff sometimes can get very complex. A lot of times there's not even an imprint on like a way station, you know, like it's just like a pass-through. Like it does doesn't even leave anything there. But it's interesting to know that if I'm engaging with a platform and I'm looking at data, like where that data's housed, where it's stored, um, potentially like who else can see the data, whether or not I'm leaving it anywhere. You know, I mean, I I I I go through contracts all day long. And so I start to ask myself these questions now. It's you know, it's like we're we're moving into the whole digital sphere of data. I mean, like, you know, the idea of of uh data brokerage and and people wanting to like gather data to potentially resell it, you know, I understood it conceptually, but then like when you got into like all the regulation, it was just sort of like eyes glaze over. But now, like as I can see like data transfer and and exchange happening, it's uh it's it's like it's very interesting to me. Um you know, it's uh it's I don't know, it's it's it's a cluster, like you guys have to be real careful, but you have a patent, so you're obviously a sophisticated guy to me. Anybody who goes through the patent prosecution process, right? I mean, like, and and actually gets approved for a patent, you guys must have done something right.
Partner Channels And Embedded Finance Plans
SPEAKER_00Um, so the like if I was it if I was a like when you say you're you're trying to use uh the payment processing companies as uh a distribution channel, or I said distribution channel, but are you looking at ISOs? Are you looking further upstream? Like who's your target for that? If and if people are listening to this and I'm just saying an agent and I want to come out and sell your product, like how do I, you know, how do I get involved or engaged, or is it is it a limited engagement for you got to go to whoever's uh distributing it for you?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so right now we've got a select handful of uh partners that we're starting to work with to introduce the platform uh through payment organizations. We have other partnerships as well with banks and associations, where obviously because this has value for business any business really, um, through those same type of introductions, uh, you know, we're we're starting to introduce the platform that way. Um I think those that are interested can definitely reach out. Uh, we're trying to focus on on this year because we're launching, we're trying to really focus on making sure it's very successful for the partners that we are working with. Uh it's very important to us, obviously, that they have a good experience and that the merchants have a good experience in introducing the platform. Um, so that's really our focus this year.
SPEAKER_00Are you are you looking at like um different types of partnership like embedded finance or POS? I mean, I'm looking at these days, some of the POS uh uh uh I'll call production or you know what whatever the deliverable is, it's changing. It's becoming like a hub for almost like similar to what you're doing. Like the the PLS is becoming like the central computer for the business for small business, like the central computer where everything kind of integrates in, and there's so much business functionality that's recorded in that thing, other than just the purchase and sale. You know, it's is uh are you are you doing partnerships like that as well?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I agree. I mean, I went to Transact in Atlanta earlier this year, and uh it was largely like hardware vendors that were there. There were so many hardware uh vendors that were exhibiting at the show, I was very surprised. But you're absolutely right. Um, so we're actually partnered with JARIS. Um, there's gonna be a release about that coming up at the end of this week before the SEAA show that I'm attending next week in Miami. And uh we're partnered with them for embedded lending. We're gonna be introducing checking. We have an embedded payroll solution at cost
Employee Member Deals And Wrap
SPEAKER_01savings. Um, and one thing I didn't touch on yet that I think is really significant is that we offer a cost savings member deals platform for all the employees of the merchants that sign up. So we're extending the savings from the business owner to the employee level where they get access to cost savings member deals. And uh at member deals, um, they they'll get an invite from the employee or employer, I'm sorry, uh, with their logo, and it'll invite the employee to say, hey, listen, as a benefit of being an employee for ABC Company, you now have access to cost savings member deals. It'll have their logo on the email, and all of their employees get access to this corporate level discount platform. And it's the same platform that's deployed right now by Walgreens, Home Depot, AMC Theaters, you know, all these big corporates. So we're we're making that available to SMBs when just like the cost containment thing and the GPO thing, it's not usually available for SMBs. We're bringing that same solution to them as well.
SPEAKER_02Thank 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.