The Payments Experts Podcast
Expert payments attorneys discuss the electronic payments industry from a legal perspective.
The Payments Experts Podcast
Your Business Is Probably Overpaying - Learn Why | AI-Powered Cost Audits with Bill Kurtzner PEP115
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
What if the fastest way to grow your business isn't increasing sales, but eliminating the hidden costs you're already paying?
In this episode of the Payments Experts Podcast, hosts Christopher Dryden and Jeremy Stock sit down with Bill Kurtzner with Cost Savings (https://costsavings.com/) to explore how artificial intelligence is transforming cost management for businesses while creating entirely new revenue opportunities for payment professionals, ISOs, and fintech companies.
We dive into how AI can analyze utility bills, waste removal, telecommunications, and other recurring business expenses to uncover hidden savings in minutes. Along the way, we discuss why many companies continue overpaying because of evergreen contracts, automatic price increases, and fees that often go unnoticed for years.
The conversation also looks beyond payment processing, examining how value-added services, employee savings platforms, embedded finance, payroll, lending, and AI-powered business tools are helping payment organizations strengthen merchant relationships and build recurring revenue that extends far beyond traditional processing.
Whether you're an ISO, merchant services professional, fintech executive, entrepreneur, or business owner, you'll gain practical insights into reducing expenses, improving profitability, leveraging AI to create competitive advantages, and delivering greater value to your customers.
Topics include:
•AI-powered business cost reduction
•Hidden fees and contract escalations
•Employee savings and retention strategies
•Embedded finance and recurring revenue
•The future of merchant services beyond payment processing
If you're looking for practical ways to help businesses save money while building stronger, longer-lasting customer relationships, this episode is packed with actionable insights you can apply today.
**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
Utility Companies Fight Cost Savers
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and and it's interesting too, because right now the way that the the utility companies are fighting back, especially if you have something like solar, is you know, w when they're when they're charging you and when they're giving you credit, they've like created their own little like marketplace to make sure that they're ending up on top and creating the most revenue or profit at least. Like it's very interesting to me how the utility companies are responding to some of the cost savings elements that have come into the space. And I'm I'm solely talking about uh solar panels, right? But like now you introduce something like this into it, I'd be interested to see how they're gonna try to combat this too, you know?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean, there are, I mean, this is no joking. There are literally entire departments at companies like waste management that are designed to counter what it is that my company does. Yeah. They have a whole strategy for dealing with us, basically. Um, I mean, obviously the waste removal industry is notoriously run by the moments.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I get it.
SPEAKER_03Right, right, right.
SPEAKER_02Welcome to the Payments Experts Podcast, a podcast of global legal law firm. We hope you enjoy this episode.
Discounts That Feel Like Raises
SPEAKER_01Does that beyond the employee having greater satisfaction for like the benefits of almost like a you know a fringe benefit that not necessarily quantified, but um, is there a benefit when the employ to the SMB when the employees engage? Well, yeah, well, uh definitely because I understand employee satisfaction of getting a discount, like because they're an employee, but is there is there like a greater um value prop to the SMB for getting all of their employees signed on?
SPEAKER_03It'll show the SMB how much money their employees have saved by purchasing things through the platform.
SPEAKER_01Awesome. That's awesome.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, which effectively is like uh give them a raise.
SPEAKER_01No, no, no. I get it because we changed our insurance a couple years ago, and you know, we had a controller that we hired, and she was all about benefits, and so she shopped a little bit, she changed our employees' insurance, and I remember one of our employees came up to me and was like, Oh, thanks for the eight percent raise. And I was like, What are you talking about? And I had never I had never perceived it that way, right? Like I had never really looked at it, but I do believe that that's a great way for not only like hiring, but retention of good employees, of like, hey, look at all the benefits that we provide you, and look at look at how you can you know really maximize your savings and efficiency as on a personal level by being engaged with us.
Giving SMBs Big Company Perks
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and it's uh it's it's a challenge for SMBs right now because these larger corporates do have an advantage in that they have more money, they can offer health insurance benefits and other things. These employee discount platforms that they typically offer to corporate employees are not usually available to SMBs. So we're giving them that, we're trying to level the playing field, give them access to the cost containment solutions that are usually leveraged by these large corporates, and then also the employee discount platform for their employees and uh make it easier for them to compete with these larger companies.
SPEAKER_01No, I think that's great. Uh, you know, I it's it's up and down. It's it to me, it's like the the group purchasing organization, but now you're just like making the tentacles go as far as possible for people actually reaching that benefit. Which I think that's important.
Revenue Share For Payment Partners
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think for the the processing world out there, the ISOs or payment organizations that are listening, the most significant aspect is we do a revenue share. On the membership fee for our platform, it's $49 a month. We do a revenue share there, our embedded finance for lending, we do a revenue share there, our payroll, we do a revenue share. So a lot of these companies are uh looking to offer these ancillary solutions. When they get embedded for a payment processor, usually they're embedded into the payment processing portal, which is not something that the business owner accesses all the time. So it's not in front of them as much. So we have a mobile app, like larger payment processors typically won't have a mobile app because nobody would really need it, right? But our platform engages with the business owner and then even downline to the employee level to uh connect with them, bring forth uh new deals and opportunities. Uh, we do have personal finance that's going to be coming online in 2027. So um, you know, personal loans, we have a corporate rewards credit card, a personal credit card coming out for cost savings. Um, so all of that revenue that's uh that's earned through the platform is attributable back to the payment organization that signed the company up. Yeah, they get downline past the business level to the employee
Payroll Data Powers Smarter Credit
SPEAKER_03level.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so on the employee level, it fascinates me because they're you know, they're more than anything, they're trying to get unbanked people banked and or at least try to get them participating in certain you know aspects of the economy. And a lot of unbanked people don't participate in cards. Uh well, I mean, they don't do it on a on maybe like a traceable level, right? Um, but this sounds like you'll have an offering that where somebody can actually be issued a card, not necessarily tied to a bank account, but tied to you know their employment more or less. Like there's a there's some sort of tracking mechanism in there, like that you can maybe start to pull people in and they could have like uh you know their own card, which is a prepaid card, even if they want to go onto it that way. I I I you know, or somebody who's willing to do like you know, short-term, you know, small consumer finance, you know, like set like some small dollar amount um and then plug it onto a card, right? I think that's pretty that that's pretty good too.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it all ties together. So um, you know, once you have the payroll piece, if they take the payroll, the employees can get notified through the mobile app that they're getting paid this week. We know how much they're making. We integrate our credit solution, so now we know what their credit looks like. Now you've got their uh financial information and their credit information. On the letting lending side, you can start to present them with pre-qualified loan offers and things of that nature. Um, it's similar to being able to refer your customer to credit karma, but where the business is going to save money and you as a merchant organization are gonna get paid for sending them there. And uh and probably the most interesting part about it is once they sign up for our platform, even if they leave the payment processor for acquiring, they still get paid on the downline revenue from our solution. So they've got all the employees from the business and the business owner and the whole business connected to this platform that they're now getting residual revenue on passively, even if they leave them as a payment processor.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, no, no. I get it, I especially on the issuing spend side, too. There's uh good money that could potentially like come to them, you know, with their employees using uh some sort of card, you know, uh like funding a portion of their wages onto a card and then having the spend associated with it. Um, what like so this sounds wonderful in many respects. Uh what are some of the challenges that you've been facing when you've been out in the marketplace?
Agentic AI Audits In Minutes
SPEAKER_03Uh well, developing an AI has been really interesting. I mean, it's an ever-changing landscape. So, you know, when we started down this path, you know, 18, 24 months ago, uh we weren't sure that what we were trying to do was even possible. When we filed for the patent, it definitely wasn't. Um, so I think that's why we got the patent, because they didn't think it was possible either. Um, and then, you know, now AI's come such a long way that, you know, we're we're building out things at a speed that's never been done. Um, you know, go lives and and production-ready environments and things, they take sometimes days to prop up. Uh so one of the challenges was starting originally down a path of like traditional software development and spending a lot of money doing that, and then realizing down the line, you know, where we are today, that all that probably wasn't necessary to get to where we are. It's it's really an interesting kind of you know conundrum where traditional software development is kind of taking a back seat right now, in my opinion.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I don't disagree with that. And and I think it's uh agentic AI has changed the landscape for payments specifically, right? I mean, I I look at it and you know a lot of like the fraud prevention is based on human activity. And the minute you take that human activity out of the equation, which is happening, and it's something where they're programming an automated agent to a certain degree, or the maybe the automated agents like just doing it themselves after a little bit of experience, right? It really is kind of taking the the paradigm and shifting it either, you know, at least on its side, if not upside down, because that human interplay is leaving somewhat, right? And and uh I would imagine that that's gotta have some impact on what you're doing as well.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean, you know, we we we had a bit of foresight in in recognizing that you know AI was definitely going to impact the space in which we're in. So we were either gonna be at the forefront of it and adopt it and get on board or potentially get left behind. Um, it I had conversations with auditors that I've worked with for years that have been in the space for 20 years, uh, you know, 12 months ago, where they said, you know, I think in like five or 10 years, you know, AI is gonna take over this industry. I said, I think you're like five or ten years off because we're looking at like six months from now, like what you're doing is gonna be antiquated and uh it's happened. Um the the tools that we make available to all the SMBs are pretty generalized. We do have a genic AI that we leverage for for Utail auditors as well. It's so advanced that you can upload 12 months worth of invoices and without any other information, uh let's say, for example, 12 months worth of electricity bills, it'll pull up the geographic location, what type of facility it is, what business it is, and what they do. It'll produce a full, what would be almost the equivalent of an Ashray level two energy efficiency audit for them, 30 pages long, with recommendations on uh energy efficiencies like LED lighting, HVAC improvements, all of these things. Uh it's very extensive. It does in about four minutes.
SPEAKER_01That's pretty amazing.
SPEAKER_03It's also an energy engineer would do and take two weeks and charge $5,000 for
When Big Vendors Push Back
SPEAKER_03it, basically.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and and it's interesting too, because right now, the way that the the utility companies are fighting back, especially if you have something like solar, is you know, when they're when they're charging you and when they're giving you credit, they've like created their own little like marketplace to make sure that they're ending up on top and creating the most revenue or profit at least. Like it's very interesting to me how the utility companies are responding to some of the cost savings elements that have come into the space. And I'm I'm solely talking about uh solar panels, right? But like now you introduce something like this into it, I'd be interested to see how they're gonna try to combat this too, you know?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean, there are, I mean, this is no joking. There are literally entire departments at companies like waste management that are designed to counter what it is that my company does.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03They have a whole strategy for dealing with us, basically. Um, I mean, obviously the waste removal industry is notoriously run by the bottom.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I get it. Right, right.
SPEAKER_03Right, right.
Escalation Clauses And Hidden Fees
SPEAKER_03So so they are probably one of the most egregious. Um, but we've audited companies like uh Confi Administrative Services, largest personal lines insurance company, 1,600 locations on average across all their sites, here's 54% a month. With some sites where they were paying $2,000 a month, we got the cost reduced to $175. They're replaying by 90%.
SPEAKER_01That is awesome.
SPEAKER_03And it happens all the time. The the contracts there have escalation clauses where they're allowed to increase the cost year over year. It's an evergreen contract. So if they haven't paid attention to it in 10 years, it can be five times what it was when they started, and they'll just keep going until you point it out.
SPEAKER_01Well, it's like it's like processors, man. Like they do a systematic, you know, either biannual or triannual rate increase, or you know, like whether it's in conjunction with interchange increases or you know, whatever it is. But you know, I I have sometimes merchants come to us and say, I'm paying like 12% effective rate. And I'm like, yeah, it they're like, how is this? How is this uh how are they able to do this? How is this legitimate? And I said, because your agreement, like you you didn't try to negotiate it at all. Not that you could have, but you didn't even try. And then every time they send you a monthly statement, whether you receive it or not, or whether you're accessing it through a digital platform, I said, if they give you a statement message that rate increases are going to go up and you can either cancel right now, or like nobody's paying attention to it. So it's all legitimate under the contract. And unfortunately, when you go to court, the contract will prevail. So whether or not this is a deceptive practice, it, you know, if they're doing everything and they're not systematically trying to shield you from what they're doing, and you're never checking, and you're just sort of I mean, I think that's the fascinating part with what you're doing. Because I would imagine that on a personal level, people generally they they aren't really checking value savings against providers. Um, usually, like, I mean, look at our phone providers. We've got Verizon, we've got ATT, we've got T-Mobile. I think that there's a couple like smaller ones, but ultimately we're not given many choices. And the choices that we're given, I'm not really seeing how much savings that we're gonna have, right? I think that mentality just moves straight on to business with business owners for small business because they're probably thinking the exact same thing is I'm just gonna get what I get, nobody's really gonna do anything. And my time's valuable. So when I'm sitting here trying to actually go through and figure out where I can get savings, I'm eating up all those savings because I'm just blowing my time. So, you know, like having a yeah, having a tool like look, what you're doing makes like full sense to me, right?
SPEAKER_03Like, I mean, uh I I used to think that yeah, you you you couldn't be more accurate in your assessment. Basically, um when we have a very niche industry that we operate in, uh, we live in the niche, right? We we bring forward these kind of like interesting or like unknown opportunities to these companies, even these large companies. I mean, they contract us on a contingent fee basis. And frankly, I think a lot of times because they have adept internal human resources, like a Walgreens gonna have somebody that's a really experienced energy manager or sustainability manager or shipping and logistics manager. They think because they have these resources already that there aren't things that are slipping through the cracks. But you know the age-old adage, which is that you can get nickel and dimed to death, right? Yeah, so what we've done for years is pick up those nickels and dimes and give them back to the company, and we take a percentage of that as our success fee. Um, but you're right. Uh there's a lot of rubber stamping. There's a lot of um companies that I mean, for example, if you didn't know that you could potentially electricity is regulated, water sewage regulated. If you didn't know that you could potentially be overpaying for these things, they're a necessary cost of doing business, right? So if you don't pay the electricity bill because you think you see something funny on it, you can't go to the electricity provider and say, I'm not paying this because uh I don't think it makes sense. If you don't know why it doesn't make sense, you have no electric stand on. And even if something is wrong, you're not gonna have anything to present to them. If you don't pay the electricity bill, they turn off your electricity. Now, if you're a manufacturer, distributor, or any business, you have no electricity. So you have to pay the bill to keep going. And so that unfortunately uh happens a lot. It happens on a large scale for large companies.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I've been saying this for 30 years, man. ATT overcharging you ten dollars. I think it's systematic. And the way that they developed and designed their phone tree is intended to keep you on hold for an hour, so you quit, right? And then they like, you know, they'll give you they'll give you the money back if you can get to them. Good luck getting to them, right? Like, how do you thought about design?
SPEAKER_03You're absolutely right. I mean, like, I just gave you that example about confite, right? So we went in and renegotiated all the waste contracts, they make you sign a new three-year agreement to get the price and concessions. 12 months later, the price is going up. And it's not within the contract, says the price can go up, let's say 5% annually. It goes up 25%. Yeah. On every location, systemically, it is designed to make you feel like they make their profit on who doesn't say something, right? Exactly. Exactly. You gotta think about it this way too. With with like waste management in particular, you've got waste management in Republic that own about 50% of the market because of anti-collusion and antitrust, they only have 25% of the market each. They're not legally allowed to take any more than that 25% apiece, which means that when they go back to shareholders and they have to show more profits, the only way they can do that is increasing costs and fees, right? So they can't, you know, new businesses pop up and they can service that because it's new market, right? But at the end of the day, they can only have so much of the market. And for them to keep showing shareholder growth, they have to be charging more money for what they're doing. So they find these ways to throw fees on there. Um uh overflow fees, for example. That's a new thing that came up in the last few years. So if there's a a trash bag outside of your dumpster, it's not in the dumpster, they'll charge you $150 because it's not in the dumpster.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and then some homeless people some homeless person just came by and threw that over, right?
SPEAKER_03I mean, we've had situations where people are paying more for overflow fees than they are for the service itself.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, it's like any way that they can get you coming and going, man. 100%. It's it's mind-boggling, yeah.
Mission And Where To Find Them
SPEAKER_01Well, look, I I really appreciate you coming on. This has been really educational, and I I believe in what you're doing from a individual consumer perspective, I believe in what you're doing. And um, yeah, yeah. No, I think it's a great idea. I think it it depending on how you can deliver it and how efficient you can make it, I think, you know, sky's the limit for you guys. But uh, you know, I always give I give uh our guest the last word every single time. So if you wanted to give us like just a couple sentences of who you are and how we can find you and everything else, I mean uh you mentioned SEAA, I'll be there. So I'll look for you. But uh you know, give us the give us your closing shot.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, listen, we're we're trying to uh you know return revenue to small businesses. We really want to help every business in America to take advantage of the tools and opportunities that these large corporate companies have that are, you know, reaping tons of profits. We want to return that uh capability back to the small businesses everywhere, make them more competitive, uh, put more money in their pocket, and just help the economy grow. And uh that's really what we're all about. We want to help them and their employees to save money.
SPEAKER_01That's awesome. Thanks, Bill. This Bill Kurtzner for Cost Savings. You can see him at cost, you can see their product at costsavings.com. But Bill, we really appreciate you coming on. I'll see you at SEAA.
SPEAKER_02Thank you so much for having me. 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.com. Matters discussed are all opinions that do not constitute legal advice. All events or likeness to real people, and events is a coincidence.