The Payments Experts Podcast

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...

“Merchant of record” sounds official. The problem: card networks don’t even define it the same way. That ambiguity can get businesses shut down overnight. Want the bright line between MOR, PayFac, and PayFac Light? California can be the place where fast-growing commerce companies learn an expensive lesson: states are no longer “too busy” to chase remote sellers, platforms, and cross-border transac...

What if the real moat isn’t your software, but your distribution? James Shepherd breaks down why vertical SaaS is exploding in payments and why agents can win if they bring the right solutions to market. AI is not your new coworker. It is a high powered math engine that rewards clear thinking, good inputs, and enough compute, and it punishes shortcuts. Christopher Dryden, Esq., sits down to talk w...

Five things that give the merchant processing industry a bad name. A payment processing statement should never feel like a magic trick, yet too many merchants get hit with fees they never truly agreed to and increases they do not notice until the bank account hurts. Christopher Dryden and Jeremy Stock of Global Legal Law Firm bring on Mitchell Reisberg from Watchdog Merchant Services (https://watc...

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 Kurt...

“Merchant of record” gets thrown around nonstop, but it changes who owns the customer, the descriptor, and the liability. We break down what it really means and what it is not. “Merchant of record” sounds like a neat shortcut in payments until you realize it can change who owns the customer experience, who appears on the billing descriptor, and who gets stuck holding the bag when disputes, taxes,...

Negotiation changes when you have leverage. Our playbook: lock out debits, demand the underlying basis, and force real answers, sometimes by filing a complaint. A six figure “brand fine” lands out of nowhere, nobody will show you the underlying letter, and the funds can get pulled before you even have a chance to respond. That is the reality we see for merchants caught in the gap between card netw...

Payment processing often feels like a tax and when every ISO sells the same terminals, the same funding speed, and the same basic promises, the only lever left is price. That is how the industry ends up in a race to the bottom, with merchants switching for a few basis points because they have no real reason to stay. Christopher Dryden, Esq., talks with Tuzo Rewards, Global Legal friends Jeff &...

Stripe approved the merchant… then froze funds and refunded customers anyway. How do you protect your business when the processor owns the relationship? One day your payments are flowing. The next day a platform decides it “doesn’t support your product,” freezes your balance, and refunds your customers while you’re left holding the shipping bill. That risk is closer than most merchants think, espe...

Surcharging caps. Debit card limits. Fines that flow through banks. If you’ve ever wondered who really profits from card payments, this conversation will change how you see  Checkout is turning into a trust test. Customers hate surprise fees, merchants hate absorbing card costs, and the rules around surcharging, cash discount, and dual pricing keep getting more confusing. We sit down with Clark Kr...

Software that negotiates prices and completes payments for you sounds convenient until it hallucinates a refund policy. Software that can shop, negotiate, and pay for you is no longer science fiction, and it is already colliding with the realities of payments risk. We sit down with Dale Laszig from the Green Sheet (https://www.greensheet.com/) to break down agentic commerce in plain English and ex...

“Merchant of record” sounds easy, until you realize it isn’t a defined term. We break down PayFac vs MOR, why rules exist, and how people accidentally step into money transmitter risk. PayFac is one of those payments terms people toss around until they’re the one holding the liability. We sit down with Deana Rich of Infinicept (https://www.infinicept.com/) to map the real payment facilitator story...

A single receipt can change how you see the payments industry. When Naveed from KV Payments notices a 4% card charge at a mechanic shop, it triggers the question every small business owner eventually asks: where is all that processing margin going, and how do you price merchant services fairly without stepping into a compliance mess? We walk through Naveed’s unconventional path into payment proces...

Outrage alert: a government ambulance merchant was charged 9.49% in fees. We unpack how hidden debit routing and “pass-throughs” spike your effective rate and what ISOs and merchants can do next. Ever wonder why your “great” rate still turns into a painful effective rate on the statement? We dig into the machinery behind card acceptance and show how debit routing, pass-through fees, and quiet port...

Ever had a $100 ticket morph into $260 at checkout and wondered who’s skimming the difference? We use that universal frustration to open a candid tour through payments in 2026—where junk fees, policy experiments, and AI-driven fraud collide with the daily realities of underwriting and merchant risk. Joining Global Legal Law Firm’s managing partner, James Huber, is Allen Kopelman of Nationwide Paym...

Card fees on sales tax? Illinois just lit a fuse. We unpack who really pays, how ISOs get squeezed, and why “compliance” might mean three prices at checkout.  When lawmakers target “junk fees,” the payments engine doesn’t stop—it reroutes. We dive into Illinois’ push to exclude sales tax from the interchange base and trace how that single change ripples through card networks, processors, ISOs, ISV...

Merchants are told they have “choices.” But do they? We unpack the Visa–Mastercard settlement, the honor all cards rule, and why surcharging still trips up pros. Listen now and tell us: does this help small businesses or not? What happens when the rules that govern card acceptance start shifting under your feet? In this episode, we break down one of the most misunderstood and potentially far-reach...

Stablecoins aren’t a side conversation anymore — they’re knocking on the front door of the payments ecosystem. In this episode of the Payments Experts Podcast , we sit down with Adam T. Hark , managing member of Wellesley Hills Financial (https://www.wellesleyhillsfinancial.com/), for a wide-ranging, candid discussion on how stablecoins, tokenized deposits, and wallet-based payments could fundamen...

Ever wondered why that “free” POS hardware ends up costing so much later? Christopher Dryden, Esq., sits down with Magnolia Ventures’ Jessica Casto to pull back the curtain on modern payments strategy: how software-led distribution reshaped acquiring, why processor-agnostic design protects leverage, and where the fine print quietly shifts risk to the least prepared party. We move from the realitie...

AI is no longer a chatbot. It is an agent that can move data and make decisions.  In this in-studio conversation, Leo Arzumanyan, Matthew Luciani, and Jeremy Stock cut through the hype and get practical about using AI in payments. We start where risk lives: privacy, closed versus open loops, and how to keep sensitive underwriting logic and merchant data inside your walls. Then we map the real use...

Banks don’t close accounts for sport; they close accounts when risk stories don’t add up.  James Huber, managing partner of Global Legal Law Firm, sits down with Adam Carlson from SOAR Payments (https://na2.hubs.ly/H033tL00) to unpack what “high risk” really means in 2026, why peptides became the latest MATCH magnet, and how card‑brand programs like VAMP are changing sponsor bank behavior. If you’...

Visit our guests DealHub 360 here: https://na2.hubs.ly/H030plB0 Tired of chasing documents and updates across spreadsheets, inboxes, and shared drives? We bring together the creators of DealHub 360, Deepika Shahani and Paul Manley, to show how a centralized loan origination portal helps ISOs, lenders, and equipment vendors move faster, stay compliant, and reduce risk without adding headcount. Paul...

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: complia...

The CPayO Mindset: Turning Payments From Cost Center Into Competitive Edge. Three percent can quietly devour fifteen percent of your profit. In this episode, we strip payments down to the levers that actually move margin: rails, contracts, tokens, data rights, and operational control. With Viktoria Soltesz of the Soltesz Institute (https://na2.hubs.ly/H02Y1Cv0), author of The CPayO: Chief Payment...

The conversation opens on a blunt question: can a solo agent or a small team still build something meaningful in payments, or is the market a race to zero? Frank Pagano of VizyPay (https://www.vizypay.com/) doesn’t flinch. He argues it’s still doable, but only if you control the customer journey and make hard, long-term decisions that trade fast cash for durable value. His path into payments began...