The Payments Experts Podcast

The CPayO: Making Payments a First-Class Function (with Viktoria Soltesz) Payments isn’t a line item. It’s the circulatory system of your business. In this episode, we sit down with Viktoria Soltesz (https://www.solteszinstitute.com/), author of The CPayO: Chief Payment Officer — the role that doesn’t exist (but should), to map why every serious merchant, ISO, PayFac, or ISV needs an executive who...

Banking Meets Payments: Capital, AI Reality Checks, and the Tokenized-Deposit Shakeup Hosted by Leo Arzumanyan and Jeremy Stock. Special guest: Adam T. Hark, Managing Member, Wellesley Hills Financial (https://www.wellesleyhillsfinancial.com/). Payments isn’t just rails and rates anymore; it’s capital, contracts, and data that decide who scales and who stalls. In this candid, operator-level conver...

Stopping Deepfake Fraud: Identity at the Exact Moment Money Moves A familiar voice on Zoom. A “known” face on video. A routine request that moves millions. Today’s most dangerous attacks look like business as usual—until the funds are gone. With guest Peter Segerstrom (Traceless) and host Christopher Dryden, Esq., The Payments Experts Podcast tears into how AI has supercharged social engineering—a...

ADA, Chatbots, and Compliance-as-a-Feature: Turning Lawsuit Traps into Portfolio Stickiness (with Michael Williams, Clym (https://www.clym.io/) Cash is disappearing, card rails rule, and “set it and forget it” legal copy is now a liability. In this fast, no-B.S. episode, James Huber and Jeremy Stock sit down with Michael Williams, co-founder of Clym, to unpack the lawsuit vectors quietly hitting m...

The payments world didn’t just change—it rewired who holds the power. Christopher Dryden, Founding and Managing Partner of Global Legal Law Firm, sits down with Darrin Ginsberg of Super G Capital (https://www.supergcapital.com/) to chart the path from door-to-door ISO sales to e commerce gateways and the rise of embedded payments. Darrin shares how he built one of CSI’s largest offices, why e comm...

The payments game has changed, and winging it is no longer an option. James Huber and Jeremy Stock sit down with Maurice Griefer of MyCPO (https://www.getmycpo.com/) to unpack what it takes to scale a high-risk ecommerce brand without getting crushed by chargebacks, caps, and the new Visa VAMP rules. From the wild energy of early ISO call centers to today’s distributed agent networks, the throughl...

Imagine being barred from accepting cards overnight—and no one will tell you why. That’s the reality for many merchants placed on MasterCard’s MATCH list, a risk registry that can sink a business while support teams stay silent. We brought managing partner James Huber and senior associate Bryce Vandemore into the studio to unpack what really moves the needle: skipping the endless email chains and...

Social Engineering Beats Your Stack: Fix Identity or Get Breached A single phone call to a help desk shouldn’t sink a global brand—yet it happens. We dig into how social engineering bypasses expensive tools, why identity verification matters at the exact human moments work gets done, and how to measure cyber risk before it becomes tomorrow’s headline. With Peter Segerstrom of Traceless (https://tr...

Hemp Ban Fallout: How Policy Whiplash Hits Payments, Portfolios, and Merchants.  Hosted by Global Legal Law Firm Managing Partner James Huber and Senior Associate Attorney Bryce Van De Moere A sudden hemp or cannabinoid ban doesn’t just change SKUs—it detonates risk models, freezes reserves, and scrambles underwriting across entire portfolios. In this episode, we unpack how shifting federal–state...

From Surcharging To Dual Pricing: How Small Businesses Stay Compliant And Keep Customers Hidden fees at checkout aren’t just frustrating—they’re risky. We dive straight into the real-world mechanics of pricing programs that merchants use to offset card costs and explain why the lines between surcharging, cash discounting, and dual pricing aren’t as blurry as they seem. The rule of thumb is simple:...

Cash Discount ≠ Compliance: Dual Pricing, Debit, and the MATCH Hangover (with Mahdi Hussein, Supersonic POS) (https://supersonicpos.com/) Ever been told “it’s just a cash discount” only to have a secret shopper’s photos tell a different story? This episode strips the buzzwords down to the brass tacks payments professionals actually live with: the legal and operational differences between dual pric...

Taming Chargebacks With Real AI Agentics Too many merchants breathe easy under legacy chargeback ratios, only to be blindsided when their PSP tightens the screws. We sit down with Ben Herut, co-founder at ChargeFlow, (https://www.chargeflow.io/) to unpack the shift toward post-payment risk and why Visa’s VAMP is forcing acquirers and processors to act earlier—and harder—on portfolio-level exposure...

Surcharging, Dual Pricing, and Debit: The Compliance Traps No One Warns You About Hidden fees, stacked fines, and a maze of rules—merchant pricing isn’t just a line on a receipt, it’s a legal and operational minefield. We dive into the real differences between dual pricing and cash discounting, why debit transactions should not be treated like credit, and how a simple surcharge can trigger state l...

Candor Over Clever: How Honesty, Software, and Solid Contracts Build Real Payments Businesses In a market where scripts and “solutions” blur together, candor is the unfair advantage. This episode features JJ Sedor of Paymint Solutions (https://www.paymintinc.com/)—a former construction-business owner turned ISO CEO—who wins by telling the truth, learning faster than rivals, and leading with softwa...

Fines Without Findings: Surcharging Rules, Real Penalties, and How to Stay Out of the Crosshairs Join Christopher Dryden, Leo Arzumanyan, and Jeremy Stock of Global Legal Law Firm (https://www.globallegallawfirm.com/podcasts/) as they discuss how merchants are getting hit with four- and five-figure “surcharging violations”—and no one will say what actually went wrong. In this episode, our hosts pu...

AI Agents at Checkout: Automation, Authenticity, and the Next Wave of Payments What happens when AI agents start shopping and paying on our behalf—while merchants still have to trust the identity behind every transaction? In this special deep dive with Kevin Woodward of Digital Transactions (https://www.digitaltransactions.net/), hosted by Christopher Dryden, Esq., and Jeremy Stock, we unpack the...

This special episode flips the script. Instead of hosting, James Huber, Esq.—Managing Partner of Global Legal Law Firm (https://www.globallegallawfirm.com/podcasts/) and co-host of The Payments Experts Podcast—steps into the hot seat as the guest, interviewed by Rob Hoblit, Chief Revenue Officer at NMI (https://www.nmi.com/), during one of their internal Fireside Chats, now shared publicly for the...

Risk keeps moving even when the rules look settled. We sat down with Kevin Woodward, senior editor at Digital Transactions (https://www.digitaltransactions.net/), to trace where the real pressure is building in payments: Visa’s VAMP and its oversight shift, tokenization that works until it doesn’t, and AI that can help teams underwrite faster without surrendering judgment. The conversation starts...

The VAMP Era Is Here: What Payments Pros Must Know Before It’s Too Late Think MATCH was hard to navigate? VAMP just rewrote the risk rulebook. In this high-impact episode, Christopher Dryden, Esq., and COO, Jeremy Stock, sit down with Matt Steinbrecher of Sound Commerce (https://sound-commerce.com/) to unpack the hidden compliance traps now emerging in merchant processing. Whether you’re an ISO on...

Q4 is Here. VAMP Is Live. The Risk Game Just Changed. Welcome to the new frontier of merchant risk management. With Visa’s Acquirer Monitoring Program (VAMP) now officially live, the underwriting, compliance, and dispute mitigation landscape is shifting fast—and merchants, ISOs, and Payfacs who aren’t already adapting may find themselves in hot water come November. In this episode of the Payments...

NMI’s message is clear: you don’t need to lock into a single processor or bank to scale. With modular tools and real-time control over key systems, ISOs, PayFacs, and software platforms can adapt faster, negotiate stronger, and retain full ownership of their merchant relationships. Whether you're building a payments stack from scratch or optimizing your current setup, this conversation offers...

The rules of payments are changing—often mid-transaction. Are you ready? In this episode number 68 of The Payments Experts Podcast, we break down the silent killers of merchant profitability: compliance gaps, outdated integrations, and poorly configured gateway flows. Managing partner of Global Legal Law Firm, James Huber, is joined by NMI (https://www.nmi.com/) Chief Revenue Officer, Rob Hoblit,...

Behind the Shutdown: What Every Payments Professional Should Know About Merchant Terminations, Fraud, and Sustainability Why do some high-risk merchants process for years while others get shut down overnight—often without warning or explanation? And why are so many payment professionals blindsided when portfolios collapse or lawsuits emerge from deals that looked solid on paper? In this episode of...

Stablecoins & the $27 Trillion Shift: How Digital Dollars Are Reshaping the Payments Industry The payments industry is undergoing a seismic transformation—and this time, it’s being led by stablecoins . Once dismissed as fringe crypto experiments, these digitally native assets backed by fiat currencies are now powering over $27 trillion in payment volume annually . And major players—from JP Mor...

The High-Risk Processing Trap: How Merchants Are Getting Exploited In the fast-moving world of high-risk payment processing , what looks like a lifeline can quickly turn into a liability. For merchants operating in regulated or fringe industries—think peptides, nootropics, coaching, supplements, adult, or subscription models —finding a processor willing to approve them often feels like a win. But...