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 Krimer from National ePayment (https://nationalepayment.com/) to get practical about what actually works at the point of sale and why so many business owners only change pricing once the shop next door does it.

We break down why merchants hesitate to adopt dual pricing and what actually happens when customers see a cash price next to a card price. Clark Krimer explains how payments sales works in the real world and why better pricing disclosure is the missing piece in credit card processing.

• merchants waiting for nearby businesses to adopt dual pricing first
• why customers assume surcharges are merchant profit
• how dual pricing differs from surcharging and cash discounting
• Visa-style disclosure expectations and the operational challenge of changing prices
• Do Price Digital Labeler printing cash and card prices
• California restaurant fee disclosures and why menus create risk
• how fines and enforcement pressure flow through banks and processors
• why payments education stays low and transparency stays hard

We talk through the real economics of credit card processing fees: why a simple surcharge cap often fails to cover the full spread, why debit card restrictions complicate “pass-through” pricing, and why customers often assume the merchant is pocketing the difference. From there, we dig into the compliance problem that trips up otherwise honest businesses. If a fee is disclosed poorly, especially in restaurants and other high-traffic environments, it can trigger complaints, fines, or even litigation. The conversation also touches California’s junk fee environment and why menu disclosure is becoming a legal flashpoint.

Then we get hands-on with a surprisingly effective fix: Do Price Digital Labeler, a tool designed to make dual pricing easy in retail by printing a single label with both the cash price and the card price. It’s a small operational detail with a big impact on price transparency, customer clarity, and brand rules alignment.

If you care about payments compliance, merchant services strategy, or the future of surcharging and dual pricing, this one is for you. Subscribe, share this with a merchant who is struggling with fees, and leave a review with your take: should the customer see two prices everywhere?

**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

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 explain what changes when “the customer” is a digital agent acting autonomously at real-time speed.

We unpack agentic commerce, where software acts on a buyer’s behalf and can search, negotiate, and complete payments without a human in the loop. We connect the promise of automation to real risks like hallucinated refund policies, AI-driven fraud, and the need for tighter contracts plus continuous monitoring.

• Defining agentic commerce in plain English for payments teams
• Why rules-based AI can be safer than LLMs
• The airline refund story and what it teaches about liability
• How AI changes chargebacks and dispute response workflows
• Deepfakes and synthetic merchants targeting onboarding gaps
• The shift from one-time KYC to continuous behavioral monitoring
• AI versus AI dynamics in fraud and risk decisioning

We dig into a memorable cautionary tale where an AI system hallucinated a refund policy and the business had to honor it, then connect that lesson to chargebacks, dispute management, and the legal pressure points that show up when machines make commitments. From our perspective as payments-focused counsel, the practical starting point is updating contracts, policies, and training so liability is clear and teams know how to respond when automation goes sideways.

From there, we get concrete about the fraud landscape: deepfakes, synthetic merchants, fake documents, and the growing gap between merchant onboarding and ongoing behavior monitoring. The big takeaway is that “set it and forget it” KYC does not hold up in an always-on world. We talk about building a multi-layered trust infrastructure with strong identity signals, behavioral monitoring, governance frameworks, and AI-powered fraud detection tools, because it often takes AI to spot AI.

AI fighting chargebacks meets AI pushing fraud. Who wins when machines argue at scale? We talk contracts, liability shifts, and why you should partner with security experts instead of building tools yourself.

If you work in payments, underwriting, risk, or compliance, this conversation will help you think clearly about agentic commerce, AI fraud, and what readiness should look like right now. Subscribe, share this with a colleague in the industry, and leave a review with your biggest question about AI in payments.

**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/
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2176695

A payments podcast of Global Legal Law Firm

“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, from the scrappy early days of online “aggregators” to the moment Visa and Mastercard finally wrapped rules around what the market was already doing. Along the way, we revisit the rise of PayPal in the late 90s and how Square’s tiny dongle changed face-to-face acceptance for millions of small merchants.

We trace how the payment facilitator model went from “against the rules” behavior to a core part of embedded payments for SaaS platforms. We also dig into why “merchant of record” shortcuts can create serious compliance and even criminal risk if money flow and onboarding are handled the wrong way.

• Deana Rich’s path into payments through bank merchant operations and early electronic processing
• A clear definition of a payment facilitator and submerchant liability
• How PayPal and early online aggregators pressured the ecosystem to evolve
• Visa’s IPSP framework and the role of high-risk categories in shaping rules
• Square’s in-person breakout and why Visa and Mastercard formalized PayFac rules
• Why embedded payments fits vertical SaaS and ISVs, plus add-ons like lending and insurance
• Why “merchant of record” is not a defined standard and what that means in practice
• KYC basics including owners, OFAC screening, and MATCH list checks
• How poor structuring can trigger money transmitter issues and bank fraud exposure
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We also get practical about what a payment facilitator actually does: bringing submerchants under a master program, taking on risk, handling settlement flows, and operating the underwriting and monitoring that keeps the whole thing stable. If you’re building embedded payments for a SaaS platform or ISV, this is the part that matters most because the upside is real: tighter product control, better vertical fit, and the ability to add services like reporting, insurance, or even merchant lending based on payment performance.

Then we hit the uncomfortable topic: “merchant of record.” It sounds like an easier path, but it isn’t a consistently defined standard, and the wrong structure can pull you into KYC gaps, OFAC and MATCH list blind spots, money transmitter exposure, and even bank fraud allegations if you’re processing for businesses you didn’t disclose. If you’re building, buying, or advising a payments program, this conversation is your reminder that shortcuts in payments can get very expensive.

If you’re “processing for other businesses” under your own merchant account, you may be creating bank fraud exposure. This conversation is a wake-up call on KYC, OFAC, MATCH, and liability.

**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