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: compliance takes too long, costs too much, and fails too often at scale.

The core idea is simple but often ignored—high-risk is usually operational risk, not product risk. When merchants change products weekly and rules shift daily, human checks can’t keep pace. That’s why continuous audits, product-level validation, and transparent data sharing between merchants, processors, and banks now matter as much as good underwriting.

The CBD and hemp space highlights the problem. Onboarding a merchant with dozens of SKUs and lab reports used to mean manual COA review, endless back-and-forth, and slow time to revenue. With OCR and structured data extraction, those COAs become searchable fields. Processors can instantly locate banned cannabinoids, confirm potency claims, and flag mismatches against rule sets dictated by their bank or card brands. The win is not just catching risk; it’s enabling compliant businesses to stay live without disruption. Instead of black-box decisions that punish merchants after the fact, a shared layer of visibility gives them alerts before they trip wires. That turns compliance from a source of fear into a daily habit.

This shift extends far beyond cannabis. Any enhanced due diligence sector—gaming, adult, firearms, online alcohol and tobacco, nutraceuticals, functional mushrooms, cosmetics, and online lending—faces similar pressures. Municipal rules stack on state and federal mandates. Card brands push VAMP and portfolio scrutiny. Without a living map of requirements tied to real merchant behavior, providers rely on hope. Worse, merchants bear the brunt: reserves, MATCH listings, and sudden shutdowns. When a platform continually crawls product pages, pulls certificates, and matches claims to approved lists and rule sets, it empowers both sides. Banks get traceable evidence. Merchants get early warnings and clear steps to fix issues. Portfolio risk drops while revenue stays predictable.

Pricing opacity is the other quiet drain. Interchange shifts, processor markups, and “notice” of price changes buried inside statements leave busy operators flying blind. Two restaurants using the same processor can pay wildly different rates simply because one negotiated and the other didn’t. Statement analysis as a service fills that gap, translating six-hundred-line statements into actionable decisions. The takeaway is blunt: every company needs a payments brain—whether a chief payments officer or a trusted advisor. The goal isn’t to chase rock-bottom rates; it’s to align pricing with risk, ensure rules are followed in real time, and stop leaks before they become losses.

AI is not a courtroom litigator or a replacement for paralegals. Here, it’s a quiet, relentless assistant that reads faster than teams can and never gets tired of forms. Use it to extract, normalize, and monitor. Keep humans for judgment. Marry those strengths and you change the game: faster onboarding, fewer fines, fewer surprises, and a portfolio that grows because risk is managed in daylight. When compliance becomes a product feature—not a punishment—good actors thrive, bad actors stand out, and the entire ecosystem gets stronger.

**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

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 Officer — the role that doesn’t exist (but should), we reframe “processing fees” as an executive function and show how a CPayO-style approach protects revenue when card-brand caps, state rules, or platform shutdowns collide.

Why this matters to operators

• Profit, not percentages. Measure cost to collect against unit economics, not top-line. Small fee drifts compound into lost margin.
• Rules collide in the wild. Brand surcharge caps, state price controls, and regulated markets squeeze merchants while costs float.
• Platform risk is real. Provider offboarding and token lock-in can turn recurring revenue into an existential crisis.
• Control beats hope. Own tokens, build routing optionality, and negotiate portability so you don’t beg for access when risk appetites change.
What we dig into
• The Soltesz 8-step framework for mapping fund flows, quantifying fees/FX, aligning treasury timing, and building redundancy that actually fails over.
• Pricing programs and optics: how surcharge/dual-pricing rules intersect with consumer expectations and brand enforcement.
• Open banking, wallets, stable-value rails: where they lower cost or latency, and where compliance/UX friction slows adoption.
• Contract gravity: data portability, token migration, termination assistance, audit rights, and change-control clauses that separate resilient operators from the rest.
• Middleware and orchestration: route for approvals and cost, keep PCI/fraud scope sane, and maintain leverage across providers.

A practical playbook you can use this quarter

1. Instrument the money map: Merchant-level reporting, approval rates by BIN/region, cost to collect by rail, dispute cycle time, and days-cash-held.
2. Contract to control: Add token-portability SLAs, termination assistance, data export formats, and service credits tied to approval-rate deltas.
3. Build a second rail: At least one production-ready alternative for subscription retries, fails, and geographic outliers. Test it monthly.
4. Protect recurring revenue: Standardize token escrow/migration rights; document refund runways before any offboarding event.
5. Monitor and iterate: Quarter-by-quarter audits of fees, FX, routing outcomes, and policy drift; adjust playbooks as products, SKUs, or rules change.

The heart of the conversation centers on control. Stripe and Shopify offer easy starts but can shut merchants down or lock tokenized credentials in ways that endanger recurring revenue. We share a real case where token migration became an existential crisis—and how to avoid it. The strategy: use payment orchestration to own your data, route transactions for cost and approval rates, fail over across providers, and keep leverage when risk appetites shift. We also dive into contract trends pushing fraud, PCI, and liability to merchants and POS providers, plus practical middleware options to meet those obligations without becoming a bank.



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A payments podcast of Global Legal Law Firm

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 with curiosity and proximity—meeting a neighbor, seeing success up close, and challenging the assumption that a great career must follow a safe W-2 route. That spark evolved into a bootstrapped company that chose transparent service over shortcuts, took real financial pain early, and doubled down on operations to protect merchants and attrition. The thesis is simple yet tough: own the experience, earn trust, and let the reputation compound.

One of the biggest wedges in the story is leasing. When cash was tight, the “easy fix” of equipment leasing promised fast acquisition and upfront money. The team did the homework and walked away. Reviews were brutal, terms were draconian, and the long-term damage to merchant trust felt inevitable. Instead, VizyPay engineered alternatives: placements that require time commitments, subscription-style equipment models that mimic smartphones, and in-house programs that maintain service quality. These options address a real cash challenge for small businesses—POS and terminals aren’t cheap—without trapping merchants in predatory structures. It’s a case study in customer-centric payments strategy, where sustainable residuals beat quick hits, and attrition control becomes a competitive moat.

Another pillar is partner selection. Early on, VizyPay went direct to a processor to keep control of support and risk, even if the deal terms were tougher. Owning customer service meant they could shape the merchant journey, react to issues fast, and align incentives internally. That required building strong operations—service, risk, underwriting—alongside a sales engine. Culture became the leverage point. Hiring for buy-in, asking unconventional questions, and rewarding loyalty created a team willing to sacrifice in the early days. This approach isn’t glamorous; it’s a grind that reduces churn, exposes bad actors faster, and compounds merchant satisfaction into reviews, referrals, and local credibility.

Risk management shows up repeatedly: bad leases, flipping agents, and toxic behaviors that can sabotage a young ISO. The conversation digs into practical defenses—vetting agents, monitoring spikes in MIDs, and refusing to be dazzled by sudden volume. There’s an industry-wide warning too: aggressive splits, upfront contests, and vague promises attract the wrong talent and the wrong merchants. Instead, align economics with the lifecycle of an agent. A year-one rep may need training, tools, and equipment help. A year-ten producer needs strong splits, back-end protection, and minimal friction. Matching terms to career stage isn’t just fair; it’s a retention strategy that keeps portfolios stable and brand equity intact.

The bigger question—should a hustling agent build an ISO today or plug into a large shop—gets a pragmatic answer. You can build, but you’ll trade simplicity for overhead: payroll, leases, risk systems, and the constant pressure to maintain compliance and service. Many high-split agents are better off leveraging a well-run ISO’s rails, protecting their residuals contractually, and focusing on what they do best: selling and servicing local merchants.

**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