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.**

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A payments podcast of Global Legal Law Firm

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 owns payments end-to-end: banking, risk, data, UX, contracts, and compliance. We move from first principles to field practice: how to negotiate bank and processor relationships, design checkout that doesn’t kill conversion, and plan for scale before your success trips a risk wire.

Why this conversation matters

Payments as strategy, not plumbing. Treat acceptance, disbursements, and data flows like an operating system, not a vendor invoice. That shift reduces cost, raises approval rates, and gives you leverage when something breaks.

The CPayO mandate. One executive accountable across finance, legal, product, risk, and engineering to set policy, pick vendors, and own KPIs (auth rates, cost to collect, dispute cycle time, days-cash-held).

Scale without surprises. When volume or business model changes outgrow your original merchant profile, renegotiate and re-paper before a processor “discovers” it for you.

UX meets settlement. Beautiful storefronts die at clunky checkouts; payment UX and processor choices must be designed together or you pay in declines and abandonment.

Global is different. Cross-border means new providers, fees, licensing expectations, and regulators. Education and governance beat gut feel every time.

What we get into

Money doesn’t just support your business—it shapes it. We sit down with Viktoria Soltez, author and payments strategist, to argue that payments deserve a seat at the executive table and outline why a Chief Payment Officer can be the difference between smooth scaling and daily firefighting. From clunky gateways that crush a luxury checkout to contracts that quietly handcuff your margins, we unpack where revenue really leaks and how to build systems that make payments feel invisible to customers and unbreakable for teams.

We dive into the literacy gap that plagues even sophisticated companies: finance understands banking but not acquiring, UX ships beautiful flows that fall apart at the pay wall, and legal treats merchant agreements like phone plans. Viktoria explains how to plan your payment flows before you launch new products or markets, how to renegotiate when your profile changes, and why measuring fees against profit—not revenue—reveals the true cost of “just 3 percent.” We also tackle cross-border expansion, scheme monitoring programs, and the rising importance of dispute management and data ownership.

If this conversation helped you see your money movement in a new way, follow the show, share it with a teammate who owns checkout, and leave a quick review—what’s the one payments question you want us to tackle next?

Renegotiation is a skill. You’re not the business you were 3–5 years ago; neither are your vendors. Go back to market for price, terms, data rights, and true support.

AI and “agentic” checkouts. Tomorrow’s buyer may be a bot acting for the customer. That demands machine-readable product, pricing, and payment flows your systems can actually satisfy.

Education gap = risk. Most teams don’t know what to ask. Build internal playbooks for boarding, changes in scope, chargeback ops, and incident response so success doesn’t trigger shutdowns.

The real cost of “3%.” Cost to collect must be measured against profit, not revenue; a “small” fee can erase margins if you aren’t optimizing routing and terms.

A usable CPayO playbook

Own the metrics. Track approval rates by BIN/region, cost to collect by rail, refund/chargeback ratios, dispute cycle time,

A payments podcast of Global Legal Law Firm

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 conversation, Adam Hark maps the real terrain for ISOs, PayFacs, acquirers, and ISVs: how residual streams get valued, why lenders still struggle to underwrite payments businesses, where AI helps (and where it absolutely doesn’t), and why tokenized deposits from major banks could upend stablecoin economics and B2B money movement.

What we dig into

From portfolio trades to full-stack banking: How residual purchases, portability, and ISO/agent structures shaped a niche investment-banking playbook for payments—and what buyers actually pay for when they value a book.

Capital that understands payments: Why traditional lenders misread variable merchant cash flows, the collateral that really counts, and the deal structures that align risk with revenue.

AI without the fairy dust: The practical use case is heavy-lift data processing (merchant-level files that set portfolio value), not judgment or strategy. Generative tools draft; experts decide. Hallucinations are a legal and financial risk without human oversight.

Operating in the tokenized era: How bank-issued tokenized deposits (with yield) could challenge private stablecoins, change treasury workflows, and accelerate corporate adoption of blockchain rails—while cores, processors, and gateways scramble to keep up.

Founder focus: Don’t bolt AI or crypto onto the roadmap just to keep up with the buzz. Start from the problem: auth rates, cost to collect, dispute cycle time, portfolio attrition. Solve that, then layer tech.

Field notes for teams

Valuation is in the data exhaust: Clean merchant-level reporting and cohort analysis beat pitch decks. If you want a premium, instrument your book.

Contracts drive financeability: Data portability, token migration, termination assistance, and audit rights are the difference between “bankable” and “hard pass.”

AI guardrails: Use models to wrangle processor files and KPIs; never ship output without expert review. Treat models as interns—fast, not authoritative.

Tokenized deposits over press releases: Expect treasury to demand speed and yield. If you touch payouts or cross-border, start planning wallet addresses, policy, and controls now.

Talent and trust: Niche expertise compounds. Clients will pay for people who actually understand payments math, not just “fintech.”

Why this episode matters

If you raise capital, buy portfolios, or operate on the sharp end of merchant acquiring, this is your playbook for 2025: get your data house in order, negotiate bankable contracts, deploy AI where it’s measurable, and prepare for tokenized deposits to change how funds move and settle.

**Matters discussed are all opinions and do not constitute legal advice. All events or likeness to real people and events is a coincidence.**

Visit us today: https://www.globallegallawfirm.com/podcasts/

A payments podcast of Global Legal Law Firm

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—and what payments teams can do about it right now.

Why this matters to payments & fintech

Fraud has shifted from stealing numbers to stealing people—their voice, face, and work patterns. Help desks, payment ops, treasury approvals, and VIP inboxes are the new perimeter. If you move money, change bank details, or provision access, your identity workflow is your risk model.

What we cover (built for operators)
• AI-enabled impersonation: Voice/video spoofs that pass a quick “does it sound like them?” test—and how to break the illusion in seconds
• The help desk as your identity perimeter: Password resets, SSO unlocks, and privileged access handoffs that attackers abuse first
• Ephemeral data, not permanent secrets: Why short-lived artifacts and least-retained data shrink both breach blast radius and audit pain
• Payments risk beyond PCI: Real controls where losses happen—supplier changes, wire approvals, card-on-file changes, and refund pivots
• POS/IoT exposure: The quiet attack surface growing with each new device and integration
• Wire-fraud playbooks: Out-of-band verification that actually works when time is tight
• Audit, insurance, and exit readiness: Controls that lower loss and premiums, and survive technical diligence

Field patterns you’ll recognize
• Friday-afternoon wires after weeks of mailbox surveillance
• “Urgent” VIP resets that turn into lateral movement and payout edits
• Deepfake calls that pressure teams to skip second-factor checks
• Vendor banking changes greenlit on trust instead of verification

The 12-control checklist (deploy this quarter)

1. Two-channel verification on money moves: Approver must touch a second, pre-registered channel before any bank-detail change or high-value transfer
2. Reset hardening at the help desk: No single-factor resets; require device signals + OTP + recent-activity challenge
3. Short-lived secrets: Replace static screenshots and passwords-in-tickets with ephemeral artifacts that expire after use
4. Privileged session guardrails: Time-boxed elevation and approvals logged to an immutable trail
5. Vendor change surgeries: Treat IBAN/routing edits like production releases (staging → review → two-person control → deploy)
6. Location/device reputation checks: Deny or step-up when posture is off (new device, TOR/VPN, geo anomalies)
7. Tiered approvals by risk: Amount, corridor, and beneficiary novelty drive extra checks automatically


**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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We know the players. We know the playbook. We execute.
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A payments podcast of Global Legal Law Firm

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 merchant websites: ADA accessibility claims, “chatbot wiretapping” suits, and a maze of state privacy rules that change faster than roadmaps. The punchline for payments pros? Compliance is product—it reduces fines, preserves MIDs, and keeps portfolios from churning.

Why this matters to payments teams

ADA goes digital: Website accessibility claims have exploded—think large volumes with five-figure settlements that crush SMBs and create needless merchant attrition.

Wiretapping via chatbots: In two-party consent states, recording or logging live chat without explicit notice is becoming an easy plaintiff’s layup.

Dynamic, not static: What’s compliant in one state might fail in another. A one-size policy either over-frictions conversion or under-protects risk.

Operational drag: When demand letters hit, support, finance, and legal get pulled off mission—right when merchants need them most.

What we cover (built for ISOs, PayFacs, acquirers, ISVs)

The new lawsuit economy: Why “fines without findings” moved from ramps and bathrooms to menus, receipts, and live chat logs—and how automation lets plaintiffs scan thousands of sites a day.

From GDPR to geofencing: How a CFO’s privacy headache birthed a horizontal, website-level compliance stack—accessibility, privacy, “wiretapping,” and geo-controls—designed to update without re-implementation.

Real-time compliance: Continuous scanning that flags risky changes (new widgets, menu updates, policy drift) before a demand letter arrives.

Friction that fits: Show less friction where law allows, more where it’s required—so marketing converts and legal sleeps at night.

Retention math: Portfolio stickiness improves when an ISO bundles easy, merchant-installed compliance at a partner price—versus losing the account after a suit.

Practical playbook you can deploy this quarter

Website attestation at boarding: Add a one-page checklist: ADA accessibility, privacy notice, cookie behavior, chatbot recording disclosure, and where each appears (entry, checkout, receipts).

Two-party consent guardrails: If you operate in consent states, on-page chat notice plus explicit “continue” intent = safer logs.

Geo-aware policies: Serve state-specific privacy/consent text and feature friction based on visitor location; don’t let the strictest state throttle all traffic.

Evidence kits for defense: Time-stamped screenshots of menus, signs, policy pages, chat notices, and a weekly crawl log. Merchants need this before a letter arrives.

Quarterly scans, monthly deltas: Automate site scans; review deltas with merchants; fix drift (plugins, templates, receipt footers) without re-platforming.

Field signals you’ll recognize

“Register-only” disclosures that fail conspicuous-notice tests.

Live chat that asks name/email without recording-consent language.

Menu PDFs that screen readers can’t parse.

Traffic from restricted states hitting prohibited SKUs.

Demand letters starting high, settling mid-five figures—and repeating.


**Matters discussed are all opinions and do not constitute legal advice. All events or likeness to real people and events is a coincidence.**

Visit Global Legal Law Firm today: https://www.globallegallawfirm.com/podcasts/

A payments podcast of Global Legal Law Firm

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 commerce distribution beat terminal leases, and what he learned buying 50+ portfolios before turning that knowledge into loans secured by residual streams.

We sit down with Darrin Ginsberg of Super G Capital to trace the arc from ISO sales to e commerce gateways to lending against residuals. We unpack how ISVs seized leverage, why banks don’t fund portfolios, and where smart capital actually drives ISO growth.

• early ISO sales tactics and CSI scale
• pivot to online processing and gateways
• seminars and referral partnerships for distribution
• portfolio buying, attrition, and concentration risk
• creating loans collateralized by residuals
• underwriting beyond statements and rates
• ISVs gaining power and shifting rev shares
• why banks won’t underwrite recurring revenue
• MCAs vs structured ISO lending
• best uses of capital, including agent buybacks
• coaching founders on overhead and pay plans
• health journey, resilience, and return to lending
• loan sizes, terms, and how to contact Super G

We get into the mechanics that most outsiders miss. Banks still don’t treat a merchant portfolio as a real asset, so ISOs with strong monthly revenue can’t access traditional credit. Darrin explains how he underwrites beyond the residual report—looking at sales models, stickiness, leases, software integrations, and support—to price risk and structure deals that actually help companies grow. We also unpack the ISV power shift: early rev shares near 10% ballooned to 90% as platforms realized their leverage, with many becoming their own ISOs. If you’re not selling software or embedded into it, you’re fighting uphill.

Capital is only as good as its use. Darrin breaks down high-ROI moves—buying back dormant agent residuals at favorable multiples, funding proven marketing, securing equipment for frictionless installs, and opening scalable recruiting hubs—and warns against draining loans to pay off low-rate mortgages or paper over broken unit economics. We contrast sustainable ISO lending with merchant cash advances that trap businesses in costly cycles. Along the way, Darrin’s health journey adds perspective on resilience and focus, and why fundamentals still win in a market obsessed with headlines.

If you’re an ISO, ISV, or PayFac operator looking to scale with discipline, this conversation gives you a clear playbook on underwriting, attrition, portfolio value, and the smarter ways to deploy growth capital. Subscribe, share with your team, and leave a review with the one change you’re making to your model this quarter.

**Matters discussed are all opinions and do not constitute legal advice. All events or likeness to real people and events is a coincidence.**

Visit Global Legal Law Firm today: https://www.globallegallawfirm.com/podcasts/

A payments podcast of Global Legal Law Firm