PEP Episode 083 — Merchants Versus The MATCH List: Why The Threat Of A Lawsuit May Now Be Your Best Approach

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 going straight to a well-drafted complaint that forces banks and processors to respond.

We take apart the power dynamics behind the MasterCard MATCH list and explain why a litigation-first strategy now gets merchants faster answers than inquiry letters. We share case patterns, how banks and processors pass the buck, and what it takes to pressure real protocol change.

• why inquiry letters stall while complaints trigger action
• how banks, processors and ISOs split duties and avoid blame
• why MATCH listings cluster by category and tool-driven flags
• the costs, timelines and leverage of litigation versus waiting
• how fines and retroactive rule shifts punish compliant merchants
• the cardholder protection narrative versus merchant reality
• service gaps between cardholder support and merchant silence
• risks of cashless policies concentrating control in card rails
• practical steps to show compliance and push for removal

We walk through the turning points that led us to a sue-first strategy, why it accelerates dialogue, and how these cases are simpler than most people think. The aim isn’t courtroom theatrics; it’s a clear yes or no so a merchant can reopen accounts and stop the cash burn. Along the way, we map the responsibility maze—banks hold the authority, processors run the operations, and both often cite “internal policies” or “ongoing investigations” while providing no reason code. We also call out category-wide crackdowns and retroactive fines, from peptide vendors to weight-loss products, where compliant businesses are swept up in blanket MATCHing with little transparency.

You’ll hear how the “we protect cardholders” message can mask a deeper incentive to protect the networks themselves, creating a stark service gap: cardholders get fast remediation and live help, while merchants hire counsel just to learn what happened. We dive into the rise of cashless policies and what it means when the only way to transact funnels through private rails that can exclude you without a hearing. Our goal is practical and focused—push for protocol change, document compliance, pressure timely reviews, and establish a credible path off MATCH when errors occur.

If you’re a merchant, ISO, or in-house counsel navigating MATCH, this conversation gives you the current playbook: where to start, how to apply pressure, and what outcomes are realistic. Subscribe for more merchant-first insights, share this with a colleague who’s stuck on MATCH, and leave a review with your questions so we can tackle them next.

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

Transcript

James Huber (00:00):

Well, the whole card brand system is rigged. They built the ecosystem and it works for them. And MasterCard and Visa have zero risk whatsoever because they’re calling the shots. It’s their world. So yeah, the whole system is set up against the merchants. Now, the cardholders actually, we’re all pretty protected in that. And so that’s the idea is when we’re talking to Visa and we’re talking to them about what’s the purpose behind all of that, they get away with it because going, we’re protecting the card holder. And so we saw a shift in COVID when all of a sudden merchants are going out of business. And merchants are people too by law, businesses are people, so you’re not protecting them. They’re the victims.

Jeremy Stock (00:56):

Welcome to the Payments Experts podcast, a podcast of global legal law firm. We hope you enjoy this episode. We’re really excited today. We’ve got an in-studio podcast joining us, senior associate attorney, Bryce Vander Moore, who oversees our match list work, as well as managing partner of the law firm, James Huber. And we do have Ryan Reynolds as a special guest. No relation. No relation exactly. Gentlemen, we’re talking about match list litigation, maybe why it’s the best option to get off the match list these days. Go ahead and jump right in.

Bryce Van De Moere (01:37):

Well, traditionally, we send out the inquiry letter and ask for a response, and it’s just total silence. And I know that is very frustrating for our match clients because they need movement. They need to understand what’s going on as soon as fast as possible. And I have over time developed the impression or the supposition that they don’t want to talk to us at all. We’re not talking to lawyers. We we’re predominantly talking to analysts or whatever’s below an analyst, or in some cases granted like a compliance attorney, but we’re not talking to litigators. And so I have had to adjust my strategy and we’re just going straight to the litigation now. We’re drafting, we’re drafting the complaint, emailing it to them or sending it to them as a courtesy with a one week response deadline, letting them know that this is real. We’re not going away.

Bryce Van De Moere (02:37):

I know your MO is to just try to wait us out until we burn out or lose steam, but this is going to happen. And the advantage of that is that now the bank has to go, or the processor has to go and get their own litigation attorney, who invariably calls me up, says, Hey, what’s the deal? Why are you filing this complaint? My response the same. This is the only play you guys are leaving me. But I have found that my goal is if I do this enough that maybe they’ll say, okay, maybe we don’t have to spend the money to go out and hire a litigation attorney. Maybe we answer this yes or no question. The fact that it takes our clients having to pay thousands of dollars to draft a complaint, to get an answer to a yes or no question is absurd. But that is basically where we’re at right now. But as we’ve said before on this show or this podcast, the whole goal of this is, is regime change or protocol change if we someday don’t have any match cases because MasterCard has changed its rules and brought some sanity to this process, I feel like I’ve done my job. That’s my goal

James Huber (03:48):

Because well, it’s not going away. I mean, the match list, if working perfectly is protecting the industry from bad players. You’re having an alert right now. But yeah, we see so many people on match. Everybody’s a problem. It’s becoming the exception. I mean, not there’s millions and millions of merchants not on match, but there are so many, and then there’s so many that are certain types that are on there. And I agree with the litigation tactic I always have. We’re a law firm, but for years, yeah, it would be months and months and months of can I get off match? I’m losing money every day. And we always would say, look, the way to get these people to respond is sue ’em. Everyone’s like, can’t you do something? You’re an attorney. I can do two things. I can sue somebody and I can subpoena them. Baseball bat guy, Bryce probably knows a guy. But the other than that, that’s really all we can do. The other thing is, I guess go lobby Congress for change. But I got a feeling that MasterCard and Visa actually don’t have a feeling. I actually know that they spend so much on lobbying. You’re not going to get them to do anything.

Jeremy Stock (05:03):

As was said in a previous podcast, they spend more than God in lobbying. I

James Huber (05:09):

Doubt that the church race spends a lot. I guess it depends which God. Yeah, maybe some of them. But yeah,

Bryce Van De Moere (05:18):

You can ignore a letter. You can’t ignore a complaint.

James Huber (05:22):

You

Bryce Van De Moere (05:22):

Got 30 days to respond, 30 days to respond. And it’s basically putting them on the clock. You can try to spin this as long as you bury this as long as you can, but you cannot ignore a complaint. And that is basically, we’ve had a lot of success with that lately. So my goal is never to drag anybody into litigation. It really isn’t. I understand what the toll it takes on our clients. They’re already in trouble financially, and now I’m hitting them up for legal fees, which when you are fighting somebody or dealing with somebody who has unlimited resources, it can get out of control really fast. I just want to get a dialogue. And so this is really the only play that they’ve left to us. And it seems to be working,

James Huber (06:06):

And it’s a tricky situation. We say, we learned early on don’t file a lawsuit unless you’re willing to go the whole way early on in my career as I take on cases and be, oh, let’s just sue ’em and see how it goes. And hopefully that changes their mind and then it doesn’t. And then they’re in it and then they’re going, well, I can’t pay for this. And I’m like, well, then it was all for Naught.

James Huber (06:27):

The rule of thumb in litigation typically is whoever has more money is going to win, but you just need enough. So it’s a tricky tactic here of are you willing to go the whole way? But the good news is these cases, they’re not that complex. I’m not having to go depose a hundred people as far as our litigation, we have taken, no one’s ever gone to trial ever in the history of Match. And I know that almost for a fact. I know we were, I think the third to take one to a week before arbitration and all the ones before that, they settle right before because the outcome is potentially regime change. So if you have an arbitrator or anyone going, you abuse the match process, you need to change the whole way that you’re doing business. That’s way more expensive. We’ve had a bunch where we’re going, look, we just want to get off match.

James Huber (07:30):

And they’re like, we’ll give you X amount of dollars. We’re like, wow, that’s a lot of money. How about you save your money? Just take us off match. And they’ll say, no, really stubbornly. But that’s really changed over the last few five, I mean ever since COVID, all of a sudden now they’re going, fine, we’ll take you off. Because I think that the card brands have eased up on, because it used to be like, oh, if you made a mistake doing match, what else are you doing wrong? Now they’re going, yeah, I get it. You guys are shoot first. Check their skin color later.

Bryce Van De Moere (08:06):

Oh man, that’s a very valid accusation. We’re going to get demonetized guys. Well, but also, so the whole goal for me with our clients is just trying to find out what happened as quickly as possible. And the complaint, waving the complaint in their face, I felt we really made strides there. But unfortunately, what we’ve also, fortunately what we found out is how many of these match placements, they don’t even know what the merchant did. They don’t know. They don’t know. Or it’s based on some ridiculous misunderstanding. And then we had to spend five, six months just getting them to respond to accept the fact that they made a mistake.

Jeremy Stock (08:50):

So guys explain that. How can they not know for the listener, this entity put them on match list. They’re supposed to have a reason. How do they not know? What are they telling you guys?

Bryce Van De Moere (09:00):

Well, I’ve also just given up for the most part on dealing with the processors. The processors can’t, cannot get me what I need for my clients. Only the bank can do it. So I’m just tired of being stonewalled by the processors. So now I just leapfrog over to the banks and they don’t really have any idea as to what their processors are doing or seemingly doing. It’s like after the fact. They’re only looking into it after a complaint hits their desk. Until then, it’s just like, see no evil, hear no evil.

James Huber (09:35):

Look at this point, it could be an underwriter or compliance person. They could be using ai. And they are, they’ve always have been. They’re looking at numbers, they’re looking at metrics, and they’re saying, whoops. He went a little outside match ’em. Because the reason the match list matters to the processors, if you don’t match somebody and that merchant gets in trouble later, they can come back at you for liability for not matching ’em, which never happens, which I am not aware of a single instance of that ever happening. But what happens is the banks, they’re the ones supposed to be doing the MAT matching, putting it on the list. They have the keys to the castle, but most of the banks don’t really do anything, and they just turn the keys over to the ISO or the processor or the FSP, and then the ISO is just going, look, we don’t want to get in trouble. Just match ’em. Match ’em, match ’em. We don’t care. Round them up. You’re standing in front of Home Depot, get in the back of the van, figure it out later.

Bryce Van De Moere (10:39):

I’m sensing an underlying theme to this entire podcast. Exactly. But also what’s happening more often than not is that MasterCard is ordering the bank or the processor to just match ’em, but is not explaining to the bank or the processor. Why. Yeah,

James Huber (10:59):

They just send a notice that says, look, recommend it. You got fined because of this activity. You got to put everyone on match. And they won’t even say the merchants. And so sometimes the processor, they don’t even know. They’re like, all right, I’ll match him. Him, him, him. You happy dad?

Bryce Van De Moere (11:14):

Yeah. For instance, I have a ton of peptide litigation. We’re going right now, the Wegovy vs. the Qzempic of the world, and MasterCard just seems to be just blanket matching them all. And I’m coming back to these banks and these processors and showing them, here’s how my guy is in compliance. I just have to believe that MasterCard just really doesn’t have a real understanding of the difference between a research vendor or a therapeutic vendor.

James Huber (11:45):

I think they just don’t want people to lose weight.

Bryce Van De Moere (11:47):

And they don’t, yeah, the fatter the better. But

James Huber (11:49):

Yeah. So spending more, you’re eating. You’re not spending enough money,

Bryce Van De Moere (11:55):

Never spending enough money. But yeah

Jeremy Stock (11:57):

Feed the healthcare system. No doubt.

James Huber (11:59):

People are too healthy. They’re not going to pay medical bills. That was a good one. But

Bryce Van De Moere (12:06):

I’m trying to show the banks conspiracy that they’re in compliance. And usually we can come to an agreement that will satisfy the banks that the placement is wrongful. Because MasterCard explicitly says, if you have a problem with this placement, you got to go back to the bank. And this has been going on for the better part of this year. And in all these negotiations, I have yet to have anybody tell me, oh, well, we took this back to MasterCard. And they said like all this, that nobody ever says that. And so that leads me to believe that MasterCard is just making the call match them. Here’s a big fat fine for you that because you missed, your underwriting was bad, even though you thought that you were underwriting this merchant within the terms of MasterCard until MasterCard changed the game. And then retroactively, they hit you up with a fine. You didn’t know that we changed the rules on the fly. How could you do that a hundred thousand dollars? We got one guy who got hit for $425,000, no explanation as to why. And we’re not even sure that the match placement is valid, but the money’s already gone. And how easy do you think it’ll be to get MasterCard to return that assessment if we’re actually able to prove that the match case was invalid? And so it’s almost kind of like rigged. It’s really only way to look at, it’s just a cash grab.

James Huber (13:31):

Well, the whole card brand system is rigged. They built the ecosystem and it works for them. And MasterCard and Visa have zero risk whatsoever because they, they’re calling the shots. It’s their world. So yeah, the whole system is set up against the merchants. Now, the card holders actually we’re all pretty protected in that. And so that’s the idea is when we’re talking to Visa and we’re talking to them about what’s the purpose behind all of that, they get away with it because going, we’re protecting the cardholder.

James Huber (14:11):

And so we saw a shift in COVID when all of a sudden merchants are going out of business. And merchants are people too, by law. Businesses are people. So you’re not protecting them. They’re the victims. And most of these, a lot of this match work is because it’s people defrauding merchants. That’s thing. It’s the cardholders. And the merchants not doing anything wrong except for maybe they don’t have enough systems to root out these people that are getting free whatever on the internet and charging it back or just running straight scams with stolen cards and stuff. So the merchant, the whole system is set up against the person that it’s supposed to be protecting, which is the merchant. And I get it, the card holder needs protected too. But merchants, they’re better off just taking cash in so many aspects.

Jeremy Stock (15:05):

It seems like it sometimes.

Bryce Van De Moere (15:08):

And I think protecting the card holder is kind of a red herring. I mean a hundred Percent.

Bryce Van De Moere (15:12):

They’re protect on a level themselves. That’s exactly my point. So my wife’s mother had a suspicious charge on her card. She called into the credit card company into the bank. They’re like, oh, you got to cancel the card right now, right now. Ultimately she did. Ultimately, we determined that the charge was actually valid. She just forgot that she made the charge. But I was like, why were you in such a rush to cancel that card? Because you’re not going to be held responsible for that. Any fraud is going to be covered by the bank. If the charge is invalid, it’ll be corrected by the bank. They’re the ones who are exposed. You’re not going to have to pay for that fraudulent charge. And I understand that we’re down the road here a little bit, but ultimately, you’re right. It’s about the banks protecting themselves, which of course they right do, but they’re risk averse to almost the point of ridiculousness at times. It is just like you’re not willing to give any ground whatsoever.

James Huber (16:12):

So we’re seeing a sea change. Like I said, it, I don’t think you’ll see a big change from a legislative standpoint, but it is a matter of time of the more vocal that we are about these things. We should start to see some things moving because yeah, they’re protecting the cardholder. Because if we all start getting ripped off and we can’t reverse our charges, I’m going to go complain to whoever our senator is. Actually don’t even, I don’t even know.

Jeremy Stock (16:42):

We’ll edit this part out, gone through.

James Huber (16:46):

It doesn’t even matter.

Bryce Van De Moere (16:47):

Oh, no, that’s the house. That’s the house, right?

James Huber (16:49):

Whatever. So I’m going to go complain to the president and he’s going to say, yep, okay, we’re going to go make some changes, but we need the merchants complaining about this. And they complained via, you’re overcharging us for interchange. And it looks like they’re going to get a little reprieve there over the years. But I mean, it’s nothing like what they did in Europe. And even Canada’s was way better. But the merchants need to get vocal here, and that’s what we feel were the speaker box. So yeah, we were having a lot of success with this. And the more we do it, the better it is for the merchants because yeah, judges are seeing this. They’re seeing it over and over. I think Bryce has three dedicated attorneys at the big processors, and they have a Bryce line that he calls in. He gets a direct line straight to the desk now. So

Jeremy Stock (17:41):

Well, it’s a red phone.

James Huber (17:44):

We can bleeping,

Bryce Van De Moere (17:45):

Oh, that guy, again, anytime we can get an email or a contact, I’m going to just pound to the ground. But again, the point is I’m trying to make these banks or their attorneys, their compliance attorneys, realize that this is an entirely, it’s just a huge waste of money. Why do we have to get to the point where you have to go and hire a lawyer, have them draft pleadings, like drop 10 grand just to get a yes or no question answered? It does not have to be that way. We’re reasonable people. It’s crazy to hear an attorney say that, but we’re reasonable people. And if we’re wrong till we’re wrong, we’re not. But you’ve done this stand behind what you’ve done. There’s a bank that it’s just mind-numbingly irritating where I read these letters that they send to their merchants and they’re like, yeah, we have to push on match. We won’t tell you what the violation was. And because of our internal policies, we can’t tell you what we did. You remember that one? You remember that one? It was just like, I’m not even going to name. It’s just like our internal policies. We are not allowed to tell you why we shut you down.

James Huber (18:57):

Yeah, that’s ridiculous.

Jeremy Stock  (18:59):

Or what they’ll run to is they’ll say, well, we’re investigating potential fraud. They use that as investigating potential fraud. So they close their mouths and they don’t tell us anything,

Bryce Van De Moere (19:09):

But we can’t tell you anything about the investigation. And the investigation never involves the merchant at all. Don’t you want to talk to the dude or the gal that is at the center of this? Don’t you want to find out whether or not you’re completely off base or there’s some misunderstanding because the identity theft ones, at least 50% are just complete misunderstandings. QuickBooks, they applied for a merchant account, but through QuickBooks didn’t Intuit, but they just, for whatever reason, they didn’t have the requested paperwork. So they halted the application process. You’ll get matched immediately because they’re like, oh, you couldn’t complete the process because you’re obviously a fraudster. No, my kid was crying in the background. I had to go, had to go deal with ’em, and this process had to stop. But do they ever ask the applicant? No, they never do. They just shoot first and never ask any questions later.

James Huber (20:05):

Well, think of the difference between that experience and the cardholder experience at this point. I think everybody’s gone through the process of looking at their bank statement and saying, oh geez, Apple’s charging me seven times a day, and you stop the card. What’s going on? I’ve been defrauded. And you’re on the phone with ’em and they’re going, oh, actually your kid has your password and is buying Roblok over and over and over.

Bryce Van De Moere (20:32):

Been there. This sounds like a real story. James been

James Huber (20:35):

There. Where’s the camera? In case my kids watch it.

Bryce Van De Moere (20:39):

Fortnite is a drag too.

James Huber (20:39):

Oh yeah. So anyways, but they’re on the phone and they are able to go, oh look, it was from one of my child’s iPads. And they’re cranking on it, and they’re going, whoops, didn’t know Wink win or whatever. So that level of service, and then I can handle it. The merchant who never doesn’t get that they have higher price to come in and get all frothy at these guys to get them to even take a look at it. It’s ridiculous.

Bryce Van De Moere (21:15):

And I just want to segue something that I’ve noticed lately out in the world, and it is really kind of bothering me. I can see where all this is going. So this whole thing where with cashless merchants, you go into stores and they say, we’re cashless. You have to use a card. So we just seem to be moving an extra way further toward putting MasterCard and Visa as the only game in town. No regulations at all. If you don’t have a card, you can’t transact business. You can’t make a purchase at this point.

James Huber (21:54):

Well, you think of on the airplane, I had one where you had to log onto, you’d have to have their app and you had to have your card entered before, otherwise he would starve to death on that flight.

Bryce Van De Moere (22:04):

And I don’t know what is in it for the merchant having to go cashless, there has to be some incentive by the credit cards. And that’s something that I’m trying to determine because, well, no, that’s not, it’s having cash. There’s an expense to that. You have to have enough cash. You have to go to the bank. But credit cards, they always add. They’re always like, if you pay me cash, we won’t have to add however percent that gives the credit card, they’re cut. So why would they not want to keep the ability to take cash? Why would they automatically have to raise their prices? However many percentage points.

James Huber (22:41):

They have an employee that’s probably stealing from them.

Bryce Van De Moere (22:47):

That’s not at all unlikely. That makes sense.

James Huber (22:50):

No, there’s a problem. You have to go. I remember working in restaurants and stuff, it was a pain. You had to count all the money. I always got wrong. And then someone has to go to the bank and you have to deposit. Now people can’t give change. No pennies anymore. So it’s a pain.

Jeremy Stock (23:06):

Yeah. Yeah. I worked at in and out through high school. They were cashless for years, or excuse me, they were cash only for years and years and years. Even when debit was, and credit was fully established, I think because it’s a lot easier. That’s the other side of it. It’s a lot easier to hide cash. Maybe what you were saying, James

James Huber (23:28):

Who was your manager? His name was Jeremy.

Bryce Van De Moere (23:30):

But there’s just some places, even with kids, basically you’re barring your kid, a kid from your establishment because he’s not old enough to have a credit card, so he cannot do business in your store. So I have to believe that that is against a merchant’s best interest, probably against their will. There has to be something going on where the credit cards are managing. You got to go cashless. So that is an angle that I’m trying to do some more to technology, running down Googling conspiracy theories. In this day and age, all these conspiracies that I thought they were, nah, there’s no way. There’s just no way they could happen. Now I’m kind of like, especially with what’s happening lately, I’m like, I don’t know, man.

Jeremy Stock (24:15):

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Payments Experts podcast, a podcast of global legal law firm. Visit us online today at global legal law firm.com. Matters discussed are all opinions and do not constitute legal advice. All events or likeness to real people and events is a coincidence.