PEP Episode 084 — VAMP Caps & Chargebacks: The New Rules to Survive in 2026 | Guest Maurice Griefer of MyCPO

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 throughline is clear: honest setup, realistic limits, and proactive dispute prevention beat short-term hacks every time.

We trace the journey from old-school ISO bullpens to today’s agent-driven portfolios, then dig into VAMP, chargebacks, MATCH, and how merchants can scale without getting shut down. Maurice shares why he launched My CPO, the realities of going solo, and how to build a resilient payment stack without losing your shirt.

• evolution of the ISO model and sales ethics
• common setup mistakes that trigger MATCH
• planning limits, caps, and multiple MIDs
• VAMP thresholds, portfolio risk, and fees
• alerts, RDR, and dispute prevention tools
• building SOPs, hiring, and merchant support
• long-term trust versus short-term tactics
• hope is not a payments strategy

Maurice shares what he learned growing up around merchant services and later helping build Maverick, then explains why he launched My CPO to stay close to merchants on the front lines. We break down the mistakes that get good businesses on MATCH—like pushing a second website through an existing MID or accepting bad MCC advice—and show how early discovery, accurate underwriting, and multiple MIDs create resilience when Q4 spikes hit. If you’ve ever had a processor freeze funds after a viral campaign, this conversation gives you the playbook to avoid it.

We also dive into the VAMP era: tighter thresholds, pass-through fees, and hard choices for acquirers balancing revenue against portfolio risk. The solution isn’t magic—use alerts and RDR, improve customer service, fix product pages and disclosures, and plan realistic caps that won’t trip alarms. You will pay either way: in tools and process now, or in penalties and lost processing later. Ethics and transparency still compound: the companies that do it right keep the same team at the booth year after year because trust scales better than churn.

If you’re building in high-risk ecommerce or advising merchants who are, this is your roadmap for sustainable growth. Subscribe, share with a teammate, and leave a review telling us the one change you’ll make to your payment stack this week.

*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):

Companies where they blow up and they sell for a hundred million dollars just from robbing people. And you’re going like, that is so messed up, but I’m going to you. Yeah, it’ll come around. But yeah, I mean, a lot of these people just get away with it, but it’s not sustainable growth. I mean, obviously if you sell for a hundred million dollars, hopefully it’s pretty sustainable. But the companies that do it the right way, those are the companies that you see that the same guys work the same booth at the trade shows of, you see the other companies where it’s like, oh, this person has a different colored shirt this year because they’re pushing too hard and they’re cramming.

Jeremy Stock (00:50):

Welcome to the Payments Experts podcast, a podcast of global legal law firm. We hope you enjoy this episode. Today we’ve got joining us in studio managing partner of the firm, James Huber, as well as our special guest joining us remotely. Maurice Griefer of my CPO. Maurice, I think you and James have known each other a long, long time. We’re really excited about this podcast. Welcome.

Maurice Griefer (01:20):

Yeah, likewise. Yeah, we go back for sure. So I’m excited to be here.

James Huber (01:24):

Yeah, Mo,  I was thinking about this morning what to talk about, and I thought one of the interesting things is you’re one of the few people who probably grew up with merchant processing being discussed at the dinner table. I don’t know if it was discussed, but your dad, Alan Griefer, is one of the OGs bodies gold huge company. So what was that growing up? Growing up right in the middle of the hurricane.

Maurice Griefer (01:54):

Yeah. So yeah, story’s funny when people ask how I got into it. I was just born basically, and I don’t think literally born and I don’t think I had another path really. It’s kind of funny too. So in college, I joined my start in the payment space was at Maverick, who everyone kind of knows now at this point. So I started literally the day after I graduated college. But in college I did a couple internships, just wanted to see is there anything else I might like and I didn’t like anything, any internships that I did. I just didn’t like it. I’m like, all right, payments are meant for me. Clearly it’s in my blood. But yeah, so when my dad started, I was only 10, so I really grew up in it and I always thought it was really interesting. I didn’t really pay attention too much, obviously being that young, but I remember going in when I was in high school, going into the office of the first ISO that he started and they had that crazy bullpen, 75 salespeople, something like that.

Maurice Griefer (03:01):

And that energy was really crazy to see. And then really getting into it full time was fun because when I started back at Maverick, there was just a couple of us and obviously I was there for 12 years. So seeing that growth, just that crazy growth that Maverick had we’re obviously working alongside my brother and dad was a crazy journey. But yeah, it’s a fun industry. I mean, it’s really hard to, once you’re in the industry, to get out and do something else. It’s a crazy industry that we’re in, but it’s a lot of fun and I love it.

James Huber (03:38):

Yeah, I do too. I always love the energy in those call centers. Also, when we first got in the space, we’d go into those places and it’s literally paper flying around and back when we first got in, it was Wolf of Wall Street, and I would joke with people and I’m like, did you guys, I just tell people, I was like, our clients are like, they watched the first three quarters of Wolf of Wall Street and they got bored and didn’t see how it ended. It was like that. And then we were going like I’d walk in there and be like, this is a nightmare. Get me a mop. Drooling going, there’s so much compliance work. And they’re going, we don’t want to do the compliance work. We just want to make money. And I’m going, well, you’re get sued a lot. And they’re like, well, that’s why you’re here. So we’re going great. And I mean, the industry’s changed. I haven’t seen a call center like that. I know that they’re still out there, but it’s not the same. Not to say that your dad’s company was Smash and Grab, but kind of everybody was back then. But

Maurice Griefer (04:47):

It’s lot’s changed from the nineties to early two thousands to now. I mean, the ISO model is so much different. I mean, a lot of ISOs now just outsource sales, so you don’t even have that crazy bullpen of salespeople in house. It’s all a lot of those ISOs, the big ones especially, they’re getting their deals through agents and companies like my CPO and myself. So the structure has changed a lot, but I’m sure there’s still some of those crazy companies out there. But yeah, you can’t do a lot of that stuff. And even with how much the industry has changed, there’s a lot more. There’s still not a lot of it, which I always thought it was kind of interesting. There’s just no regulation for the sales side of it, the sales agents, there’s really not. It’s all I guess reputation based. But I hear a merchants saying, Hey, this agent told me this and that recently.

Maurice Griefer (05:43):

So I was talking to a merchant that was high risk. They’re in that nutri space and Hey, just get a mid and put your furniture ccc. I’m like, that’s not possible. One, the merchant doesn’t decide what imcc they’re going to use. And I’m like, that agent you’re getting advice from, you probably shouldn’t be working with him. I don’t think he really knows what he’s doing. So obviously then you starting to get into vamp, which obviously we’ll talk about and just the current landscape of the payments industry. He just got a lot of these knuckleheads out there that they’re thinking short term. They just think dollar signs and they’re not really setting up their merchants properly and they’re just burning relationships with the ISO’s that they work with. So there’s still a lot of craziness in the industry, but that will never go away.

James Huber (06:33):

I mean, that’s one of the bigger problems that we see in this space particularly. We do a lot of match work, getting people off of match, and we see it. We’re going, you shouldn’t be on match, but you were set up wrong. And I find it interesting because the high risk guys, the guys that are running multiple merchants that are moving transactions between websites and stuff, it’s almost like they just expect things to go up and go down every three, four months, and they move from here to there to there. But there’s a right way to do it. There’s a right way if you’re actually selling a real product, as long as you’re selling a real product and you’re not selling what we were looking at a website the other day. It was like, we sell guitar picks and toasters, and I was like, the fuck? Did this make it through underwriting?

Maurice Griefer (07:22):

Yeah, that’s very weird. But too, we see weird stuff all the time, and I always like to give merchants benefit of the doubt, and I don’t like to make quick judgements. I’ve seen weird things all the time, and it ends up being a legitimate merchant. They’re like, Hey, I just was on social media and TikTok and I see these kind of trending, these trendy products and they’re all not related at all, but I just want to sell it on a website and see if I can make some money and kind of start a business like, okay, it’s kind of weird, but prove me wrong otherwise. But the match issue, that’s been an ongoing struggle. I think for many high risk merchants that’s probably going to get worse with now with vamp. But it sucks too because a lot of merchants, they don’t have bad intentions and they’re not bad actors going on to transaction laundering, which is a common one.

Maurice Griefer (08:18):

We see merchants, they don’t realize it. I was literally talking to a merchant last week too that we recently onboarded. They have two nutri websites and they just said, Hey, we boarded one. And then day after they said, Hey, we got another website that we have that we want to get processing for. We’re just going to use that mid for our other website for now. I’m like, no, no, no, no, you cannot do that. And there was no, I don’t think there was any bad intention there, but the merchants don’t really know. They don’t know all the rules and what you’re not supposed to do and what can get you in trouble. So you’re with the wrong processor and you do something like that. Not even trying to have any bad intentions, intentions, but the processors can be really quick to say, you know what? We caught you selling on another unapproved website. We’re closing your mid, we’re holding all your money and we’re going to throw you on mash list for transaction laundering. And that can just totally cripple a business, which really sucks to see. And obviously you guys do a lot of work there, so it’s just part of the challenges and stuff we’re dealing with every day.

James Huber (09:22):

Yeah, I mean, we see it too. I like what you said of a lot of these merchants don’t have bad intentions. We see a ton of it where they didn’t have bad intentions, they’re getting punished because their business was too successful. The ISO set ’em up as a 50 K limit and they’re going, well, we’re selling hundreds of thousands of dollars of, was it three years ago? My wife bought it, looked like it was an animatronic live pig for $12. And she got there and it’s like one of those little windup pigs. And I was like, these guys sold the shit out of this thing.

Maurice Griefer (09:59):

Oh yeah,

James Huber (09:59):

Because the video, I thought I was getting a live robotic pig. But now that’s a little bit deceiving. So maybe that was a bad example. I just wanted to bring that one up because

James Huber (10:10):

My wife watches this podcast. Yeah, you got a lot of those impulse buy and merchants mean they make money off of those in those gadget type of accounts where just really impulsive low ticket, you see you’re targeted an ad or you come across a creator video with a link to buy one of these things you probably don’t really need, but it’s like, oh, it’s kind of cool. It’s 15, 12 bucks, whatever, I’ll just buy it. But it comes to you and it’s just not at all what you thought you were going to get.

James Huber (10:38):

It’s not at all, but are you really going to do a chargeback? But my point on even the mechanical pigs is if you’re not set up correctly, that thing’s going to go gangbusters. So your ISO should be looking at this and looking at the video and you’re probably going, eh, chargebacks are going to be an issue. I’ve seen the pig, but when they ramping up, you’re going, you’re going to sell the shit out of this product products right before Christmas. And a lot of us white people sit here and we’re like, I just got to fill up the room with presents, like more plastic shit. I know I’m going to throw it away, but just click, click, click. We got to spend this much, and then now one kid’s got to bigger present, so I’ve got to spend more to make it even on that kid more pigs.

Maurice Griefer (11:27):

Yeah, that always sucks when you’re getting penalized for being successful, but that’s where it all kind of goes down to those early conversations. Whoever, as the merchant, whoever you’re working with, your agent, whoever you got to be, I think you have to have those conversations. Here’s our plan. You don’t know my background. We just got introduced, but I’m very of scaling this company to a million dollars a month and three to six months, I’m that good of a marketer. I got this crazy growth projections and if the agent’s like all, I’m just going to get you a 50 K mid and we’re just going to see how it goes for a little bit, but if they’re in week two and they’re already at 50 K, you’re already kind of in trouble. So

Maurice Griefer (12:15):

Those conversations as the merchant, just really kind of explaining your business, making sure you’re on the same page with your process or your agent, whoever you’re working with, is really critical because so many issues that merchants run into I think can be prevented by just having a good conversation of I really need to know everything about your business, your plans, but also too on the underwriting side, I think ISO’s got to do a pretty good job at asking those questions. And sometimes two merchants get frustrated when underwriting has a lot of back and forth. They have questions, but it’s probably a good thing. They really want to know your business, so you’re not immediately getting shut off two weeks later because you came really hot out the gate. But yeah, that’s a lot of the work we do, and especially now I think merchants kind of understand the need to have multiple mids and de-risk their business by not having all their eggs in one basket.

Maurice Griefer (13:11):

So the last two weeks has been really interesting. I’ve noticed a lot of merchants on X talking about, Hey, Shopify payments is shutting us off because we’re growing quickly. Our chargebacks maybe spiked up a little bit. But I think obviously a lot of that stems from vamp now. But yeah, the big challenge, especially now this is we’re heading into obviously the crazy Q4 merchants typically do a lot more volume. So one of the crazy stories I’ve had with just doing too much volume, getting you in trouble, I think a couple years ago I was introduced to someone on Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving night, an old merchant introduced me to a buddy of his that literally they hit their cap, the processor put a hard cap going into Black Friday, cyber Monday, and he was freaking out and on a Thursday night sent him an app. Friday he was approved.

Maurice4 Griefer (14:10):

We got him another mid. So also too, you got to be able to really make moves and pivot quickly if you’re kind of headed for disaster. So it’s always a tough spot to be in if you’re, it’s a good problem to have if you’re growing really quickly, but you got to now, especially payment strategy is so important for businesses to think about. You can’t neglect your payments infrastructure, your payment stack as you’re trying to grow your business because at the end of the day, if you can’t accept payments, you don’t have a business and you’re kind of screwed. So

James Huber (14:43):

Yeah, I mean brick people, we got an auto parts guy today and I’m looking at this and I’m going, yeah, you’re a tough out. He’s like, I’m taking orders right now, but I’m not taking the payments. He got matched and shut down, but I’m going, yeah, well, he better get a solution quick. So we’ve been talking kind of generally of what agents should be, and I was doing that kind of to segue into, let’s talk about My CPO. You started this, you said you’re at Maverick, a family company for years and years and years, and then you said, Hey, I’m going to start out a company that’s a little bit different. So why don’t you tell us about that? You don’t have to talk about why you split out from the business necessarily, but you were looking to do something a little different.

Maurice Griefer (15:32):

Yeah, I mean, I just ultimately liked being merchant facing, and I loved working with my clients and helping businesses with their challenges and struggles. And that’s over the years, obviously just kind of being in the industry for a while. People know who you are and you take care of a couple of good merchants and then they refer you their friends, and that kind of just snowballs gradually. And yeah, I think the Mavericks model was much more agent focused and they didn’t really want to do sales, and I always respected that, especially now seeing from both sides as the iso, the agent, it’s always nice when you’re an agent and you don’t really have to worry about your upstream partners competing with you. So yeah, obviously it was a really tough decision and to leave and branch off. But for me, I just ultimately wanted to do what I enjoy doing most, and that was just working with my clients and helping businesses solve their payment challenges. And the best way for me to do that ultimately was just to branch off, start my own thing, and also to still help Maverick just in a different structure.

James Huber (16:44):

So you’ve spun out from, let’s say you’re an executive at a very large successful company and you spun out and said, Hey, I’m going to do this on my own. What were some of the parts, I mean, we spoke before you started. I would say one of the good parts is you’re working from home, you get to be around your three-year-old daughter and the glimmer in your eye. And then what were some of the hard parts about jump and ship and hanging your shingle?

Maurice Griefer (17:21):

So starting a business is not easy, just however you want to slice it up, as you guys know. So yeah, it was really, I think the big thing was just trying to get used to just this whole new setup and just more of a mindset shift. But then also too, the business started to ramp up and it’s been growing, so now it’s like, okay, great, now I got to start hiring people. And so it’s just constant challenges of just really growing pains of a new business, just me too. So it’s not like I have co-founders, it’s all on me at the end of the day, but it’s a fun point now because I’m starting to hire, build out the team and try to get myself removed from obviously being involved in just every single task. So it’s a lot. I mean, the merchants that I focus on are much more in that restricted space. So with that, obviously they’re a little bit more high maintenance and just in the sense of there’s always challenges and fires that you’re kind of dealing with. So for me, just to focus on obviously the most critical parts of a business, really be more of that cheesy saying of working on your business, not working in your business.

Maurice Griefer (18:38):

That’s been definitely just the growing pains of building out that team and just making sure customer service. I mean, if you have, I have already a couple hundred merchants that I’m managing and it’s just me. I do have another employee who’s been really helpful the last couple of months, but it’s still, you’re dealing with every day, Hey, I got a couple chargebacks, I need help with fighting. Can you spend an hour with me doing that? So I really want to make sure I can give everyone the attention, but the business needs to get more scalable. I like to say. So you got to have good systems in place. You got to have SOPs and processes to be able to obviously really start to dial up the company because it’s been, I guess you can say a lifestyle business for a little while, but now it’s like, alright, I want to take it to that next level, actually grow the company and really build it. I’ve already seen what’s possible before you show up every day and you’re consistent and you can build a pretty successful company with obviously no outside investment or capital. You just suit up and show up and you can build a pretty big company.

James Huber (19:50):

Yeah, I mean I see it a lot where people, they feel like they’re captive in their executive role. Even say you’re an executive sales role and you’re going, look, I’m at this company, I’ve got this great book of business. I’m feeling a little cornered here. I want to spin out. And they’re going, well, I can’t because I’m going to lose my residuals. But the better companies will go, go do your thing. You’re going to keep your residuals. So like you said, you don’t need to go get an investor because nothing’s changing. You’ve got this old deal over here and then we’ll give you a new deal over here. And even a lot of times we see the good companies being like, yeah, and you don’t even need to be exclusive, just don’t take any of your merchants away, of course.

James Huber (20:38):

But yeah, generally it’s fine. And so we see people so worried about that, but we’re going, no, you can absolutely go and do your own thing. Because when you’re in that executive role, I was going to joke with you, I bet you’re having a lot less meetings now where it’s Maverick who’s got so big, where actually you need to have those meetings and stuff like that, but to be freed. We see a lot of people once they’re out and they’re like, oh my gosh, this is great. But then the hard part is then you’re going, oh, wow, I can’t do everything. Before I had everyone else doing everything and they handle customer service, and I was just outselling. But now you’re doing everything. And then that’s where it gets tricky. Then you have people from your old company calling you being like, oh, hey, I want to come work for you. And then you’re like, oh, no. Well now I’m getting in hot water and that stuff. That’s where it gets hard. So how did you hire people? How’d you find?

Maurice Griefer (21:36):

Yeah, so a good thing for me of just being in the industry. I know a lot of people and obviously too, yeah, you got to be careful how you navigate through if you try to poach people from partners and stuff like that. But I worked with a industry recruiter that Chris recommended actually and connected me with and just helped me out just with this first hire. But now as I am expanding the team, I don’t really even have to post much about putting jobs up on some of these platforms. I just happen to know a lot of people, which is nice, and I can reach out and just have those conversations with people, just try to see if they’re looking for new opportunities. So I’m not obviously at a point where I’m hiring like crazy. It’s very strategic one by one, still small team, but try to get those key positions in customer service, marketing, onboarding, sales support.

Maurice Griefer  (22:45):

So it’s a fun, very manageable kind of growth of just start to, as the needs come up for different roles. And then also too, as the company grows and evolve, you really start to figure out where do I want to focus on? Obviously sales is my background, everything else I don’t necessarily want to do. So it’s lucky when you’re working from a big company, it’s like, Hey, I need some marketing assets done. Okay, great. You go to the marketing person, Hey, I need this agent’s red line, this agreement. Okay, great. You go to your in-house council to review that there. So you don’t have, or customer service, you walk over to someone on the customer service team like, Hey, can you spend 20 minutes just going over the statement with my client here? I got to focus on selling, selling, selling.

Maurice Griefer (23:34):

I’m not at that point yet, but that’s obviously the goal. And every business is different too. So I’ve talked to obviously a lot of agents over the years and they’re fine just kind of being a one man band and they’re like, Hey, this is just kind of a lifestyle business for me. I get the ultimate freedom. I work when I want and I don’t need to try to make an insane amount of money, and I’m kind of good with where I am, but I don’t know, everyone’s different with the way they want take their business and all that. So yeah, I’m just kind of taking it month by month and just really just trying to have fun, obviously at the end of the day. So it’s very stressful just trying to launch and grow a business, but you got to have fun with it too, right?

Maurice Griefer  (24:17):

I hold myself to very high standards, I think, and I put a lot of pressure on myself of this is where you should be, this is where you should be. But you got to take a step back sometimes and say, you know what? Life is good. Things can always be worse. You got your health and just it’s going to all progress, and you just trust the process and think long-term and good things will happen if you just do good, honest work. I believe in karma, as long as you’re taking care of your merchants and your honest, transparent person, which there’s not a lot of in this industry, unfortunately. Good things are bound to happen.

James Huber  (24:59):

Yeah, I always see that when I see we run into, of course, a lot of the bad players, and I always see that, and I’m like, you guys could have made plenty of money just doing things the right way. And you see these companies where they blow up and they sell for a hundred million dollars just from robbing people, and you’re going like, that is so messed up, but I’m going to you. Yeah, it’ll come around. But yeah, I mean, a lot of these people just get away with it,

James Huber (25:30):

But it’s not sustainable growth. I mean, obviously if you sell for a hundred million dollars, hopefully pretty sustainable, but if you know the companies that do it the right way, those are the companies that you see that have the same guys work in the same booth at the trade shows of, you see the other companies where it’s like, oh, this person has a different colored shirt this year because they’re pushing too hard and they’re cramming. So I know we wanted to talk a little bit about vamp. What are your thoughts on the new Visa rules?

 

Maurice Griefer (26:10):

Yeah, I mean, there’s not a whole lot we can do other than Visa, MasterCard. They set the rules, we got to play by it, and it’s getting tougher, obviously going to be very frustrating as, especially if you are working with a lot of card not present merchants, especially in those higher risk verticals, it’s just going to get tougher. The thresholds are getting lower and lower, which for many years, I mean, even if you kind of go back to when COVID started and you saw the last couple of years that just big shift towards e-commerce, I feel like, except for the very initial, that beginning period of COVID where maybe travel merchants were just getting hacked left and right and shut off, but it’s been pretty lax. I feel like just how processors have managed merchants and everyone used for a long time that 1% threshold of like, Hey, just stay under 1% and you’ll probably be fine.

Maurice Griefer (27:11):

Or seeing merchants run consistently at one and a half, 2% even, and never really had any issues. I guess too, if the processors making a bunch of money on chargeback fees, they got a 10% reserve. They’re like, okay, do we really, let’s just keep this merchant on. But now there’s a lot of tough calls I think acquirers and processors are going to have to make on this. We got a couple really profitable high margin merchants, but they’re accounting for 80% of our problems here. I mean, we probably need to offboard ’em and we’re going to take a hit on our revenue, but it’s going to be really tough these next couple months too. I think people are still just really trying to navigate it, but I’ve already seen merchants getting charged for vamp fees now, and processors are already starting to pass through some of these fees and figure out ways to offset I guess that risk.

Maurice Griefer (28:13):

So it’s always a tough balance for processors to kind of weigh risk and reward. But now there’s just so much more pressure from vamp, and I think it’s going to get tougher to get underwritten and onboarded. And it’s also, if you’re a high volume merchant and you’re chargebacks are kind of high, you’re kind of screwed. Honestly, that’s why I see a lot of merchants now, they’re just trying to set up as many mids as they can get, just kind of knowing we get five mids set up, we’re probably going to lose three, two of them at some point, but we got to have some redundancy and just make sure we don’t lose all of our processing. But yeah, it’s really tough. I mean, it comes down to the education too, and just making sure you’re talking with your merchants on these are the new rules. Here are the tools that you probably should implement. For a lot of merchants too, they don’t want to make any changes unless they absolutely have to. They’re like,

Maurice Griefer (29:13):

Hey, I can get set up with this process, or they’re not going to have me enroll in any of the alerts. They’re not going to require RD, rca, all that stuff. They’re really lax and they’re just going to give me a mid and just kind let me run with it. But that’s not really going to be acceptable anymore, and I’m sure there will be Will those ISOs that just say, screw it. We have such a low risk, such a low chargeback ratio on our portfolio, we can handle a bit of high risk. But also too, the industry, these agents, some of these high risk merchants catch wind of some new ISO popping up that’s starting to take on high risk. It takes a couple of weeks for them just to get overwhelmed with apps and people reaching out like, Hey, these ISOs are all getting the usual suspects of ISOs are getting tough. We got to find some new homes. But yeah, it’s going to be, I really hate to be negative, but I think it’s going to get pretty bad in these coming months.

James Huber (30:17):

I think it’s going to get bad, but then I think that Visa will see that they’re making it, so they’re basically denying people processing who aren’t that bad. So we know that it’s designed, we know what the purpose is, but I don’t think it’s going to have the effect necessarily because like you said, you’re punishing good, well-intentioned merchants who are dealing with bad cardholders. So I think probably going into January, February, they’ll change it.

Maurice Griefer (30:55):

Once there’s enough pushback from the industry, maybe they’ll make some changes, but you plan they’re

James Huber (31:02):

Making less money. Maybe that’ll do it.

Maurice Griefer (31:05):

Yeah. Yeah, right. So it’s Visa, MasterCard, at the end of the day, they’re just always making money. It’s just always coming in one way or another,

Maurice Griefer (31:15):

Which is kind of tough. It’s always tough. I feel like for merchants, they always kind of get screwed at the end of the day, so it’s going to be costly for them either way. So it’s either you don’t make the changes to get your chargebacks under control. I’m like, okay, that’s fine, but now you’re going to get charged all these extra maybe vamp related fees from your ISO, or they’re going to maybe increase your rates, your other, just your regular per transaction costs because you are running really high, so you have that expense or that increased expense. Or on the other side, you can implement the alerts, you can get higher customer service people actually build a legitimate business and make those changes. It’s going to cost you money, but the benefits going to be your chargebacks are going to be lower now, and maybe you’ll build cleaner history.

Maurice Griefer (32:01):

You won’t be on the radar as much. So either way, it’s going to cost merchants money to kind of meet these new thresholds, whether they want to make all the changes, put in all the tools, or not take any action and pay for it by getting fined and penalized. So that’s the tough call for merchants to make because they’re already getting charged left, and especially these high risk merchants, they got charged all sorts of different fees. So now you start to bring, Hey, there’s more costs and more fees, but at the end of the day, if that’s going to be what keeps their business operating, that’s kind of their only option. So

James Huber (32:39):

Totally. All right. Well, you get the last word. What do you want to leave our millions of viewers and listeners with Yeah. What’s the biggest takeaway you want them to think about after today,

James Huber (32:53):

Third time listening to this?

Maurice Griefer (32:55):

Yeah, so I think the biggest takeaway is that hope is not a strategy. You got to be proactive and you have to pay attention to chargebacks. You can’t overlook the importance of a good solid payment stack. So just working with the right people, partnering with the right agents and ISOs, and getting yourself set up for success from day one is so crucial. So this is what we do all day every day, is just helping solve these challenges. But I can’t stress enough to people is just, and merchants especially, just keeping a payment strategy in mind, just starting your business even from the very beginning, thinking about payments and just how to set yourself up for success long term is so crucial.

James Huber (33:52):

All right, great. Well, how do people get in touch with you?

Maurice Griefer (33:56):

Yeah, so LinkedIn’s always good X or Twitter X, whatever you want to call it. I have somewhat of a presence there. Otherwise, go to the website. It’s just get my cpo.com, email me mg@getmycpo.com. I’m always happy to talk to anyone regardless of where they’re at in their situation. If they just want to bounce some ideas off me, always happy to give that value.

Jeremy Stock  (34:24):

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.