PEP Episode 090 — The CPayO: Chief Payment Officer – The Role Which Doesn’t Exist (but should!) | Book Talk

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, and cash-hold days. Report to the board monthly.

Contract for control. Negotiate data portability, audit rights, termination assistance, and response SLAs that match business risk.

Design the checkout, not just the site. Pair UX with payment orchestration and gateway capabilities so the last click isn’t the weakest link.

Plan the step-ups. As volume or SKU mix changes, proactively re-underwrite and re-paper to avoid “surprise” risk events.

Educate the org. Train finance, product, and support on payments fundamentals; don’t let accounting alone dictate UX or risk posture.

If you operate, fund, or advise payments businesses, this episode is your blueprint to turn payments from a black box into a competitive advantage.

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

Transcript

Jeremy Stock (00:00):

Author of the CPAYO, Chief Payment Officer, the role which doesn’t exist but should Viktoria Soltesz,

Viktoria Soltesz (00:08):

But you just don’t know what you don’t know if you have

Christopher Dryden (00:12):

I’m not much of a consumer, but what you just described, I think I see the amount of Amazon packages that show up at my house. So I understand that people are me. I don’t buy anything online really, to be honest with you.

Viktoria Soltesz (00:27):

You lucky you.

Christopher Dryden (00:27):

Even though this is what I do. I’m such not a consumer. But what you just said I do think is important because most people shopping experience is visual online these days. And with AI, I think that’s only going to increase, right? I mean it is going to be like your AI is going to be like, Hey, I want this and do me a favor, go find this in five and then give me a presentation. And in that presentation I think is really going to matter. If Brad Pitt’s wearing my shirt, I automatically feel better about the shirt, right? That’s so true.

Jeremy Stock (01:04):

Welcome to the Payments Experts podcast, a podcast of Global Legal Law Firm. We hope you enjoy this episode. We’re really, really excited about this podcast today. We’ve got a remote podcast. Joining us in studio is managing and founding partner of global legal law firm, Christopher Dryden, as well as our special guest, Viktoria Soltesz of the Soltesz Institute and author of the book the CPayO, which is a very the Chief Payment Officer. There it is, Chris.

Christopher Dryden (01:45):

I feel like I’m on the Price is Right all of a sudden.

Jeremy Stock (01:47):

Absolutely. The position that doesn’t exist, but should, Victoria, I think this is your third time on our podcast. We’re really excited that you’re here. Welcome.

Viktoria Soltesz (01:55):

Well, thank you so much for having me back and giving me the opportunity to talk about what I love, which is payments and banking and how money works. So thank you so much guys for having me back.

Christopher Dryden (02:07):

Oh yeah, I haven’t had the opportunity to actually interface with you, which I was looking forward to because I wasn’t aware of your book. And then Jeremy showed it to me when we were getting ready to do the podcast because we had to reschedule this. And for me, I looked at it and I looked at Jeremy’s outline for it and then I didn’t have an opportunity to read it. And then we got delayed and I did have an opportunity to read it before we did the podcast, which I was, I didn’t want to just have to skim it. It was great. I have a hard time explaining to people, Victoria, about what we do as lawyers, people in my life. People will say, oh, what kind of an attorney are you? And I’m like, I have to give sort of a, I’m in FinTech, but really I’m in payment processing.

Christopher Dryden (02:53):

They have no idea what I’m talking about. And so it’s interesting to me to have somebody bring something. There hasn’t always been a lot of, I mean there’s industry publications, but those are for people who understand what’s actually happening. There’s not something that’s like an introductory to digital payment or payment. And I felt like your book did a really awesome job of providing a reader a digestible way to kind of understand the payments infrastructure. Because look, I do training sessions with new employees all the time, and it takes three, four sessions of at least an hour or two to go through the architecture of the payments infrastructure and then the history of it to show people where it was, how it changed, what’s still legacy that exists within it, but how technology’s driven it forward. And we’ve even done some different outreach to local bar associations here in California and put on webinars to discuss payments because I think every business attorney that represents a company that is unfamiliar with this should counsel with the payments counsel because once you get into a payment relationship, renegotiating is very difficult.

Christopher Dryden (04:13):

And I don’t think that some businesses understand their bargaining power and when you just take it for granted as though it’s this commodity that’s needed in order for you to run your business. Well look, when the percentage of sales have gotten to a place where it’s the super majority of your sales are through this and you’ve decided that you’re willing to give away a substantial percentage of the overall revenue that cuts into your margin, I’m not sure how many attorneys are even looking at it that way. Unfortunately, our outreach was unsuccessful, but before we get started, I think it would be beneficial for everybody to know who you are and where you’re from and how you’ve gotten to payments.

Viktoria Soltesz (04:59):

Well, it’s a long story, right? Because no one wants to be a payment professional from kindergarten. You just somehow end up being a payment professional. So the same thing with me as well, 20 years ago, I’m thinking about it, it’s already too many years. But yeah, 20 years ago, Cyprus, which is a very small island in the Mediterranean in Europe, just joined the EU. So I was younger, I went there and I got involved in setting up companies, optimizing the taxes. But 20 years ago, banking was completely different. We just opened a bank account with a simple passport copy faxed over to the bank. So there was not that much of a discussion about banking. Everything was about taxation, optimization. The whole world opened up. But a couple of years later I realized that all my clients are suffering with how we move funds. What are the international regulations?

Viktoria Soltesz (05:58):

Some payments go through, some providers cannot be paid. So Europe was actually a big melting pot of all these payments and banking problems, and they just started. So the clients still had this, my money, my rules, why the bank is asking questions kind of attitude. But of course they had a problem. So who do you cope when you have a problem? Your accountant and I was clueless that how comes that something is legal and everything is okay, but the bank has a completely different approach to it and they do have the right to restrict transactions or give you a hard time. So that was a time when I was really curious about the whys. So I started to dig deeper and you know how it is you get into the rabbit hole and then you really realize how payback is working and card processing and then the FinTech went through a whole boom, different payment methods, different regulations, different countries.

Viktoria Soltesz (06:56):

So I kind of get sucked into it simply because I did not really understand how these payment and banking world works. And by understanding even just the bare minimum basics, I could help my clients so much better for the tax advisory as well, and then help them with the banking and payment set up and whatnot. So this lead to opening my own consultancy, which is right now dealing with payment and banking strategy building, which is I think it’s quite unique just like your law firm with legal advice on payments and banking while we do the strategy and the internal setup. And last year I opened an institute because I realized that whoever is making decisions over payments and banking have no clue because there is no education. So that’s the kind of mission that we are fighting for today to create an ethical and transparent industry where everybody has the relevant education and the opportunity to optimize their payment and banking flows, not to get ripped off, have knowledge about their rights obligations.

Viktoria Soltesz (08:08):

And as you said, it goes back to what is a bank, why they are giving you a heading, what is regulation? How did it evolve until what we have today? So it has a lot of different aspects to it and that’s what it makes it super interesting because today payments and banking really affects every area of the organization. It has a bit of touch on the user experience, how you check out and pay for goods and services online, but it has risk, it has compliance, it has tech because FinTech is obviously a part of that is tech and the innovation and the data security. So many areas that right now no one has really the seniority to make the relevant decisions over all of these little interdependent kind of areas of the organization

Christopher Dryden (09:03):

Or even to understand it. I mean everything that you just said I feel like is very spot on to whatever business function for whatever business. And it’s crazy because all of these businesses, even sophisticated ones, even law firms, they enter into these contracts that are just your cell phone agreement these days. You just take it for granted,

Viktoria Soltesz (09:26):

Right?

Christopher Dryden (09:26):

So an individual enters into an at and t agreement over here or a Verizon agreement and they just don’t read the fine print. It’s just like, here, give me my service. What’s my fee? Yada, yada, yada. They don’t understand that there’s a lot of terms and conditions that go with it. They don’t review ’em, they just click the button. I think that that happens even with sophisticated businesses over here, that merchant processing agreements are just something that is a part of what I have to do

 

Christopher Dryden (09:54):

And there is no scrutiny on any of it. And what happens when your revenue gets so large, you’re talking about banking and every CFO controller, they have a great background on banking, usually come from a CPA background. Our controller, she’s had to learn payments and what we do just period. And so I think one of the purposes of you writing this book was sort of to put payments on the same scale as banking within the importance of an organization and how it gets structured in that it should have the same importance as finance, product delivery, service delivery, even legal. I think legal might have less of an impact depending on what industry you’re in, I mean, or how you’re delivering goods or service. I think it’s a part of it, but I think payments is just as important. It’s kind of like payments operates invisibly. Is that really kind of what you’re trying to expand or expound in this particular book and how you’re presenting it to people? What was the purpose of the CPayO primarily for you?

Viktoria Soltesz (11:08):

I think that there is a big shift in how you’re planning an organization today because everybody’s going abroad. You are targeting new markets with the help of the internet, you can actually start a new operation from your bedroom, but as soon as you go abroad, that’s when you start realizing that these are different providers, different fees, different terms and conditions, different obligations. So the whole thing opens up a whole part owner’s box. So what I realized is that today you are not just having an idea doing an MVP, going to new markets or even starting out that new product or service in your local area, and then you just find a bank or a payment provider just to collect funds for it. It’s no longer the case. First you need to really understand that how you are going to get paid, how are you going to pay your supplier and payroll and obviously the shareholders for the profit. And once you have a clear understanding on those flows, then you build the operation around it. And with this approach, you can avoid so much of a headache and issues and high fees and ooh, I didn’t know and firefighting. So what I see today is that there is a shift in the industry where banks have more say in your business than, okay, I’m coming from a payment angle. So I would say that than any other area of your business.

Christopher Dryden (12:39):

No, we had a podcast about this yesterday. Really. It’s interesting you say this, but yeah, I think you’re spot on. Payments is kind of like in the background and even your bank doesn’t necessarily understand acquiring either.

Jeremy Stock (12:55):

Well, Chris, you said something before you said payments is the center of the universe in terms of running a business, and I think that’s kind of something what Victoria’s getting at as well. That’s

Christopher Dryden (13:05):

Right. Yeah. I think what you said, not to filibuster, but what you were talking about with actually the cross border thing is one thing and we could spend an hour on that and I don’t want to get lost down that rabbit hole because to me that’s fascinating. You start getting cross border and you’re in a whole new world because everything just really, it makes it, I think from that perspective, having a really strong payments person isn’t just a plus, it’s a need. But the thing about payments is it kind of sits in, like I said when I started, it’s this, it’s this. Given what you just described was here, let me figure out how my business is supposed to flow and then build the payment around it, which I think is great because if you’re going to have a banking partner, I think it’s better that you have one that actually understands payment processing.

Viktoria Soltesz (13:57):

That’s right. And I personally put payment and banking under the same umbrella simply because I’m looking at a business like a human body and the payments and banking is the circulation. So you need a specialist in cardiology to be able to make sure that all the veins are flowing, everything is unclogged, everything is healthy, it’s expendable, scalable, it fulfills all the need from every other organs in the body. It works exactly with the payments and banking and of course, yeah, banking are the part of the payment which is taking care of the settlement and acquiring and whatnot. Obviously you can get into the details, but if you see things from this perspective, anything which has to do with moving money from A to B that could be considered under the same importance. So therefore, and payment should be planned for should taken care of. And that’s what I’m trying to advocate for, that those days are long gone when you just walk into a bank, open up whatever financial product and that is going to support you for 20 years.

Viktoria Soltesz (15:05):

No, no, no. FinTech is always changing. There is a new technological innovations, there’s new regulation, there is new things, there are changes in the price, in the terms and conditions and good luck for someone to figure out because you don’t know what you don’t know. It’s not just the fine print. It’s about even asking the question that, Hey, what about if what happens when? And we are talking about for example, scalability. I mean, when you’re a startup, you just try to get out as soon as possible, fix it, okay, it works more or less let’s roll. But then the real problem hits you when you want to scale up. Now your local bank is not supporting you. Now your gateway, which you integrated three years ago on a friendly advice and you develop something internally which made it okay, is no longer supporting your business when you have 10,000 clicks and clients are queuing up to pay you. So those are the little areas that now we are talking about. It makes sense.

Christopher Dryden (16:06):

We talked about this yesterday on a podcast. One of the things that’s missing in America with payments is between the people here and the users.

Christopher Dryden (16:16):

There’s not a good communication module. And so I think even before you get to what you just described when you said what questions to ask, look, if my payment goes down, can I pick up the phone and actually get ahold of somebody who can do something? There you go. If you have a negotiated an agreement and you’re just dealing with a reseller, even there’s limitations on customer service even there. And how do you like or chargebacks, if you’re in a high volume card not present business, how do I manage or create a, or does my provider offer me something that has a very easy flow back and forth to be able to contest chargebacks, issue refunds. I don’t know how much you’re experiencing this in Europe, but in America we just went through some changes on in visas, it’s monitoring program and how it deals with thresholds, it’s called vamp, and they changed the way that they calculate the acceptable thresholds for returns and chargebacks and where previously, whereas I mean friendly fraud can be considerable when merchants were able to get in front of it, now they’re actually tightening and clamping down on the ability to get in front of it and refund people.

Christopher Dryden (17:33):

And so there’s going to be a huge squeeze related to that, and I guarantee you they don’t have anybody to really call and talk to about it. I mean, trying to get ahold of the card brands is ridiculous, but having a good banking partner, I think having an executive or an position would really change maybe the perception that the bank even looks at the merchant with, I mean, I’m going to negotiate on the front end. I’m going to ask the right questions and then I’m going to go ahead from there and have some sort of connection point to my bank when something goes wrong.

Viktoria Soltesz (18:06):

That’s so true. I think it’s time that people start to realize that payment is not just something like, this is life, this is what we need to deal with. Well that’s given and we are going to manage. No, no, no. You’ve got a lot of opportunity as you said, to really negotiate to understand, to change in this time and age. There are so many other providers out there. But if you just pick any business owner, I can guarantee that the majority of them won’t be able to understand what the payment data shows or for example, what is a gateway. So even the basic understanding, common knowledge is missing, and if your accountant is making a decision on your user experience or risk or tech integration, you are in trouble. And I think this is the time when we need to need to put things in perspective that yes, payments, how you collect money from your clients is just as important and need to be strategized for a marketing plan, like a go to market sales plan. You need to plan for these things. You need to understand your opportunities, your options, as you said, the prices, the terms, and the whole industry need to have supporting experts. For example, you guys advising on the legal part, me building the strategy or other people who are also explaining these things to you. So it is more important now than ever before. And to be honest with you, I think it’s only going to get more complicated because now

Christopher Dryden (19:46):

I agree with, you said something in your book that I find interesting. You said the way that payments, how you believe it operates and then how it actually is managed. These are two different things and you had some specific examples. Could you kind of give a background of, I mean we’ve sort of been talking about it and I agree with you what you just described with not having a CPA makes some certain decisions on the subject matter you were just stating I think a real world example of that would be beneficial.

Viktoria Soltesz (20:20):

Easiest example, I was talking to A CFO in a big conference and when we are queuing up having coffee and we started to talk about the most important thing that I like, obviously payments and banking. And I just casually mentioned to him that all the banks and the payment providers that you started to work with 20 years ago when you started the business now are in a whole different light. So you can actually go back and renegotiate your fees and you could see the person’s face was changing. Oh my god, I didn’t even know that. And I bet that I saved him at that moment, like hundreds of thousands of dollars just because now we are talking about it. Yes, of course I can go back. I’m not the same business as I was 20 years ago. The bank is not the same as they were 20 years ago.

Viktoria Soltesz (21:09):

Let’s see what else is out there for me. But just because you’re not talking about it, it’s not taught in the university. No one knows the best practices and standards you don’t know. Oh, for example, there was another client of mine who was dealing with luxury products. It was a beautiful face cream. So everything was about user experience, how the journey goes. The client goes on the website, picks the beautiful creams and the color coordination and the font and the design and animation. And then they had a payment processor who was absolutely killing the whole user experience because it was this monochrome dodgy looking, put your car details here. So whatever you built and spent a lot of money on the user experience before could be broken at the last minute on the checkout. Why? Because the UX person has no clue about the technology, has no clue about payment terms and conditions. And maybe finance said that, Hey guys, this payment provider is charging us half a percent. Let, let’s integrate that, right? But now we are talking about it. Now it’s a funny story, but you just don’t know what you don’t know if you have

Christopher Dryden (22:25):

I’m not much of a consumer, but what you just described, I think I see the amount of Amazon packages that show up at my house. So I understand that people are, I don’t buy anything online really, to be honest with you

Viktoria Soltesz (22:41):

Lucky you.

Christopher Dryden (22:41):

Even though this is what I do. I’m such not a consumer. But what you just said I do think is important because most people’s shopping experience is visual online these days. And with ai, I think that’s only going to increase, right? I mean it is going to be like your AI is going to be like, Hey, I want this and do me a favor, go find this in five and then give me a presentation. And that presentation I think is really going to matter. If Brad Pitt’s wearing my shirt, I automatically feel better about the shirt.

Viktoria Soltesz (23:14):

That’s so true. But I think here you mentioned a very important part, which is the agentic payment, and I think everybody’s dreading that and no one really understands what’s going on because now UX is going to be completely changing. It’s no more human ux. You need to satisfy the AI, how the AI is going to find you, click data security check out on your page taking care of all the payment processes. So good luck to you if you’re an e-commerce business start

Christopher Dryden (23:45):

I mean, that’s a whole nother podcast too, right? I mean like AI and how it’s going to interact with payments. We’ve done it in spurts and we’ve talked about it here, but I think it’s just still too early. I think there’s going to be a lot of bumps in the road as they try to implement different concepts with it. But that just adds a whole other layer of can you sell to my robot? What world are we living in? All of a sudden, another thing you say in your book, which I thought was interesting, is you say the CPayO is invisible and a really good CPayO is invisible. Then I happen to agree with that statement. But tell people why the good CPayO is invisible.

Viktoria Soltesz (24:31):

It’s the same way how a good policeman should be invisible. Why? Because they only turn off when there is a problem or a good firefighter. I don’t see firefighters because they are doing a good job that my house is not on fire. It’s exactly the same for the CPayO. If everything goes well, that means that somebody’s taking care of it. As soon as you see the cracks and the fire coming up, then you know that wow, we should have, could have. And that’s when the problem starts. So the good CPayO should be taking care of the heart and the flow of the business from the beginning. And it doesn’t matter how big is your company or what lifecycle it is. The CPayO has function in every single step of the way. You are in trouble when you’re a startup for different reasons why you are in trouble with your payments when you’re a large international organization. But that’s the beauty of it, that a senior figure who knows a bit of compliance, a bit of ux, a bit of tech, a bit of finance is the only person who will be able to advise you what’s the best and optimal way as of today in this ever-changing FinTech environment. So

Christopher Dryden (25:44):

Yeah, I think the same thing I talked to our controller about, it’s not just about tracking, it’s about management. And I tell her, look, our AR team, it’s important that they understand their importance. I mean, we produce the work that creates the invoices, but we still got to get the money. And so everybody has to understand how they fit into the revenue and expense scheme of the business to some degree. And what you just said about the CPayO and something that I appreciate that I want to highlight is that businesses, if you change your processing profile from your merchant processing application if flags in risk management, but when you are a startup and you start to gain volume and you really have something that’s working, people don’t know to go back. And they also, and I’m not just talking about for renegotiation, I think that’s on the table too. I agree with you wholeheartedly. All of a sudden there’s bargaining power.

Christopher Dryden (26:53):

I’m just talking about for compliance. The minute that you get out of the scope of the parameters of your initial application, you better go back because you don’t want something happening. And I think somebody who understands payments will be able to tell the business, Hey, as you get successful, and look, I will tell you here, we use ISOs and sales agents and that’s our bread and butter client. And as I’ve been in this industry that used to be who could fog a mirror? To now today, the people that are in the industry, they’re good at what they do and they understand payments. Many times I go to our clients when I have something that comes across my desk that I don’t understand operationally, and I will go to them and I will say, is there a way around this? Is there something, have you experienced this same issue?

Christopher Dryden (27:42):

And what have you done with it? Because some of our clients, their knowledge of payments is off the charts. I mean, it is crazy, but that’s not everybody that signs a business. And so your immediate contact might not even know, your contact may not even be in the business anymore, but they would need to know, Hey, you guys are really finding some success. I will say that that is one of the things that really is missing in the payment processing world here is customer service. It’s kind of like the legal world and the medical world. I don’t know if this is just a problem endemic to America, but it’s only when there’s a problem, there’s nothing that is really building customer service in a way to build relationships. And the really good salespeople that I see have kind of morphed themselves into really good service people too, because they are actually paying attention not to just what they’re paid, but to things going on with their clients staying in contact. I’d rather have 10 clients that make me a shitload of money than a thousand clients that make me a little bit, and I got to keep replenishing. And that mindset just doesn’t really happen here and I don’t know why. And I think that this CPayO is somebody that could really, for a business that is actually doing volume, that’s something that they could build.

Viktoria Soltesz (29:14):

I agree with you. And I think the problem is not just in the states, it’s everywhere. It’s education and the lack of it. Why? Because I did that. I have experience. I saw someone did that and it was working. So I assume that’s going to help in the future. Where are the benchmarks? Where are the standards? Where are the commonly agreed practices and the frameworks and things? What leads the industry? I mean, the whole industry right now is running on gut feeling and we are talking about money. So can we just put things in perspective, acknowledge the importance of this, and then build some kind of either certification, education, commonly accepted practices, just put things in perspective that yes, this is a thing which you cannot avoid as of today, running your business, you have to do payments.

Christopher Dryden (30:07):

No way. And it’s interesting what little cross border I’ve actually experienced. It’s got to be an education in the EU because

Christopher Dryden (30:14):

You do have all of these different countries with different philosophies. The central bank is way more of a player, in my opinion, the way we’ve architected in America payments has actually gotten a pass on regulation and quite a bit of it. We bump into statutory frameworks, but overall, there’s nothing that directly regulates us and there’s very little oversight from our fed. Whereas I see in other countries, really, Asia is where I’ve seen it the most. It’s like the central bank runs everything like Middle East Asia, and I’m sure there’s just all these different philosophies about how to do banking in Europe. It’s got to just be overwhelming at times. If you want to do, I mean, I guess that’s a question in the EU, has there been a standardization of payment?

Viktoria Soltesz (31:07):

Well, in Europe, you like to regulate thing, maybe over-regulate sometimes, but as you said, you have to have some kind of disaster to be able to trigger the regulation. Unfortunately, how the world works, something needs to go bad. So there is a regulation around it. So it doesn’t happen again in the future. But I think before we are regulating, we just need to at least educate the users because if you’re regulating without education, you’re just not really helping anyone. You’re putting more penalties on someone who didn’t know what to do to start with. So I think that’s where,

Christopher Dryden (31:47):

Or you’re overreacting or you’re overreacting in your approach to respond to whatever the fire was. Right,

Viktoria Soltesz (31:53):

Exactly. And I think the biggest problem now is there are so many different financial licenses. There is a massive discrepancy on how regulators even think about the same problem in states, in Europe, in Asia, in Africa. It is a big soup. It’s a mess. And if you are the one who needs to move funds around, then you need to adhere to all of these regulation. It is like good luck doing it on a gut feeling without the proper professional help. And that’s exactly what we are talking about, that at least you need to acknowledge that this is a problem and I need help. Right,

Christopher Dryden (32:32):

Totally. And go back to your book in chapter five. You talk a lot about fees, right? I mean, you discuss fees associated, and I think that this is something that people don’t understand everything that actually goes into their payment processing. Why don’t you elaborate on that?

Viktoria Soltesz (32:50):

Yeah. I think if people would understand how expensive is payment processing, they would think twice before ignoring it. So I have a really easy to follow calculation, which put things in perspective. So let’s say that you’ve got a product which you’re selling for a hundred dollars, right? So then you are going to your friendly payment processor. Let’s say the average fee on that is 3%. So you think, well, 3% is not going to hurt me, right? It’s okay, it’s significant, but it’s not that bad. Now, if you are putting this 3% in perspective of not your revenue but your profit, meaning to create that hundred euro hundred dollars volume of product, you need to spend $80 costs on that, and you put that $3 cost as opposed to the 20, which is your profit now, it is a significant cost and sometimes can be even that.

Christopher Dryden (33:48):

Totally.

Christopher Dryden (33:49):

It’s great that you, it’s great that you said it that way. Thank you for coming on. It’s been a great conversation and thank you very much for sharing your book with us. It’s been great.

Jeremy Stock (33:57):

Absolutely. You so much, Viktoria, it was wonderful. If you can hold up the book again. We’ve had our special guest author of the CPayO, chief Payment Officer, the role, which doesn’t exist, but should, Viktoria Soltesz from the Soltesz Institute. You can find her over @solteszinstitute.com. Viktoria, as always, a real pleasure, Chris. Thank you so much all, and we’ll see you on the next one. Bye-bye. See you, Viktoria. Thank you. 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.