PEP Episode 091 — Building An ISO in 2026: The Hard Truth from the Field With Guest Frank Pagano of VizyPay

The conversation opens on a blunt question: can a solo agent or a small team still build something meaningful in payments, or is the market a race to zero? Frank Pagano of VizyPay (https://www.vizypay.com/) doesn’t flinch. He argues it’s still doable, but only if you control the customer journey and make hard, long-term decisions that trade fast cash for durable value. His path into payments began with curiosity and proximity—meeting a neighbor, seeing success up close, and challenging the assumption that a great career must follow a safe W-2 route. That spark evolved into a bootstrapped company that chose transparent service over shortcuts, took real financial pain early, and doubled down on operations to protect merchants and attrition. The thesis is simple yet tough: own the experience, earn trust, and let the reputation compound.

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

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

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

The bigger question—should a hustling agent build an ISO today or plug into a large shop—gets a pragmatic answer. You can build, but you’ll trade simplicity for overhead: payroll, leases, risk systems, and the constant pressure to maintain compliance and service. Many high-split agents are better off leveraging a well-run ISO’s rails, protecting their residuals contractually, and focusing on what they do best: selling and servicing local merchants. White-label paths preserve brand while avoiding technical and regulatory debt. For those who do build, the advice is consistent: choose transparency, keep culture at the core, and anchor decisions around small-business advocacy. Markets change, boards push fee dumps, and terms shift; bootstrapped independence and a clear why can be the antidote.

The closing takeaway loops back to the original challenge. Success in payments is less about a hack and more about choices that pay off slowly: no bait-and-switch, no silent fee hikes, and no shortcuts that erode trust. Whether you’re an agent or an operator, the winning play is to own the journey, invest in service, and let results speak through retention and reviews. The industry is noisy, but merchants recognize the difference between extraction and partnership. That’s where resilience lives—and where new builders can still win.

*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):

Do you think that it’s still possible to do what you guys did in this environment or is it just the race to zero? Is it done? You can’t do it. You missed the boat. You just go back to the bench and cry.

Frank Pagano (00:13):

It’s definitely doable. I mean, you talk to somebody about what it is that they do. If someone said, “What would it take to get into this today?” It’s a ton. It’s a ton to be where we are. It’s a ton. And looking back nine years saying, “If we knew nine years ago what we know today, would we have tried it? ” And the answer’s probably not. Because it’s a shitload of work, it’s a shitload of sleepless nights. It’s just a lot of questions. I mean, every single time you turn around, it’s something different. I’ve said it for years. It’s no matter which way you turn, there’s somebody waiting there with a club to beat your ass.

Jeremy Stock (00:52):

Welcome to the Payments Experts Podcast, a podcast of Global Legal Law Firm. We hope you enjoy this episode. We’re really excited. We’ve got a remote podcast today. We’ve got joining us remotely, Frank Pagano of VizyPay. You can find Frank over at vizypay.com, as well as managing partner of Global Legal Law Firm, James Huber. James, Frank, we’re looking forward to a good conversation today. Welcome.

James Huber (01:23):

Awesome. The intro made sound like Frank was also the managing partner of Global Legal Law Firm. I am not. So Frank, thanks for joining us. You said you dug your way into work today under a foot of snow, so that’s great. VizyPay, I think you probably have to live under a rock to not know about you guys. It seems pretty prominent. You guys are at all of the trade shows. Do you go to every single one?

Frank Pagano (01:57):

Generally, yeah. I think Northeast was one that we just started going to maybe three or four years ago, but yeah, for the most part, you’re going to catch us at pretty much all the circuit shows.

James Huber (02:08):

Yeah. Yeah. We see you guys there. We see you guys at all the shows and you’ve got a pretty big organization. But before we get into VizyPay, you’re here. Tell us about yourself. Mainly, how’d you get into payments? How’d you get stuck in this industry? That’s so wonderful.

Frank Pagano (02:28):

Well, so oddly enough, I was building a house. This is like 2014, 15. And nice neighborhood, some big houses there. I kind of see this guy. He’s got a young family driving some pretty sweet cars, like matching his and hers G Wagons, big house, real young family, like two, four, and six. And I look over there and I’m like, “Man, that guy, I don’t know who he is, but he’s got to be some sort of rocket scientist, some sort of astronaut or something. He’s young. He’s like maybe late 20s, early 30s.” Like that guy, whoever it is, must be nice to be him. I’m running a business myself at the time, entrepreneurial life, it’s ups and downs. And I go meet my neighbor. And if anybody knows Austin McNabb, you’ll know he is not a rocket scientist. He’s a charismatic guy. Knew immediately this guy’s a sales guy.

Frank Pagano (03:30):

So oddly enough, he’s kind of looking at me saying, “Hey, what do you do? How did you get into what business that you’re in? ” And at the time I was in energy efficiency sales, which were boom or bust. I mean, could be massive years, it could be like nothing.

Frank Pagano (03:47):

And he’s like, “Yeah, I’m thinking about starting my own thing.” Kind of breaks it down. I said, “That sounds interesting, but I would not do it if I were you. If I were you, I’d stay with a W2 position, keep doing what you’re doing. You’ve got something figured out at a young age. Stick with it. ” And honestly, he came to my house, we were at a pool party in my backyard. He had a spreadsheet. I remember him walking in with one single spreadsheet and he’s like, “I was thinking if we could do this and this and this. ” I was like, “Well, if you’re really truly serious about this, you should probably put a business plan together and then not just talk to me, but talk to anybody else that might want to listen and see what options you’ve got.” So fast forward a little bit, we start the company and I’d say it was maybe about six months in.

Frank Pagano (04:36):

We had more success than we knew what to do with, which was, in my opinion, any organization or anything that I’ve ever been part of where they were a startup, it usually takes twice as much money and three times as long. We were six months in. I used to come in on Fridays to the office. I was not working there at the time. I still had a job that actually paid me money. And so I go into the office and I said, “Well, let’s go through some numbers or drinking a coffee.” And we pull out that old business plan and we were in month six where we thought we would be in month 18. And so we had kind of catapulted the numbers, which much to my surprise, I knew it was good. I just didn’t know it was there. And at that moment, I said, “This is the future.

Frank Pagano (05:21):

It’s going to hurt.” And it did, but I turned my back on a career that was, like I said, paying me money to work for a company that had no money to pay money. I mean, we’ve been bootstrapped this whole time and literally went to work for a year without any pay, any income. I like to tell the story. I like red wine and I’ve got a bunch of it. We’ve collected a bunch over the years. During that year, we drank all of our good wine because we didn’t want to spend the money at the store to go buy new wine. So literally during some of our toughest financials, we’re crushing all the red wine. So long story, but that’s how I got into the business. And I’ve fallen in love with the industry and with the business and it’s been no turning back whatsoever.

James Huber (06:08):

And you’re able to restock the cellar?

Frank Pagano (06:11):

We’ve got it about halfway full. I mean, if you buy a couple bottles and you drink one every single time, it takes a lot longer instead of just stuffing them away.

James Huber (06:22):

Right, right. So when you guys started out, Austin, he left his W2 role. Did he say goodbye to all of his residuals and anything? Were you guys starting fully from scratch?

Frank Pagano (06:36):

Yeah. So maybe I’m going to give out too much information, but Austin’s a pretty transparent guy, so I’m going to tell his side of the story too. So I didn’t really necessarily have intentions of getting into this. I was going to be more of an investor, was really, really intrigued by how ubiquitous it was. I was selling to utility companies that were maybe 50 targets in the whole country that I could sell to, and if they weren’t buying, there was nobody else buying what I had to sell. And what I loved about this industry was that you could literally go down the street and you could walk up and down the street and potentially close deals and have business. So I love that idea. He literally started from scratch. He took out a home equity line of credit on his way out the door when he still had a salary, knowing that he was going to potentially need some extra cash to get him through.

Frank Pagano (07:26):

And he was right.

Frank Pagano (07:29):

We got into a position where it was probably 14 to 18 months in, where we thought we were going to go, I wouldn’t say bankrupt, but we were going to have problems. We were not taking pay. We both got to a point where we were living on fumes and it was pretty rough. We had good lifestyles. We didn’t change anything. He was living on some borrowed money and I basically had all my cash reserves that were either going into the business or being used for month to month. And at the end of the day, the pendulum just kind of shifted and it just happened, like literally couldn’t have happened any better. But yeah, he walked away from his entire organization and literally started from scratch. And when I say scratch, I mean borrowed scratch too.

James Huber (08:20):

Right. So how did you guys know where to go get a relationship to make yourself to be able to do this? And just for time references, this is like 2012, 2011? Well,

Frank Pagano (08:32):

This was 17.

James Huber (08:35):

2017. Okay.

Frank Pagano (08:36):

Yeah. We’re just approaching nine years. I didn’t know the first thing about it. I know he was with a former organization. He was a TSA shop and I think he probably had some connections at both places. And I think it was just really a conversation between, at the time, First Data and TSYS to find out which one had the better kind of, maybe it’s not incubator, but more retail style program. And it just so happened that First Data was the route that we picked and they’ve been a great partner over these last nine years.

James Huber (09:11):

Why did you guys decide to go straight to the processor as opposed to just going to one of the larger ISOs out there at the time, like Priority or somebody?

Frank Pagano (09:21):

Yeah, I mean, that’s a great question. And honestly, one of the things that we’ve always focused on was service and support. So we’ve always wanted to control the journey. So I know with FirstData at the time, we could have used their customer service department. It was literally free for us to use. I think they charged something in maybe a monthly fee that we paid, but we never wanted them to control the journey that our merchants would potentially go down. So we’ve gotten really, really good at that part of our business, and that’s been a focus since day one. Obviously, attrition in this industry is … It does you know good to board new merchants if you’re losing the same amount or more every … It still does you good, but it’s not a good position to be in. And so really to protect the house, we have sales that makes the money, and then we have our ops team, which is our customer support and service that kind of protect the money.

Frank Pagano (10:21):

And I think that’s probably the biggest reason why. I think even financially, it probably was worse of a deal to do that retail deal with First Data than it would’ve been to go to a priority or somebody like that.

James Huber (10:36):

It 100% was. And were you guys doing leasing at the time too? So you had some upfront capital on deals to pay out sales agents?

Frank Pagano (10:46):

Funny story about that. So no, the answer is no. We’ve never done it. Again, we’ve acted a lot of times in a manner that was merchant centric, knowing we’d rather make a little bit of money for a long time than a lot of money in a short amount of time. And so it’s always kind of been a long game plan for us. So during those kind of tumultuous times early on, me not knowing the industry very well, I’m talking to us and I’m like, “We have some tough choices that we’re going to have to make over these next couple months. This is maybe 18 months in or so. ” And I said, “Every time that we feel like we’re going to have some extra cash, we get more sales the next month than we had the month before and our cost of acquisition, just it eats it up.” Again, a good problem to have, but it was a problem.

Frank Pagano (11:36):

And he said, “Well, I’m going to have you look at something.” And he said, “I’ve always been against it, but I’m open to it if you like the idea. It’s called leasing.” He gives me three, and I’m instantly just drawn to it like, “This is amazing. So you’re saying we could get rid of all of our cost of acquisition and make money on top of it? ” And he said, “Before you get super carried away, here’s three websites, go look at these three companies and then let’s talk about it tomorrow.” So obviously I do my homework. I mean, one star, I think if there were zero stars, they would have zero or negative stars for the reviews. I instantly knew if we’re trying to do the long game, this is probably not going to work. And I asked the question. So I obviously said, “Obviously this can’t work for what we’re trying to build.” I said, “Do you think we’re ever going to be rewarded by being the good guy?

 

Frank Pagano (12:23):

Is the nice guy finished last kind of idea here? What are we really going after here?” And I think nine years later, over 3000 five star reviews over 15,000 merchants, I would say that we have been rewarded by being the good guy, but that was literally one of the forks in the road, I think from a company standpoint was, do we do leasing or not? And we just said that, “You know what? Some people can make it work. We just didn’t want to go down that path.” So we literally did it the hard way.

James Huber (12:57):

That was how I got started in the industry. I was doing collections on leases for little merchants that leased seven Verifone readers and I’m calling them up and saying, “Hey, you owe me 80,000 bucks.”

James Huber (13:14):

And the UCC section, UCC 2A is like the most draconian piece of law out there. They had no defense. There was no way out of it and it didn’t have emotions at the time and we just had a blast. I mean, it supported a huge portion. We actually started a collections company because we were getting all of these other people and we would have these two guys in their mid 20s, they’d come in and they had this whole shtick where one person would call up and he’d get all red face and be swearing at them and be like, “You motherfucker, you’re going to pay this bill. I’m going to come down there. You piece of shit to fucking come and get you. ” And then the other guy, you’d hear some ruffling and they’d hang up and he’d be like, “I’m sorry, Mr. Smith, but this person has gone rogue.

James Huber (14:05):

He’s been fired. Now, talk to me and let’s work this out. ” And they would do this over and over and I would just sit there laughing and they invented. I didn’t teach it. At first I was doing it and I called them up and I’d be like, “I am a lawyer. I’m going to sue you. You don’t want that. ” And then we would sue, but these guys just had a great one, two punch. But then I saw that they were winning a lot of tickets off of the radio and coming in and bragging. And I’m like, “When you guys did your shtick three times, you made enough money and you bailed.” So anyways, but yeah, the leasing, it’s a gnarly market. I think that it’s changed a little bit now. I’m sure you guys, I mean, you probably do some kind of financing when it’s a huge POS machine and it costs 5,000 bucks.

James Huber (14:53):

You’re not necessarily giving that equipment away to a merchant who may go out of business.

Frank Pagano (14:59):

Yeah. I mean, we’ve got some plans that we’ve kind of put together. They’re more like, I would say placement. So some of them we do where we have an agreement worked out where they stay with us for a certain amount of time and we just actually literally place it there and don’t charge for it. We’ve done subscription type of deals where it’s just basically an ongoing subscription cost. It breaks, we replace it, it goes on forever, it gets outdated or end of life, we just replace it. And it’s kind of like what with your phone, the same kind of concept that the phone carrier’s going to just give you a monthly fee and you just, you’re never going to have a phone for 10 years, you’re just going to constantly get the new one. So we found a few ways to kind of get around the merchant having to come out of pocket because it is a problem.

 

Frank Pagano(15:43):

I mean, most merchants, I mean, it seems like maybe a trivial amount of money, a few, two or 3,000 bucks, but a lot of times it’s tight and they don’t really have in the budget to spend that kind of money. So we try to break it up and we try to do it all in- house as much as we can. We’ve had a few of our sales partners do leasing on their own and it’s an agreement outside of us and it’s just not something that we support, but it’s something that we have had to deal with from time to time.

James Huber (16:14):

So when you guys started out, did you hire a bunch of W2 people or did you just use 1099 agents? I mean, I’m sure you had customer service, that’s usually in- house W2, but did you go the 1099 route or the W2 route?

Frank Pagano (16:28):

There was probably a mixture of both. I mean, so when we started, we hired a handful of guys to go out and kind of attack the Des Moines, the central Iowa market and they were pretty successful. We had a really good crew actually and Austin was our first sales guy, so he knocked doors and did his thing. But once we kind of got kind of a base below to stand on, I think a decent amount of merchants where we kind of figured out our processes, we started having 1099s, we started talking to folks and started bringing 1099 agents in. And we just didn’t have the infrastructure that we do today. So it was a lot harder. We were doing stuff with spreadsheets and we were doing stuff with just really archaic the way that we had our reporting, but it was just what we had.

Frank Pagano (17:20):

And so it was kind of a, I wouldn’t say it was a slow start, but we did have some people that kind of hit our doorstep that were trusted and people that we kind of started building with, but we did both.

James Huber (17:35):

Yeah. And it’s tough because I’ve seen people, they start up, they do what you guys did. They leave their old processor relationship, ISO relationship, they go out and start their own thing and they recruit a couple agents and they end up being bad. They’re doing bad leases that charge backs, they’re flipping deals and all of that. So right at the beginning, it’s a tricky time. And one thing that we did for years, we still do it, just not formally, is we were tracking the bad sales agents. This was in maybe 2015- ish where we were seeing a lot of people just jumping around, flipping deals, do a new lease, do a new lease here or there. And it was between a number of our clients. So we held a list of, “Hey, I’m hiring this person, you guys know him. If I haven’t heard of him, that’s probably good news.”

James Huber (18:33):

Or if I have heard of him and he’s a good player, but most of the time as attorneys in this space, we get to meet all the bad people more. So we keep a list that people can actually call us up because when you get those bad eggs, even an outside sales agent, it’s toxicity. One toxic employee, when our firm was really small growing, we’ve had those and they take three or four people with them because they poison the well. So yeah, it sounds like you guys got lucky with your first crew. I think being in the Midwest probably helps. I think when people are on the coast, that’s where all the shady people hang out.

 

Frank Pagano (19:13):

Yeah, man.

James Huber (19:14):

I don’t know where we are.

Frank Pagano (19:15):

What’s up with that? I

James Huber (19:17):

I don’t know.

Frank Pagano (19:18):

Know. Yeah. Obviously, anytime that you’re dealing with the volume of folks that we deal with, you come across some bad actors and we have. And some stuff that is kind of embarrassing, honestly, how are we getting these things through? Why didn’t we catch this before? Some of those types of questions where it’s made our processes a little bit more, I would say, robust. Some of the stuff that we do now, we didn’t do when we were brand new. So we didn’t know what we didn’t know at the time. And it’s unfortunate that this industry, I would say, especially the agent chasing game, I mean, it’s brutal, man. It’s like we talk about how let’s not have a race to the bottom with rates, but then we’ve got every ISO in the world

Frank Pagano (20:06):

That’s saying, “Yeah, let me give you a 90% split and upfront money and you can win this car, you can have this trip.” And it’s like, “What are you guys doing?” And so that’s where I think the people that run and that chase those types of things, and all of a sudden you’ve got a brand new guy that came over from X, Y, Z company in his first month, he’s got 30 mids. “Come on, man. You got a team? “”No, I’m just a solo guy.” It’s like, “Hey, just let’s not play that game.” It’s one thing to build a relationship, but that is the very first sign of you’ve got a bad actor when all of a sudden they’re just flooding you with mids. And we’ve gotten ourselves in trouble by allowing too much of that to happen and you’ve paid some upfronts and all this stuff.

Frank Pagano (20:48):

So it sucks that we’ve got that element in our ranks. And I think it’s probably existent about any commissionable type of industry, but you definitely see it.

James Huber (21:03):

It exists in every type of industry. We had a guy apply here that killed the interview. Turns out he wasn’t even a lawyer. We got called like three years later or maybe FBI. A year or two later. Yeah. They popped him because a bunch of people had hired him and they were wondering, and it was funny, because I think we may have even given some contract work and we saw it. We were like, “Oh, what? No, sorry.” But anyways, they’re everywhere. But yeah, I mean, your people matter. How many people does VizyPay have in your humongous mega office?

 

Frank Pagano (21:41):

In the office, I think we’ve got about 85. And

James Huber (21:44):

What are all their names?

Frank Pagano (21:45):

Just kidding. Well, hang on. And that’s mostly service, support, risk, underwriting, that type of stuff. We’ve got a handful in the field and then a couple remote. As we’ve had some experienced folks hit our desk, not everybody wants to move to Des Moines, Iowa, ironically enough. So weird. I know. It’s like, “Hey, man, 12 inches of snow, Thanksgiving weekend, what’s there not to love about that? ” It’s great. It’s flat too, right? So

James Huber (22:15):

You can’t even do anything in it.

James Huber (22:17):

It’s flat too, right?

Frank Pagano(22:19):

Yeah. You could go look at it on the prairie, it looks great. But no, so as we’ve had some more experienced folks hit our doorstep over the years, it’s made sense for us to hire some people from different markets and have them work remote. Obviously, the capability’s always been there, but we just like being in- house. We like everybody being together. Our number one why as a company is our company culture. So anybody that’s seen VizyPay in social media has noticed probably our kind of … We call it a work hard, play hard culture, and we do work hard. And everybody that works here or has worked for us at some point in time has had to sacrifice to do it. And I know it sounds crazy, but one of the questions we used to ask in interviews of these 85, and it’s probably we’ve hired probably double that over the course of the years, “What’s the lowest amount of money you would take to take this job?” Craziest question I ever heard, I heard Austin ask the question like, “Dude, what are you talking about?

Frank Pagano (23:21):

Nobody’s going to want to take less than what we advertised.” And you’d be surprised. We had multiple people, almost everybody that’s here has said, “Yeah, I’ll come in for less.” And then we said, “Okay, we’ll bring you in for a little bit less and we’ll get you to where you want to be and then some. ” And everybody that we’ve ever done that with has always … They’ve just kind of bought in. They’ve got some skin in the game. And so I think we have a super strong culture because of that. And we had some people that honestly, we had the range, let’s say it was like 50 to 60,000. We said, “What would it be? ” And they’re like, 80,000. You didn’t really read very well what the job description was for. But I do think that that’s a huge part of our success is our culture and we’ve really made every decision that we’ve made as a company has been all these people have bought into our dream, our vision, and it’s a collective dream and vision.

 

Frank Pagano (24:16):

And I think that we have such huge buy-in and such loyalty that we started with company culture first and we do a lot for the people that work here because they do a lot for us. I know it sounds cheesy, but it’s true.

James Huber (24:30):

No, and it works. I mean, it trickles through. If you have happy people, they do good work. We mirror that, we try to with our attorneys, we have people coming in and they’re going, “How come I’m not here, here, here?” And I’m going, “Look, man, you’ve got two kids and you come to the office and you work 8:00 to 5:00 or 9:00 to 6:00 or something, you get to go home. You can go somewhere else and they’re going to chain you to the desk and you’re not going to see your family and it’s just different for different people and what do people value?” We hired one guy, he said, “I want to be a famous attorney.” And we were like, “Great, I want you to be a famous attorney too.” And he didn’t care about money. I mean, he did, but he did that. He’s going, “I think I can become a famous attorney here.” He’s actually became an infamous attorney.

James Huber (25:24):

That’s a whole different story. But Jeremy, what did you want to say?

Jeremy Stock (25:29):

Well, I’ll say Frank, you can tell we’ve got a lot of stories

James Huber (25:32):

Definitely. I’m curious, I run into a lot of agents out there doing their thing, just hustling solo. Do you think that it’s still possible to do what you guys did in this environment or is it just the race to zero? Is it done? You can’t do, you missed the boat, You just go back to the bench and cry.

Frank Pagano (25:57):

It’s definitely doable. I mean, you talk to somebody about what it is that they do, like if someone said, “What would it take to get into this today?” It’s a ton. It’s a ton to be where we are. It’s a ton. And looking back nine years saying, “If we knew nine years ago what we know today, would we have tried it? ” And the answer’s probably not because it’s a shitload of work, it’s a shitload of sleepless nights, it’s just a lot of questions. I mean, every single time you turn around, it’s something different. And I’ve said it for years, no matter which way you turn, there’s somebody waiting there with a club to beat your ass, and that’s just what it is. And it’s not just this industry, it’s every industry I’ve ever worked in. And so I think business ownership is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Frank Pagano (26:45):

To be perfectly honest, before I came to VizyPay, if you want to look at as a benchmark or a ruler of measuring stick of success, I made more money before I came here. So if we’re going to use that as a litmus test, then I fail. But the reality is that’s not why we did this. I did this and I know Austin thinks the same thing. We did it to build something awesome and to do something cool. So yeah, to the people that are out there, I mean, there’s nothing wrong with being the solo agent. I think it’s almost like I’m jealous sometimes of seeing some of the residual checks that we pay out to people. I know they’ve had to put a lot of hard work into it, but they don’t have to manage 85 people. They don’t have to pay a lease at a crazy office and do all the stuff that we have to do.

Frank Pagano (27:36):

We chose that, but I think there’s something to be said about the simplicity of that role, of what you get in return. And so I’ve said it for years, I think that a high split agent, they couldn’t go out and replicate that scenario if they wanted to. If they tried to hire somebody in risk and hire somebody in underwriting and do all that, it’s a volume play at that point. You’re going to dip. There’s no way that you can maintain that type of revenue. So I don’t think it’s a bad thing. And I think it’s honestly, it’s a value. I really think that you’re getting true value when you get the lion share because there’s a lot of expense that comes with this side. But I do think that it’s possible. I think maybe it’s just me being optimistic, but I do think that it’s a challenge, but anybody that has the ability and the drive, I can make anything happen.

Frank Pagano (28:30):

I mean, a lot of things are possible. The industry that we’re in is tough, but if we had to go out and do it again today, we would be a lot smarter, but I still think it’s possible.

James Huber (28:43):

I do too. I don’t see a ton of it. And I think one of the reasons you don’t is there are larger shops like VizyPay who are going, “Look, we do it all for you and you’re still getting a great split. Why would you go create your own technology, your relationships or this, that, the other thing, I asked you in the beginning why you went straight to Fiserv and not to one of the larger ISOs, you’re going to get a better deal going to you guys direct than you will to Fiserv.” I’ve seen their retail agreements are horrible now. It’s super expensive and you’ve got minimum fees. If you have a dip, if you get sick or whatever, you’re basically indentured to them if you don’t cover it. So I think there is, I don’t want to say it’s like lazy, but it’s kind of what’s the point.

James Huber (29:32):

When people come to me saying, “Hey, who should I go to Fiserv or TSYS?” I’m going, “Don’t go to either of them, go to a big ISO. You’re going to get Visi, you’re going to get better service, better rates, and you get to do what you do best, which is just sell.” And you sign a good agreement that you’ve got a backend interest in your residuals and you don’t lose them, you contact a really good payments attorneys because I know VizyPay would never agree to anything like that on the Front end, just kidding. You end up in basically the same position without having to worry about getting sued, about the wall falling on somebody. We had one ISO client. Yeah, it was like the first week they opened up, same thing. They spun out their client and what do you call them? The dividers fell on somebody the first week and it was like, shit, this is going to make it harder.

James Huber (30:30):

No insurance or anything.

Frank Pagano (30:34):

Yeah. And that’s just running a business, I think. And I think when you run an organization that’s successful, a lot of other issues spin up. If you run an organization that’s not successful, different problems happen. But yeah, I love the idea of just the independent agent out there using the rails and getting the support and service as part of that.

James Huber (31:01):

Exactly. And you can even build around that too. You can hire some people and be your sales manager type of role. And who knows? We have a lot of people that’ll white label it. Okay, call it different pay or whatever. And you’re still in that same role because that’s what basically everybody’s doing. You’re all selling somebody else’s stuff, but obviously there’s different nuances. Well, I appreciate you coming down. You get the last word. What do you want our millions of listeners and viewers to walk away with thinking about VizyPay?

Frank Pagano (31:41):

Well, I guess maybe just dovetailing in on what we talked about. I see, and I don’t know if you’re part of the Facebook groups and things like that, but I see a lot of people talk about Schedule A’s and what’s a good split and what should I get for this or that? And it’s like, man, it’s so different. I think the journey that you’re on as an entrepreneur out there, if you’re an agent in this industry, your journey year one is going to be different than your journey year five and year 10. I mean, if you make it that long. And so I think having a place that will grow with you and you’re valuable in different phases of your career and there’s different value for that. And I think finding a shop that will kind of work with you and make sure that you’re valued appropriately because somebody that’s 10 years into this industry doesn’t probably need a whole bunch of upfront money and a whole bunch of free equipment.

Frank Pagano (32:40):

And they probably get the lion’s share of the money. But maybe if you need a training team and different things, different tools that maybe we have that we can kind of put your way, maybe it changes things a little bit. So we built the company on transparency and we’re very transparent when it comes to whether it’s our merchants or our employees internally or our sales partners. It’s got to be a two-way street. And a lot of times I feel like the stuff that’s out there in our industry sometimes can feel very one way and sometimes it could be in a good way to your advantage and sometimes not. But the thing that I’ve kind of looked at long term and seen over the years has been just the terms change. I think the folks that are not maybe in control of their own destiny, maybe they’re controlled by a board, they’re publicly traded.

Frank Pagano (33:36):

You see bulk rate increases and fee dumps and all kinds of crazy shit that happens. And so we’ve been bootstrapped this whole time. We make the calls, myself and Austin at the top, we make our decisions based on three whys. Culture is number one. If it doesn’t work with our culture, we’re probably not going to vote on it and say, “Yeah, that’s a good idea.” Transparency is number two. We got to be able to justify everything. We always say that front of the house, like whatever you put on social media or whatever your advertising is, is kind of front of house. A lot of times, a lot of companies, you pull the curtain back and it looks totally different behind the scenes. It’s not what it appears to be. And I feel like we’re pretty much, you can look back behind the curtain and we are who we say we are and we’re just true.

Frank Pagano (34:22):

We’re very transparent. And the third why that we have as a company is being the voice for small business. So that’s really at the core of what we do. And I think most of our sales partners feel the same way. That’s the nucleus of this whole thing and it’s what makes everything go. And so if we’re not doing things in the best interest of those three whys, then chances are we’re not going to sign on for it. So I think, I guess to all your millions of followers that are out there listening, I do think that those are important things. I think not every ISO is created equal. I think this is my personal and biased opinion. I think we’re a good one. And I think we’re a small, more boutique style. We have all the same things, everything that everybody else has, but as far as capabilities.

Frank Pagano (35:07):

But I think when kind of taking a look at those things, you got to find out what’s really important if you’re looking and shopping for a new home and find somebody that’s willing to work with you and kind of put your best foot forward and not do the old bait and switch and get you out there selling for them and then bulk increase everything and you lose all your merchants. But yeah, I mean, I really appreciate you having me on. I’ve seen your podcast before and appreciate and honored to be talking to you here.

Jeremy Stock  (35:43):

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