Latest / Leaders In Payments / Payments Infrastructure Defined with Ben Griefer, Maverick | Episode 531

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Payments Infrastructure Defined with Ben Griefer, Maverick | Episode 531 · Leaders In Payments

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the Leaders in Payments Podcast, where we talk to sea-level leaders from across the payments landscape.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_02: We'll be discussing the products and services that impact the payment space today, as well as trends and predictions for the future of payments.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_02: We will also hear stories from our guests about their journeys to the topic.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Leaders in Payments Podcast.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Greg Myers.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: And today's special guest is Ben Griefer, the president and chief operating officer of Maverick.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, Ben, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the show.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, Greg, thanks for having me.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: So before we get into the discussion about Maverick, can you give us a little bit of your personal background and the path that ultimately led you into payments?
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I got into the payments industry early 2012.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: My father had been in payments for around 11 years prior and had a previous company exited and then started Maverick, and that's when I joined.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: So been here since day one.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: We started as a sales office, agent office.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I kind of cut my teeth on that side of the business.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: And then after a few years, we decided to pivot and really focus more on like the back-end infrastructure and the operational aspect, which really inspired us to do what we do today.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: So it's been quite the journey, seen it, I think, from every angle of the business.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, the last 14, almost 15 years have been quite the journey for us.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what did you see missing in the traditional payments model that led you to build a full service payment provider?
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, when we started and again focused really on more of the sales aspect of things, we had inside sales people working for us.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, you find yourself, obviously, when you are doing sales, you want to be able to support every opportunity that comes across your desk.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: And with that, you find yourself with multiple processing relationships, right?
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: So we'd have one relationship to get to TSIS for whatever terminals or point of sales are certified there.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: The same thing with FiServe.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then if you have higher risk verticals that maybe they don't they don't support, now you have two, three, four other processing partners, and then you want to be able to resell a few gateways and an ACH platform.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: And then you find yourself having 10 relationships.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: And instead of managing the sales organization, right, being kind of a strategic thought leader with how do we grow and how do we optimize marketing spend and lead generation, you find yourself in the weeds of this merchant application needs to go there, and they don't have a portal or we don't have permission control to give the sales rep their own login.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then every month you get 10 different versions of residual reports, and you have to do wizard spreadsheeting to just consolidate things.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, you find yourself really just being in the middle of this, and it just is very counterproductive, right?
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: So that plus kind of just the lack of technology with a lot of the legacy providers, and there's not really great branding.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: So there's merchant confusion when you're talking to them from your company, but then they log into a portal from another, whatever.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, our kind of inspiration was there just there needs to be a better way to do this.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: And it just blew my mind that there wasn't.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: So we decided to really build what we wish we had.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: So you fast forward to today, we're still a privately owned company, which to us, I think really kind of ties into our culture here that we're entrepreneurs at heart.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: We understand really where our partners are coming from as their sales organization, you know, looking to scale.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: But we have five sponsor banks.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: We're an FSP, so we own the risk, we own the bins, we have an FSP relationship with TSIS and with FISERV.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: We have a proprietary gateway that's certified directly to the TSIS front end.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: We've also certified it to Visa Platform Connect, and we also do ACH processing in-house.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: So we kind of look to aggregate and consolidate those eight to 10 providers that these more sophisticated ISOs and now ISVs are really needing to say yes to all the opportunities that come across their desk.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: And it's delivered through our proprietary dashboard, which is fully white labeled, end-to-end system, merchant onboarding, reporting, chargeback management, residuals, support tickets.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, everything really an ISO needs to run their business.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: And we've been very sensitive and very intentional to kind of that unified experience.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: So we have one onboarding flow, one Schedule A, one merchant agreement, one reporting system, one everything, even though there's three back ends and five banks on the back end.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: And what we find is, you know, we'll bring on an ISO or an ISV, and that ISO can have a hundred subagents, and they give the subagents their own logins.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: We can white label downstream.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: And now the ISO is able to actually focus on growing the business and being that strategic thought leader because the operation kind of runs itself.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: So for us, it's been, I think, a really big differentiator that you know our ISOs and and ISVs can go to market under their brand.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: They have one partner that kind of enables everything they need, and they're not caught up in that like daily operational noise.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you've talked about some of this, but let's let's keep talking about Maverick and the company.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: Who exactly do you serve?
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Where do you where do you see that you fit in the big payments ecosystem?
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then you started to talk about what makes Maverick different.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: So if you want to continue on that, so kind of three parts.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Who do you serve?
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Where do you fit, and what makes you unique and different?
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: So we're 100% reseller focused.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: So we don't do any inside sales.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: 100% of our business comes from channel partners, which historically has been the ISO and agent kind of market.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then over the last year or two, everything you can do through our dashboard, we've built a full stack API.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: So now we're seeing ISVs who are either looking to monetize payments, maybe it's higher risk verticals, or they're not getting the support or schedule A from some of the bigger pay facts.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, our audience is 100% the sales organization kind of market.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you've had the advantage of seeing payments from multiple angles.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: You mentioned sales, partner distribution, technology, risk.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, what did you learn in those early years about where the industry was falling short for partners and merchants and how much of Maverick today was built specifically to help solve those shortcomings?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, it's definitely been an interesting lens, kind of starting on the sales side and then shifting to the FSP and underwriting our first probably 5,000 accounts that we onboarded, and then how do we build out the risk functions?
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then how does collections and loss prevention work?
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then the management between us and our sponsor banks and the reconciliation and the card brands and what the regulators require.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I think for us, because we come from the sales aspect, that inherently everything we've designed kind of on the infrastructure is built for the sales partner, right?
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: We're very empathetic and we're very intentional with what we build.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: So we know the pain points of frictionless onboarding and what merchants need to do from a reporting perspective, or being able to manage disputes in a digital way, or employee, you know, adding their employees and giving them permission control or having one kind of inclusive user experience, whether it's for onboarding or having a gateway or ACH part of it.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of the bigger processors and some of the legacy processors, they lack that hands-on experience from the sales kind of aspect.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, maybe they think, hey, this onboarding flow is going to be fine, but the reality is there's a lot of friction.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: The SLAs are too delayed, and that's just not what the market will take.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what creates merchants going to Payfax or shopping around or just creating this really poor user experience.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: So the end goal for us is user experience, right?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: And if we know kind of our two customers are the sales organizations and the merchants, we have really good knowledge into what the sales partners need, what they expect, and what's going to make them successful.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then also kind of that secondary knowledge into merchants and what they need from chargeback management, fraud prevention, who's going to be the third-party gateway, or can they use ours?
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: Are they leveraging other tools that are adjacent, like ACH?
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: So that's really been our focus is delivering that user experience that really helps, I think, drive the scale.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: And while it is simple, it's also very sophisticated on the back end, kind of covering all of those use cases.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, as you've mentioned, Maverick works with ISOs, ISVs, other types of partners, including companies that operate in some complex and emerging verticals.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: So where do you see the biggest opportunity for Maverick over the next several years?
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so it's been interesting.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like I said, the last year or two, we've built a full API.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: So what we're starting to notice is more ISVs or kind of, you know, we call them the layers.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: So either third-party enablement platforms, CRMs, some of these orchestration systems now, where it all kind of goes back to us being this infrastructure platform kind of behind the scenes.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: But I think what we're going to see is this continued push with ISVs that maybe historically were payment agnostic.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now they're wanting to monetize payments.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: They can have a significant impact to PL by bringing payments in-house.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: There's also a huge stickiness driver to their core SaaS product.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then we're also seeing an uptick with the vibe coding that's going on out there is whether we have agents or ISOs that maybe didn't have development resources or kind of the knowledge to manage a team because they wanted to build their own CRM or some kind of a software product, they can start building it without having that experience.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: And we've seen an uptick there.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I do think like a lot of the future is going to be kind of driven by more of these front-end software platforms.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: And then things like vibe coding are just going to accelerate the adoption and kind of the go-to-market timelines.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: And for us, you know, we're just kind of continuing to position ourselves really as being that underlying infrastructure kind of enabler, right?
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: You can't vibe code compliance and infrastructure and sponsor bank relationships and things like that.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: And that's really where our focus is and making sure that whether you're a sales organization who wants to white label or you're more of a vertical SaaS that's looking to fully embed, go focus on the sales and onboarding aspect of the business and don't get caught up in all the nuance of all the operational stuff.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where we kind of come in and have a really good kind of divide and conquer relationship.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, obviously you're operating in part of the payments ecosystem where scale really matters.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: But as you mentioned, so do service and the relationships.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: So as Maverick grows, how do you preserve the culture and the partner experience that helped you get here in the first place?
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I think for starters, we've completely self-funded this organization.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I think when you have the privately owned kind of mentality, you know, I always say we're we're entrepreneurs at heart.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: So we understand the ISO pain points and the sales pain points when there's delays or friction or things aren't meeting SLA.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: So that I think is just inherently very big in kind of the DNA of the company, where we're here every day.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: We have very tight relationships, and the partnership aspect is significant in this business.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it just starts with the fact that we are this privately owned company.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: We're very nimble, you know, there's no red tape, there's no bureaucracy, and that really enables us to go to market and be able to move quick, reduce friction, make decisions.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I think the fact that we're able to provide kind of that privately owned experience, it gives them a boutique feel, but it doesn't necessarily mean we're a small company.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: At the end of the day, we have over 230 employees, around 60,000 merchants, process over 2.5 billion a month.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: And with our sponsor bank network and kind of our ecosystem, we can really compete at scale while still providing that hands-on experience.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, let's talk about the industry, kind of step back, take a broader view, and specifically embedded payments.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: So, what trend in payments do you believe is being underestimated right now?
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: Underestimated, that's a good question.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think that you know there's this big shift with ISVs and vertical SaaS.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like I said, I think you look five or 10 years ago, the software platforms were hesitant on forcing any kind of a payments product, and now you're kind of seeing the opposite where it's closed loop, you have to use them, that sort of thing.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I think because the ISV market is starting to create more competition to like the historical kind of ISO market that, you know, a lot of people talk that the ISOs aren't going to be able to compete with the ISVs, but we actually think that there's a very collaborative synergy for them to work together.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we find a lot of ISVs, they obviously don't know payments.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: They don't know all the nuances with pricing and interchange and how to sell and cross-sell.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: And we've seen a number of of our large ISO partners work with these up-and-coming ISVs, not only to help kind of build out a monetization strategy, but also take that software platform and go downstream to the ISO subagents where now you're having cross-sell.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that there's a lot of hype with ISVs and I understand and it makes a lot of sense for more of that embedded ecosystem to kind of adapt at the rate it's going.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: But I also do think that there's going to be a continued opportunity for the ISO market to work really hand in hand.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: And again, I think as long as the ISVs know how to integrate kind of that ISO channel, whether it's for distribution or cross-sell kind of opportunity or strategizing, that will be a pretty significant shift we'll see in the next few years.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: Just as everyone is trying to kind of get to the same merchant.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's just how do you do it and what's the most kind of methodical way to execute?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there's never a podcast, at least mine, that we don't mention AI.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: So let's dive into that.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: So where do you believe AI will have fundamental change in payments?
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: And where do you think the human expertise will remain irreplaceable?
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know what's funny is AI, I feel like especially the last year, year and a half, it's gotten just an insane amount of kind of publicity and just it's what everyone talks about.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: So we have seen a number of other payment companies that they'll start laying off departments or looking at teams as cost centers, and they kind of replace it with AI.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: And my kind of personal opinion and kind of what we are doing here is we're very big on relationship and kind of the partnership with both merchants and our partners.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: So when we look at AI, we're looking at it more from a hybrid perspective, is as we scale and we continue to grow, head count, merchant count, more partners, we want to maintain obviously our responsive SLAs and all of the stuff that kind of goes with that boutique feel.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: And AI is a great tool where you can integrate it, right?
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: Not replace people.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: But hey, you know, if we start automating or integrating either agents or AI tools into our support ticketing system or our phone system or our risk management system or onboarding system, now what we're able to do is increase output and productivity while we obviously maintain staff.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: So to me, I see it kind of as a superpower, right?
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: If we can integrate it to our workflow and our teams, you're able just to increase productivity and output, which helps with the scalability.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: So for us, I think AI is huge.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's definitely a game changer, but we've been very kind of strategic with our growth.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, again, I'm a big believer that things like customer service and tech support are not cost centers, those are differentiators.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: The fact that merchants can call us and get someone on the phone if they need help with reconciliation or a chargeback is huge.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that's also just kind of an expectation.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: So when you see the others out there that you have to go through an AI bot or things like that, it's it's frustrating for the merchant.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: So again, we're trying to find that that middle ground where it's more of that hybrid kind of integrated approach.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's go back and talk a little bit about embedded payments again.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: So where do you see that evolving over the next say five years?
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that if you look at it five, 10 years past, you know, again, it's been predominantly kind of agnostic systems out there that will have a number of either processors or gateways integrated.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: And that's, I think, kind of gone like full swing to now they want not only to monetize on payments, but will either force you because they no longer support those third parties, or if they do, you know, they're gonna have some kind of a punitive fee.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's just gonna be the continued trend.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think software companies, as SaaS fees kind of dwindle down, whether because there's more competition due to vibe coding and things like that, they're gonna be forced to find other lines of revenue.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: And again, the the payments impact to a PL is material and it's significant and it drives stickiness.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I think as software companies have to get more competitive, as there's kind of an uptick with platforms coming to market, they're gonna also have to get more kind of intentional with embedded payments.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: But I think regardless, you're just gonna continue to see this trend where every vertical SaaS platform out there will have a payment strategy to monetize and have it really embedded, not only to drive that PL impact, but also add more value to the user experience.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: If you're a SaaS platform that's managing some kind of a CRM or property management, for example, it really enhances the user experience when payments is fully integrative, it's native, it also helps kind of automate other things, whether it's reconciliation or if you do have disputes, you're able to automatically provide representments and rebuttals because you have the data connection there.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's for sure gonna be a continued trend that we're gonna continue to see.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: And what capabilities will these software companies that we're talking about, what will they increasingly need from their payments partners?
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, obviously, doing the payments is just part of the story, right?
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: So what are the other needs and the the things that you feel like they're gonna need over time?
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, what we're seeing is really just this expectation to have an API that can support essentially every aspect of the business from merchant onboarding to processing payments to disputes and fraud management, support tickets.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: So they've ultimately built whatever interface dashboard they have, and they want to control as much UI UX as possible.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: And the only way for that to happen is obviously to have an API that really supports 100% of the merchant experience.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: So that's been a big focus of ours, is just making sure everything you can do kind of in our dashboard that's been predominantly white labeled by more of our ISO channel can also be done via API connection so that we could essentially turn off our dashboard and these ISVs could control the entire user experience to that merch gen.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's wrap up the show with a couple of questions about the future.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, how have partner expectations changed over the last, say, 10 years since you since you got involved?
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: And what do you think will define a great partner relationship in the future?
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I think what's changed in the last 10 years is that when we first started kind of on the sales side, you know, a lot of the processors out there were accepting manually signed PDF merchant agreements and the whole onboarding experience was really clunky.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: You can't really white label a merchant-facing tool.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: So at the same time, you would see the companies like Stripe and Braintree and all of the more sophisticated pay facts come in.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: I think they just completely disrupted a lot of these legacy norms that I guess have been okay for the last 10, 20 years.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's really shifted what the expectations are, right?
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: So nowadays, you know, you expect the process to be all digital, all frictionless, have in the cases it's a lower risk merchant, kind of that five second, 10 second onboarding process or some kind of an auto approval, a white-labeled user experience, and then a more inclusive kind of platform.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: So merchants aren't going to manage a third-party gateway and then a third party for fraud prevention and then chargeback management.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: So we're seeing more of that kind of inclusive user experience where the merchants can manage everything within one dashboard, kind of one online system, and also reduces that operational noise at the merchant level.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: So it's, I think, kind of just been the overall technology experience from start, whether it's the merchant onboarding to they've been onboarded and how are they managing their business, the merchant account, and everything like that.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, when you look out, say three to five years in the future, what does success look like for Maverick?
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think for us, our focus and kind of our roadmap for the next few years is just to continue to really be that infrastructure enabler, right?
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: So for our channel partners, the ISOs and ISVs, how do we continue to provide them what they need to be successful in the market?
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: And how do we provide merchants what they need to run our business?
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, as we look at more adjacent solutions, right?
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: So having an embedded lending product available in our dashboard with our connection to Visa Platform Connect that easily enables tools like network tokens and agentic commerce and you know, one-step checkout.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I think just as the technology kind of standards are increased and merchants need more to accept payments and reduce fraud and then have access to other financial products, how do we do that and enable that through kind of our distribution partners and really keep them kind of future-proofed?
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: So they're not just selling payments and that's it.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: And then merchants are required to go elsewhere for other products.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: So, Ben, as we wrap up the show today, what is the one thing that payment leaders that might be listening to the show should be preparing for today that they may not be thinking about enough?
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: I think that when you look at the shift of embedded payments, that you know, a lot of the feedback we hear from the ISV market, especially, are just lack of technology in the market, whether it's API, white label options, that frictionless onboarding.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that the payment processors, the kind of the FSPs, have to just put a lot of emphasis around supporting this uptick that we're seeing and we're gonna continue to see, especially with vibe coding, and that the market's shifting where the ISVs and these vertical SAS and now even the ISOs, they're gonna build and continue to build their kind of layer that sits on top of whatever processors they work with.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: And the only way that you have a really good user experience is having that full API that supports everything from start to finish.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that's just a common theme we see is a lot of ISVs come to us and they, you know, express frustration that that partner or that processor had this limitation or they couldn't support that.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's just gonna be the expectation going forward.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: And again, it's gonna be accelerated by the fact that you don't have to be a developer and you can build something through a platform like Cloud, and you kind of just throw in copy and paste an API link or some type of documentation for it to go out and kind of do the integration for you.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: So you want to avoid those gaps.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: Everything that could be done through your interface and portal should be able to do systematically through an API connection.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Ben, I think that's a great way to wrap up the show.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much for being on the show today.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: I know your time is very valuable, so I really appreciate you being here.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Greg.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: And to all you listeners out there, I thank you for your time as well.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: And until the next story.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for joining us this week on the Leaders in Payments Podcast.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_02: Make sure you visit our website at leadersinpayments.com, where you can subscribe to the show and where you'll find our show notes.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_02: If you enjoyed listening, please share on your social channels as well.