PEP Episode 046 — Navigating Merchant Match Violations: When Banks Don’t Play By Their Own Rules

Introduction

The payment processing industry harbors a troubling secret: merchants are being placed on MasterCard’s Match List for simply possessing inventory of newly prohibited products—even when they’ve never processed a payment for these items. This enforcement approach contradicts the very purpose of Match, which was designed to punish actual payment processing violations, not potential ones.

During this eye-opening conversation with Chris Dryden, Bryce Van De Moere, and Jeremy Stock, our payments experts reveal how merchants who immediately comply with bank requests to remove prohibited products are still being matched weeks later without justification. When banks are challenged to produce evidence of processed payments for these prohibited items, they consistently fail to do so yet show little interest in correcting their mistakes.

Most disturbing is how Match List fines have evolved into profit centers within the payment ecosystem. Starting at figures like $200,000, these fines get negotiated down through the chain—from card brand to processor to ISO—while merchants still pay near the original amount. Everyone in the chain profits from the spread except the wrongfully penalized merchant.

The latest targets in this flawed enforcement system are peptide research facilities. Despite being transparent about selling for research purposes (not human consumption), these businesses face “blanket” Match listing without proper investigation or due process.

For merchants facing these challenges, our attorneys recommend documenting all compliance efforts and demanding evidence of actual violations when threatened with Match listing. While this won’t always prevent wrongful listing, it creates a crucial paper trail if legal action becomes necessary—which is increasingly the only way to get these organizations’ attention.

Have you been wrongfully placed on the Match List? Don’t face this battle alone. Contact our specialized payment attorneys who understand the system and know how to challenge these arbitrary enforcement actions.

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

Transcript

Christopher Dryden (00:00):

Merchant pays. But ultimately, if the fine started out at 200,000 and it got reduced 10,

Speaker 2 (00:06):

Say the merchant paid a hundred K, yeah. Or

Christopher Dryden (00:08):

10, it got reduced to 10 a hundred K. Then the ISO negotiates 60, processor negotiates 30 up to 10. Right?

Jeremy Stock (00:16):

Everyone’s making their own

Christopher Dryden (00:17):

Money. Everybody’s making a spread except the merchant off a rules violation. And that is a bad thing to begin with. But if you couple that with a faulty investigatory process and an arbitrary decision making process, yeah man, it’s just problematic.

Jeremy Stock (00:36):

Welcome to the Payments Experts podcast, a podcast of global legal law firm. We hope you enjoy this episode. We’re excited today. We have in studio joining us, our regulars to the podcast. We got founding and managing partners. So excited. Christopher Dryden, as well as Bryce Vander Moore, senior associate attorney gentlemen, one of our favorite topics, match list. We’ve got a unique situation that we’re going to be discussing today. Let’s jump right in.

Christopher Dryden (01:09):

Well, actually, what I want to say first is that when this thing comes out, I want Ambrosia is how I feel. Could be like the lead in,

Jeremy Stock (01:21):

I’ll look Chris, if it’s not copyrighted, but copyright gets in the way of Dick sometimes. Love this, so don’t worry about

Christopher Dryden (01:27):

It. Yeah, we’re doing good. De. Yeah, totally. Alright, so we’re back

Bryce Van De Moere (01:33):

To talk about our favorite topic, which is match because Match list. Yeah. Match list. Because we learn new things every day, and so I want to report them or get this information out there so that you guys know how to deal with it and why you probably need legal representation to navigate it. Not

Christopher Dryden (01:54):

Probably.

Bryce Van De Moere (01:55):

They almost

Christopher Dryden (01:56):

Make it mandatory

Bryce Van De Moere (01:57):

Sometimes. Yeah, they do. But there are some things that have come up lately that I think that merchants can actually try before they come to us.

Christopher Dryden (02:04):

I’ll tell you what, I had somebody hit me up the other day, somebody in the industry and they were like, no, I’d rather just you do it. You know who to go talk to. You’re going to get there a lot faster and we’ll at least get a response.

Jeremy Stock (02:17):

I’ve talked to so many clients, you guys who have literally come to us after 15 hours in two weeks trying to get somewhere on the phone being bounced around from this customer service agent to some manager whatnot, and they eventually give up and that’s usually at the point they’re calling us.

Bryce Van De Moere (02:35):

Yeah, but here’s going on. So a little background for those who haven’t watched every one of the other podcasts, the match list member Assist to Control high risk is a list that is for merchants that are suspected of violating one of the 14 card brand slash MasterCard rules. And if you end up on that list, you’re not going to be notified. Your ability to process payments with credit cards is going to be revoked for five years, and more than likely you’re going to go belly up because nobody really accepts cash or checks anymore. But the one realization that I keep coming to, because I do this match work quite a lot, is that ultimately I don’t think that the banks actually really understand match. And I also don’t think that MasterCard even understands how to wield its power because there is, there’s just a disconnect. When I talk to them, they really, what I’m learning is that they don’t know what they’re doing, but more importantly, they don’t care.

Christopher Dryden (03:40):

No, it’s what you said the other day though, it’s like what is risk? It’s the bank’s risk of loss, right? And if anybody’s familiar with a bank, the bank’s acceptable risk of loss is nothing at any time for any reason. And so I’m not sure if that equates to, I don’t care. I agree. I think it’s kind of two things. I think one, they don’t necessarily understand the small merchant

Christopher Dryden (04:05):

At all. I don’t think that they understand the impact that they have. I also don’t think that they understand necessarily that people aren’t just looking to circumvent their rules. The one thing that, I don’t know if Bryce has mentioned this on a previous podcast, but when you get matched, it’s every data point associated with the business, which includes the owners, the owner’s, social security number, address all owners that are listed, and if they scrub you, whatever OFAC or whatever other scrub system that they’re using, when they underwrite you potentially in two to three years for a totally unrelated business with totally different people, the minute you disclose that you’re a part of that business, that business can’t get payment processing. So just the data points are so extensive as to what gets barred.

Bryce Van De Moere (05:01):

But the angle that I guess I’ve kind come up with and then I’m hitting these guys with and they’re just, they have no response is that match is to punish payment processing violations, A transaction that involves a credit card for a prohibited product. And so in order to be on match, you have to have a process payment and time. And again, these merchants are just getting matched and they have no record of a process payment to support it, for instance. So one thing that’s been going on with a lot of merchants lately that are coming to me is that a bank will call them up and say, Hey, you need to remove this product from your website. You can’t sell this product anymore because of whatever reason the FDA declared it prohibited or something like that. And they’ll say, and I have it in writing, they’ll be like, okay, we’ll make the change today.

Bryce Van De Moere (05:54):

We will pull the product from market today, we’ll comply with you completely. And the bank says Fine. Then a couple weeks later, they just match ’em anyway. And so they come to me or the merchant comes to me and I go to the bank and I say, okay, show me where they processed the payment for the prohibited item after you told them to make the change. And they can’t do it, but worse, they don’t care to correct their mistake at all. They would rather wait for me to actually take an affirmative action or the merchant take affirmative action and sue them. And then they have to get an attorney involved who hopefully will have some sense in his head and will listen to reason I spent hours. Okay. Another instance. So I have a client who had a weight loss product on the market and the FDA came out and said, Hey, don’t buy this weight loss product on eBay or related sites.

Bryce Van De Moere (06:49):

Did not mention the merchants site. Don’t buy this product on eBay because people are taking this weight loss supplement and they’re adding this chemical to it, which caused a high heart rate, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so don’t do it. And so my client was like, okay, well we better just pull this product from the market anyway because we can read the writing on the wall. Somebody’s going to mess with this product and we’re going to get blamed for it because our name’s on it. And that is exactly what happened. But Bryce actually went and searched of that product online. Well, yeah. I mean, look at me man. I got to use whatever angle I can find. But my problem is with these banks is like, what does the FDA have to do with credit cards? What does the FDA have to do with payment processing? It’s not illegal to have a inventory. It’s not a violation of car brand rules to have an inventory that somebody deems now prohibited if you continue to sell it after they say, don’t buy this, don’t market this product, well then you’re in trouble. But I mean, it’s talking to a wall with these people. It’s like, show me where they processed the payment for this item after you told them not to do it. And I’m just deaf ears, they, they’re just Slack jog at me.

Christopher Dryden (08:07):

That’s what prompted this particular podcast, which is not going to be a very long one, but I was watching some communication. I end up on a lot of the communication that Bryce has with the outside vendors and sometimes there’s just nuggets in these communications that I don’t even know, and I do this every single day, but the one that really stood out to me, and I think the one that kind of inflames Bryce, I just kind of take it as normal and I can’t really do anything about it except hopefully you’ll get somebody to listen to you somewhere. It’s the idea that of what he just said. I go out and in good faith, I try to do business and eventually I do some business. But somebody comes along that has the authority to say, you know what? This isn’t safe, or You can’t do this.

Christopher Dryden (08:55):

Don’t no longer do this. And now I go and I comply and I am being the good merchant that I am and making sure that I’m following all applicable laws. And because the apparatus is so big and so not, I would say because Bryce, he picked up on this. You got to sell something using a credit card in order to be in violation of the card brand rules. If there’s no activity, then you can’t be punished for pressed practices, especially when it was brought to your attention. You addressed it. You addressed it to satisfaction. To me it was that, I mean, this is like a minute distinction. Never in our entire match process had I thought about it from this perspective of, but you got to actually sell the product because

Bryce Van De Moere (09:55):

With a credit

Christopher Dryden (09:55):

Card, with a credit card and the fact that we do all this match work, it’s like crazier than fiction a lot of times. Just things that happen in our job, you couldn’t write it. It’s like it’s unbelievable of something that just happened naturally, but we get so much match work in and there’s so many variations of why people get matched and the factual circumstances surrounding it that this was one of those ones that’s come along recently with things that are being sold in the marketplace. I mean, the one that Bryce was working on was peptides. I’m not even sure I know what a peptide is, but I do understand that there are alternative type things being sold out, especially e-commerce and social media. And I see that out there. But the fact is is that you really do have to do something in particular to cross the line, to even be in a space where they can place you on match for that reason. And it wasn’t even there.

Bryce Van De Moere (10:53):

Well, and this is also how I know that MasterCard is, I don’t want to say complicit because I view it more as just willful ignorance, but on that FDA case, MasterCard still ding them for $50,000. It matches is their rules. And they don’t r the distinction that the FDA has nothing to do with MasterCard. They don’t know that my merchant didn’t sell the product, didn’t use their credit card. They still took the $50,000. And what do you think the chances are that I can get MasterCard to give it back?

Christopher Dryden (11:29):

How long ago was it because we could sue for the $50,000? They wouldn’t want to wrangle with that at all. I’ll just tell you that I do believe that MasterCard and the FDA do have something to do with one another. The FDA is telling you what’s prohibited and what’s not. MasterCard then has to police what’s prohibited and what’s not. I don’t think this is the FDA’s failure. This is MasterCard’s failure.

Bryce Van De Moere (11:52):

Oh, totally.

Christopher Dryden (11:53):

And MasterCard, this is again, we go through the conflicts of interest of the card brands. This is one of those things where at the rate that we see it, it’s hard not to think that this isn’t another profit center for them where they just make these arbitrary decisions, bang people for amounts of money that don’t even come close to the violation. Again, it’s like going to jail for a year for doing 75 on the freeway and it has a real impact and people are automatically deemed to be guilty and they don’t have to provide any proof. And that’s the thing that really, I mean, Bryce had one instance that he described where we showed like, Hey, they complied and then later they got matched and they never sold a product. It was the people with the inventory, the acquiring bank came back to us and said, yeah, you guys really know a lot about this.

Christopher Dryden (12:51):

It would probably be good to get your take on some of this. Which I was like, for us being a smaller firm, even though we do payments, most large entities look at us and they don’t think twice as to what our competencies are. But here is a large acquiring bank saying, yeah, it would probably be good to get your guys’ feedback on this. And I’ve had other people recently hit us up about surcharge that are pretty not in our normal footprint of client. And obviously it’s because we’re kind of dissecting something that I don’t think anybody’s really dissected ever. I mean, I challenge you to find people outside of a processor, the card brands or an ISO that’s sophisticated. I won’t even give it to the banks to know more about Match than Bryce knows. I challenge you because I can name on my hand maybe like five attorneys that I think know it to this degree, but even they might not even know it to this degree because they don’t focus on it.

Jeremy Stock (13:51):

Chris, we happen to know, is it Chase? Was it Chase, Bryce? They literally brought on an attorney just to handle Bryce. No, that was MasterCard. MasterCard.

Christopher Dryden (14:03):

Oh no. Because we made so many queries to MasterCard. And look, we always try, but at the same time, there are certain instances where there’s going to be pushback to the degree that you’re not going to get compliance if you don’t have a reason for excessive chargebacks. And a lot of times the excessive chargebacks get exponentially increased because of the way that it gets handled. And look, it’s one of those things where it’s how do you find a balancing point? Because on the bank side, if you’ve got excessive chargebacks happening, you don’t want to leave capabilities open for that merchant account whatsoever. But when they shut off the merchant account capabilities, a lot of times they shut off the agent or ISOs capabilities to manage it, and they cut off the ability to do returns, which makes the return rate go skyrockets even when there’s money available to satisfy people. I mean, it’s crazy. They just let ’em all become chargebacks. They don’t care. I

Bryce Van De Moere (15:02):

Don’t know. Well, then they can get their 25 bucks per

Christopher Dryden (15:05):

Charge. That’s another thing is that becomes like a profit motive. It’s crazy. I’m working on a case today where the processor, dunno if it’s a legitimate processor or they use TSIs, and I’m not going to say their name yet, but ultimately there was a furniture store in the Oakland area that went out of business and they’re trying to hold their agent responsible for the chargebacks. Nowhere in the agreement does it say this. And what it does say is that there’s a, and this is standard contract term for an agent. There’s a claw back. And that claw back is if you got paid residual compensation on transactions that subsequently get reversed, you got to give that compensation back. That’s called equity. That’s a normal thing right there. They want to claw back every dollar he’s ever earned off the merchant for the entire time that the merchant has.

Christopher Dryden (15:56):

Oh, yeah. And nowhere in the agreement does it say this. They conflate it. And I think kind of what I’m trying to say is that there are a boatload of bad actors in our industry and the architecture of the industry has allowed profit centers in places that promote bad behavior, bad behavior to, it’s like, look, we’re supposed to be pushing down chargebacks, but I make an extra 15 bucks every time there is a chargeback. So if there’s 5,500 of them do the math right? I mean, it has these, again, far reaching impacts and unintended consequences sometimes. And I believe that it’s just so profit driven that people look at it as, and what you said about the fines, they just don’t make sense to me. But it’s

Bryce Van De Moere (16:52):

Not like then they’ll never explain ’em either.

Christopher Dryden (16:54):

I say, it’s not like anybody like 20 card, two 50,000.

Bryce Van De Moere (16:57):

Well,

Christopher Dryden (16:57):

Here’s a don’t know. Well, here’s a crazy thing that happens, right?

Bryce Van De Moere (17:00):

Yeah.

Christopher Dryden (17:00):

I saw a bunch of fines a couple of years ago and uniformly, they all seemed like they started at $200,000. Now the fines were issued by MasterCard and they actually cited the MasterCard rule that was violated. A lot of it was like e-commerce sales where people were getting qualified for one thing, but then selling something on their website that they weren’t qualified for. Now that’s on the advertiser merchant. That’s their bad behavior. So they’ve got web crawlers out there that are doing some sort of oversight to make sure that people aren’t bending the rules or breaking them. And so I saw these fines and what I didn’t know was that those fines are negotiable. So I think what ends up happening is that you go to the merchant with the fine and you see how much you can get, and then the ISO gets that commitment to the merchant, and then the ISO gives it back to the processor and it negotiates a lower amount than that, and then the processor goes to the card brands and it negotiates a lower amount than that. I’ve seen these fines negotiated down to $5,000. So if the people, but no money

Bryce Van De Moere (18:00):

Ever goes back to the merchant, right? On

Christopher Dryden (18:02):

The No, the merchant pays. The merchant pays. But ultimately if the fine started out at 200,000 and it got reduced 10, say

Speaker 2 (18:10):

The merchant paid a hundred K

Christopher Dryden (18:12):

Or 10, it got reduced to 10 a hundred K, then the ISO negotiates 60 processor negotiates 30 up to 10.

Jeremy Stock (18:20):

Everyone’s making their rules.

Christopher Dryden (18:21):

Everybody’s making a spread except the merchant off of rules violation. And that is a bad thing to begin with. But if you couple that with a faulty investigatory process and an arbitrary decision making process, yeah, man, it’s just problematic.

Jeremy Stock (18:41):

A question, gentlemen. So this issue where it’s in inventory but not a single sale was made of some FDA prohibited recently prohibited material.

Christopher Dryden (18:51):

My dad owns an AK 47. It sits in his garage. He can’t buy one in California anymore, but he owns it. He possesses it, it’s there. I won’t give you his address. It’s got cze assault white rifles. My dad is a former military naval aviator, and he is got weaponry and it’s stuff that he can’t even get in the state that he chooses to live in, but he’s allowed to possess it.

Jeremy Stock (19:16):

And so the question is, in scenarios like this, what is going to be the answer? You guys? This is going to have to go to litigation and courts are going to start having to make these decisions, which is going to take years.

Bryce Van De Moere (19:27):

Well look, well, actually, I don’t think it will because I want to assure everybody listening that I do everything I can to keep us out of litigation. I try to be as clear and informative to these people as I can, but sometimes you just have to file a lawsuit. They’re just going to be like, okay, well maybe he’s right, but let’s see if he actually does anything about it. So we have to file a complaint. My goal is just that they will assign an attorney, an outside counsel who hopefully has a brain in their head that I can actually sit and reason with because nobody over at MasterCard over at the bank is ever receptive to anything I have to say. And then we get into discovery and we ask, okay, show the proof of payment. My thought is when they cannot do that, that the case is going to settle.

Bryce Van De Moere (20:15):

But you have to, I’m finding more and more that you write a letter and then you have to take the affirmative action. It’s the only way they’re going to take you seriously. But back to your deal with MasterCard. Yeah, MasterCard has signed an attorney to basically handle me, because I was writing MasterCard every day asking, what’s the deal here? And time? And again, they’d be like, we don’t know. We don’t know. We’re just a custodian of the list. I would identify merchants to them and they’d go, I don’t know who you’re talking about. Well, you placed them on match. But I digress. I was writing MasterCard because I was new to the game and I didn’t really realize, or I believed the banks when they would say, go ask MasterCard. Go ask MasterCard. I learned now after we started that match business owner@mastercard.com where they will verify whether or not you’re match placed and take note of that listeners.

Bryce Van De Moere (21:06):

And so MasterCard will identify who the bank is, but then they’ll have a disclaimer that says, we can’t do anything. You have to go to the bank and they have to make the change. So I’m now going to the banks and what’s the, remember we finding Forrester where he is like, you are the mad now dog. I’m like, bank, you’re the man. I don’t give a shit if you don’t know who they are. I don’t give a shit. If you don’t think that you have no evidence that you placed them. As far as MasterCard is concerned, the buck stops with you. And if you really don’t know who this merchant is, then I think you should probably write MasterCard and say like, Hey, you have us listed

Christopher Dryden (21:43):

Here.

Bryce Van De Moere (21:44):

We made a mistake.

Christopher Dryden (21:45):

Yeah, you made a mistake.

Bryce Van De Moere (21:45):

And do you think they ever do that? No. No. So we have to sue. I mean,

Christopher Dryden (21:50):

Yeah, it’s crazy that they would rather refer it to outside counsel, especially when we’re presenting it in a way, I mean, this is the thing that frustrates me most. I mean, I had an exchange today and it’s like, look, I’m not going to just posture. I don’t have time to waste in life. I’m not going to just posture for the sake of posturing. My job is to give my client the best legal advice. If the best legal advice is you have an infinitesimal amount of a chance to win here or to prevail, and this is what it’s going to cost you fold and just keep going, then that’s the best advice that I can give because I’m busy enough. I don’t have a problem. I don’t need to sit there and advocate for poor positions because I need the bill. I don’t care. I am more interested in just getting to it.

Christopher Dryden (22:39):

And I have a short tolerance level for going back and forth with, I told opposing cancer today. I’m like, look, I can agree to disagree, and I’d prefer to do that rather than playing Encyclopedia Brown. That was brilliant. I mean, it’s like amateur sleuth hour here. I don’t care to sit and go back and forth on stupid arguments if I’m putting it in a cogent way. It’s the same thing we had with Chase. Dude, do me a favor. Just tell me why you’re behaving the way that you’re behaving, and let me analyze to see if it has merit, because it may, and it’s not even if I care if it has merit, will a judge or 12 people in a jury box consider it to have merit? Right? It’s not even about me. And so it’s the same sort of thing. It’s like, look, let’s just have a frank discussion and why do we have to go through the expense of a lawsuit? And part of it is, and this is crazy to me, but it’s because the people, we don’t talk to anybody who’s a decision maker ever. It’s easier for them to kick it around and not make a decision. Or maybe it’s a fear of accountability. I can’t

Bryce Van De Moere (23:49):

Believe that’s what

Christopher Dryden (23:50):

It’s, I can’t believe it’s in the employee handbook, a MasterCard or a bank that says to operate this way and eventually get it kicked out so that they have to start paying a council money for something like, because we only push to a lawsuit. Well, we know we’re going to win in this subject matter,

Bryce Van De Moere (24:08):

And it really becomes the only play that we have left, and it’s now the play that I prefer. I don’t like dicking around with anymore. Let’s just sue and get this out in the open and make them address it. But should we talk about peptides now?

Speaker 2 (24:20):

Sure. Yeah.

Bryce Van De Moere (24:20):

Okay. So the new darling of master,

Christopher Dryden (24:24):

Hold on. Is the grind my gear session over?

Bryce Van De Moere (24:27):

No, I’m sure we’ll find time to come back to it. I can grind gears all day long. So peptides, so there seemed to be waves of prohibited products. So for a long time, and you’ll remember Jeremy, it was mail enhancement. Everybody was, what’s that? Boner pills for want of a better term. So they were

Jeremy Stock (24:49):

Never heard of ’em.

Bryce Van De Moere (24:50):

Yeah, no, but chemicals that are related to that were sneaking into products and the FDA, and most of the time the merchants didn’t even know that it was in the product, but then it was male enhancement, then it was glide like Ozempic and the Wegovy. That was a new one. Are

Christopher Dryden (25:07):

People buying generic of that?

Bryce Van De Moere (25:09):

Oh yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah.

Bryce Van De Moere (25:12):

There are ways to get these drugs that don’t involve your physician, even though they’re injectable. Yeah. Well, but there’ll be a doctor involved in the process. But now what’s happened, because peptides naturally occur in the body and there’s a whole host of different peptides, and then there’s also the distinction between human consumption and research purposes. Human consumption requires a doctor’s prescription. Research purposes do not at all. However, what I see happening is that MasterCard and therefore the banks are just treating the human consumption and the research people exactly the same and they’re match placing them

Christopher Dryden (25:56):

Blankets. Okay, but how would you qualify a research person if there’s no licensing, if they’re not working for a research institution, if Bob living down in IB decides that he wants to spend his day taking peptides, but he’s researching the effect of peptides, how do they know? Just a counterpoint.

Bryce Van De Moere (26:18):

Because the interesting thing about these peptide vendors is to a man or a woman, they’re selling the exact same product now that when they were onboarded and accepted by the bank, there’s been no change at all. They tell them we’re a research lab. This is just peptides in general. We’re not even really discussed talking about the ozempic and the wegovy specifically. They’re treating all the peptides the same. So they’re nailing these guys for, I guess an illegal transaction or what they call a violation of standards because they think a doctor’s prescription needs to be involved. It doesn’t, and we have ample evidence that these research facilities do not have that prerequisite. Do they care? No.

Christopher Dryden (27:06):

Who qualifies you as a research facility?

Bryce Van De Moere (27:09):

I don’t know. But whatever they did when they were onboarded and when they filled out the application and when the bank did its due diligence in determining what it does and what they sell and what they really sell, I mean, it was good enough for them then. So what’s changed or why do again, and it’s like what we discussed at the beginning, this keeps happening too. They say, Hey, this peptide needs to go. They’ll be like, okay, today gone not selling it anymore. Two weeks later, match it anyway.

Christopher Dryden (27:36):

Well, what’s that? I mean, what’s the basis for the peptide needs to go

Bryce Van De Moere (27:42):

Because the FDA or some government agent determines that it’s harmful.

Jeremy Stock (27:48):

Eli Lilly. Eli Lilly released a lot of, there’s a lot of evidence out there that Eli Lilly, for various reasons, doesn’t want peptides at large. And so they’ve put money behind certain ones saying, Hey, we don’t want these out there. And people are listening,

Bryce Van De Moere (28:02):

Well, we heard, no, it’s not that we don’t want them out there. We don’t want them available without a doctor’s involvement. There you go. Yeah, that’s the thing. But these are research facilities,

Christopher Dryden (28:12):

But who’s manufacturing the peptide? How do you manufacture a peptide

Bryce Van De Moere (28:16):

That I don’t know, but does it involve the processing of a payment for a prohibited item? How again, is match implicated here?

Christopher Dryden (28:26):

Well, I’m more interested in, because I go back to nutraceuticals, right? That was, that’s always it still a problem. It always a problem. But it’s the compounding of the nutraceutical, right? They want to know, I mean, this is an FDA thing. I mean, this isn’t abnormal. They don’t want things widely sold that haven’t been tested that could cause some sort of mass problem. And I don’t discount that. I mean, there may not be an FDA a two months from now, but we’ll see what happens. But the fact is that I’m interested in, okay, well how are these even getting into the marketplace? Why aren’t they controlling those guys? Right? And how am I getting it as a merchant to sell? Are you saying that the labs are selling it because the labs don’t resell, they’re just buying it. Correct.

Bryce Van De Moere (29:13):

I really haven’t gotten that specific. All I know is that they are telling me what they told the bank, which is, this is for research service. I don’t know what research.

Jeremy Stock (29:23):

It’s a great question, Chris. It’s a great question. It’s actually, it’s

Bryce Van De Moere (29:26):

Their source. It’s actually really something that I need to delve into. But again, again, from the payment processing, they’re not in violation of anything. They’re not selling a prohibited product to human beings. It’s not an illegal transaction. These are for research purposes, and they have been upfront the entire time, but MasterCard doesn’t seem to care. The banks don’t seem to care. They just collect their fee, ask no questions, do no investigation, and then you’re out $50,000 for something that you didn’t do and no way out. So my suggestion is that especially with regards to these research facilities, when they get matched and it looks like it’s going to happen because I, I signed up four peptide merchants for litigation yesterday. I mean, they’re just blanket nailing these people without any due process, any investigation, any questioning. So ask them to show them the correspondence. You told me to pull this.

Bryce Van De Moere (30:33):

I did. Now you’re matching me, me, where I processed a payment that violates the match and they’re not going to be able to do it. Now, are they going to even respond to you? Probably not. And that’s when you call someone like me, but at least call ’em on it. Do you really even understand what you’ve done? You’re putting people out of business and you don’t even understand the product they’re selling or how they’re selling it, and you don’t care. They just don’t care. They just keep making money. It’s like in your thing yesterday, credit cards are just a massively unregulated industry. They’re a monopoly. They’re the only monopoly that I’m aware of that’s allowed to exist unless you buy all the banks who are in cahoots. But I mean, they don’t care because they don’t have to care, I guess is the message that I’m getting. And the only way you can make ’em care is sue ’em. And so that’s where we’re going. Like I said, I will try like hell to get it resolved. Amic, I will try like hell for you to get somebody to actually listen to me. But sometimes you just got to kick somebody in the teeth to really make ’em look at you that

Christopher Dryden (31:37):

That’s not dating advice, by the way,

Jeremy Stock (31:40):

Claimer. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Match the match searches. Right. It can be confusing. Sometimes you search match what comes up

Bryce Van De Moere (31:50):

Isn’t

Christopher Dryden (31:50):

The match list we’re talking about.

Bryce Van De Moere (31:52):

Yeah. So maybe kicking the teeth is a bad SEO term, but that’s just the way I feel these days. I’m just tired of messing with them. Understood. I’m tired of being ignored and I’m going to make ’em pay attention to me.

Jeremy Stock (32:05):

As we bring this to a close, your thoughts on, because I hear this a lot when I’m talking to these guys on the front end, they’re saying, Hey, I’m a peptide merchant. I know 12 other guys in my same situation. They always bring up class actions. Now I know and I understand, but can for the audience, can you explain why that’s not usually an option? We would love it if it was

Bryce Van De Moere (32:28):

The terms of your merchant processing agreement. Specifically say that you have to, it’s a one-on-one situation and you can’t bring a class. You can’t be part of a

Christopher Dryden (32:35):

Class. It’s beyond that though, because we just got our, got a ruling back on a case against Visa. This is another thing that I think is interesting. You don’t have standing not just to not bring a class action. You don’t have a standing to bring anything against Visa or MasterCard, even though those are the people’s rules that are being followed for this agreement. Your contract is actually, I mean, there’s a couple of things that you can bring. They’re statutory. It’s like violation of the Sherman Act. They’re monopolistic or there’s a unfair trade practice or business practice, but trying to get to Visa MasterCard through the contract is impossible. Wow. The only thing that’s really impacted them has been the interchange suit. That’s because everybody gets charged interchange, and it’s whether or not it was fair. But the contract itself, the court, when we filed in the Visa case, they said, yeah, you can maybe correct this, but really you should be filing against your processor and bank and how great is that going to be? Wow.

Bryce Van De Moere (33:52):

Well,

Jeremy Stock (33:53):

Alright, gentlemen, is there anything else? Any closing thoughts? We just want to wrap this up.

Bryce Van De Moere (33:57):

No, I’m sure I’ll be on here talking about the same thing. A couple. I’ll be back with more BS that the banks are pulling so that you know what I know and you can act accordingly. Yeah,

Christopher Dryden (34:11):

We are still lucky. We got ’em

Jeremy Stock (34:15):

Good times when the singing starts. It’s time to end the podcast. So

Bryce Van De Moere (34:20):

Thanks Jerry.

Jeremy Stock (34:21):

Yeah. Thank you for listening this long to the Payments Experts podcast. Today we’ve had in studio our founding and managing partner, Christopher Dryden, as well as Senior Associate Attorney Bryce Vander Moore, our Match Specialist’s

Bryce Van De Moere (34:33):

Match List, Vander.

Jeremy Stock (34:34):

That’s it. That’s it. Alright guys. Have a great day. We’ll see you on the next one. 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.