Protecting the Promise: A Payment Processing Blog

Regulations regarding money transmission have changed dramatically in the last year or so. Previously, only transactions that facilitated money transmission and storage were regulated and now regulations cover any instrument or transaction that has a value, including virtual currency.

As a result, any corporation that provides gift cards, loyalty programs or virtually anything that stores a value may be considered a Money Transmitter requiring registration with the Department of Treasury Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and state level money transmission licensing where they operate. What this adds up to is a lot of “stuff” that doesn’t enhance the value of a product or service in the marketplace. 

Last week I started talking about Meracord’s values focusing on “We always do things right.” This week I’ve been thinking a lot about another one – “We bring trust into people’s lives.” 

We believe that Meracord can help bring trust into people’s lives by providing compliant payment services that protect financial promises between consumers and financial service providers.  

My last post talked about Sales and Meracord’s sales process. Now I want to zoom in and talk about one critical piece of that process – “KYC” (Know Your Customer). Some call it due diligence, we call it Certification.

Sales is the engine of business. It is what pulls the business to where it is going. Marketing does the steering and Operations is the heart, but I'll talk about that later...

My career has focused on sales. I love everything about it; the challenge, the people, the systems, the wins and even the losses (no, not really. I don't like losing). 

Margaret Thatcher was a hero for women.  For years, I have admired her principles and courage and looked to her for inspiration.  She came into her position at a time when few women would have tried to do what she did, let alone been accepted. 

The American Conference Institute’s Emerging Payment Systems conference last week was abuzz with the news of FinCEN’s new guidance on virtual currency. The guidance came out last Monday and applies money-laundering rules to “virtual currencies.” In a room full of people engaged in emerging payments, this led to a lot of talk about the impact this guidance will have and how the existing state regulatory systems will interact with the Federal definition.

This week I had the pleasure of attending American Conference Institute's 5th National Forum on Emerging Payment Systems in San Francisco and connecting with many smart individuals combining compliance and innovation in the payments space.

Earlier this week, the California Legislature held a hearing to discuss its Money Transmission Act. This hearing was discussed in an interesting article on Business Insider. 

After a rigorous application process, Meracord received its California Money Transmitter License last summer. Although we certainly agree this was no easy task, we are very proud to meet the high standards required by the State of California as well as all the other 49 states. 

The other day I decided I wanted to commit to making a small monthly contribution to a local charity. They recently updated their website to allow donors to set up an account and manage their contributions. It’s a pretty cool system. But like many online payments, the only option offered was to use a card. I couldn’t help but think about the benefits both the charity and their donors are missing out on.

I love getting feedback. Hearing how we have helped a customer makes hard work worth doing.

The other day, one of our employees shared a story about a seller finance customer from Arizona. The buyer and seller of the property were having a hard time managing the payments on a seller finance note and the whole situation was just getting to be too frustrating. But with our help, they’re now caught up with payments, including taxes and insurance payments. According to the seller, he can rest easy knowing we’re keeping track of all the payments. Definitely worth the small fee we charge for the service.