ETA PayFac Guidelines: Upcoming Webinar April 15th, 2021

I will be on an ETA Webinar panel with industry colleagues -Tom Humphrey, Edward Marshall, Andrea McMullen and Dan Spalinger – this time to discuss our recently published guidelines, The Electronic Transaction Association’s Guidelines for Payment Facilitation.

We intend the guidelines to be a resource for ETA members with different levels of organizational complexity in underwriting as well as monitoring and managing submerchants. We also expect they will be helpful to FinTech companies considering the requirements of Payment Facilitation.

What Can You Expect from the Webinar?

At the webinar, we’ll discuss and provide guidance on the following topics:

Getting registered as a Payment Facilitator

How to protect your company and clients against fraud

Keeping your clients’ information secure

Laws, Regulations and Regulatory Guidelines

Guidance on Financial Operations

Our working group has researched and pinpointed best practices for underwriting and monitoring. The goal of this identification is to alert Payment Facilitators to think about flagging potential submerchants for closer, more in-depth underwriting and to look at existing submerchants for review and potential action. We have identified triggers and thresholds to help guide these efforts, though each Payment Facilitator should establish quantitative thresholds based on different parameters as they underwrite and monitor their submerchant accounts. Of course, these triggers and thresholds may vary for submerchant acceptance methods such as card present vs. card not present. They also may vary considerably in different business segments.

Who Will Be Speaking?

All four thought leaders will delve into the background of the PayFac Guidelines, explaining their origins and revisions, providing context for the regulatory scrutiny, and recommending effective tools for payment facilitators of all experience levels.

Tom Humphrey brings experience in risk management, working in development, compliance, and consulting. Edward Marshall is an attorney who has negotiated complex payments contracts and understands the evolving controversies in the payment systems industry. Andrea McMullen brings two-plus decades of experience in Canadian payments, including strategic planning and education strategy. As for myself, I am committed to using my three decades in the industry to educate new entrants to payments, develop policies that work for everyone, and make every payments project that I am involved in successful.

Feedback after the webinar will be welcome, as we will continue to iterate these guidelines in our ongoing project of keeping everyone up to date on opportunities, new technology, and the effects both have on underwriting and risk management practices.

The Nitty-Gritty:

This webinar, now in its third iteration, will launch at 12 PM Eastern Standard Time on April 15th. While we are relieved that more and more people are getting vaccinated against Covid and we are hopeful about meeting up in person again soon, this webinar is virtual.

It is free of charge for ETA members and $99 for non-members.

Remember: if you register for the live webinar, you can receive one ETA CPP Continuing Education credit. But no credit is given for archived webinars, so make sure you are there for the live presentation!

You can register for the webinar here.