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MAG Insider
John Drechny From Advocacy to Impact: How MAG Delivered for Merchants in 2025
Dec 17, 2025As this year ends, the Merchant Advisory Group (MAG) has stayed firmly focused on one thing: serving as the voice of merchants in a rapidly changing payments landscape. Through collaboration, education, and advocacy, the MAG worked alongside you to shape a payments ecosystem that better reflects merchants’ priorities and ultimately serves our shared customers. Thank you for your continued engagement and support. Your participation on committees, at conferences, in surveys, and in direct conversations with networks and regulators is what gives the MAG its strength and credibility as the merchants’ voice.
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International Perspective
Paul Tunstall Unlocking Cross-Border Real-Time Payments in Asia: From Fragmentation to Harmonisation
Dec 1, 2025Industry leaders call for interoperable standards, merchant inclusion, and coordinated regulation to drive the next phase of real-time payments (RTP) growth across Asia.
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Policy Perspective
Beth Provenzano Government Shutdown Ends: Regulatory and Legal Developments
Nov 21, 2025As 2025 comes to a close and the federal government re-opens, there are many payments policy issues to watch carefully, including credit card interchange and network rules, debit reform, challenges to state laws regulating interchange, and penny circulation complexities.
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Advancing Payments
Kelly Andrus Advancing Payments: The Evolution of Payments Continues to Gain
Nov 10, 2025The payments landscape has entered a phase of rapid, overlapping change. Historically, payments evolved through infrequent, compliance-driven upgrades. Today, new capabilities and program changes are emerging from card networks, processors, and fintechs continuously, and they have direct commercial impact on authorization rates, fraud exposure, dispute workload, and customer experience. Added state and federal legislation, coupled with new regulatory frameworks, can further complicate strategic planning. Payments is no longer simply an operational necessity — it is now a lever for revenue performance and customer experience.
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Payments Technology
Howard Xiao - Head of Strategic Partnerships at VGS, Laura Furlong - Senior Marketing Manager at VGS Agentic Commerce: Redefining the Consumer Journey, Liability, and Loyalty
Oct 9, 2025The rise of agentic commerce, and a world of artificial intelligence (AI) agents that research, recommend, and even purchase on behalf of consumers, is set to transform the payments ecosystem. For merchants, issuers, and consumers, this new paradigm raises pressing questions.
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Leadership Lens
Meg Thaxton Are You Making the Most of Your MAG Sponsorship?
Oct 7, 2025As an Annual Sponsor of the Merchant Advisory Group (MAG), you signed on to support the MAG community and help drive positive change and innovation in the payments industry. But are you taking full advantage of everything that comes with your sponsorship? Each of our sponsorship tiers comes with a robust list of benefits, and we don’t want you to miss a single thing. From speaking opportunities, to comp conference passes and more, here’s a quick refresher to make sure you are taking full advantage of your sponsor benefits and maximizing the return on your investment.
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MEET OUR NEW MEMBERS
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FastSpring is a merchant designed to help companies that offer software-as-a-service (SaaS), games, and other digital products by handling all the complexities of selling online — especially when expanding globally.
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Denny’s Corporation is one of America’s largest full-service restaurant chains based on number of restaurants. As of June 25, 2025, the Company consisted of 1,558 restaurants, 1,474 of which were franchised and licensed restaurants and 84 of which were company operated.
Denny's Corporation consists of the Denny’s brand and the Keke’s brand. -
City of Minneapolis
Minneapolis is a city in Hennepin County, Minnesota, United States. With a population of 429,954 as of the 2020 census, it is the state's most populous city. Located in the state's center near the eastern border, it occupies both banks of the Upper Mississippi River and adjoins Saint Paul, the state capital of Minnesota. Minneapolis, Saint Paul, and the surrounding area are collectively known as the Twin Cities, a metropolitan area with 3.69 million residents.
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As one of the most experienced people finder services, PeopleFinders has served customers looking for meaningful people data for three decades and has access to more than 6,000 data sources.There are many reasons to conduct a people search. Many people need to obtain or verify a current address or phone number. Some want to find relatives for genealogy purposes. Others may be looking to reconnect with someone from their past. Whatever your reason, PeopleFinders can help you find people, lookup phone numbers, and to learn more about an individual’s background with criminal records, bankruptcies, foreclosures, court records, and more. -
Founded in 2001, Zumba® is the world’s largest dance-fitness brand, transforming lives through high-energy workouts that blend cardio and fun. With more than 15 million weekly participants in 200,000 locations across 185 countries, Zumba® offers classes for every age, fitness level, and ability. From heart-pumping cardio to stress relief and confidence boosts, Zumba® brings the world’s rhythms to a workout that feels more like a party than a chore — no dance experience needed. In addition to its original Zumba program, the company offers 10 Zumba specialty classes – from aquatic-based to those specifically designed for active older adults and children. In 2016, Zumba launched its first non-dance, HIIT workout STRONG Nation®, where music acts as the main motivator. In 2023, Zumba launched CIRCL Mobility®, a revolutionary new program designed to unlock the body's full potential through flexibility, breathwork, and mobility exercises. The Zumba® lifestyle is rounded out by the company's many consumer product offerings, including video games, VR +MR experiences, original music, activewear and footwear, and interactive Fitness-Concert™ events.
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doTERRA is the world's premier essential oil manufacturer. Founded in 2008, doTERRA has provided the highest-quality essential oils to people around the globe using its "Co-impact sourcing" mission of sustainable farming and economic empowerment.
MEET OUR NEW SPONSORS
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BVNK is the stablecoin-powered financial stack for enterprises. Build financial products. Unlock new markets. Move money in seconds across 130+ countries. One platform for every use case. Trusted by Worldpay, Deel and Flywire. Processing billions annually.
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Testlio’s fully managed and AI-driven crowdsourced testing platform connects global quality experts with product and engineering teams to ensure every release works for every user, everywhere. On 600K+ real devices. In 100+ languages. With 800+ payment methods. The company is 100% remote, with team members in 150+ countries. Female-founded, approximately 46% of full-time employees are women. Testlio’s clients include some of the world’s leading brands, such as Netflix, Clari, Strava, Whatnot, Merck, and more. As an ISO 27001:2022 certified vendor and trusted Microsoft Supplier, we apply rigorous security measures aligned with global privacy expectations, such as GDPR, to every client engagement. Learn more at testlio.com.
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Fime, along with its consulting division Consult Hyperion, enables its clients to create and launch trusted and secure payments, smart mobility and digital identity solutions. We offer a global industry perspective with local insights and a unique track record in strategic and technical consulting, test platforms and testing services.With over 900 consultants and engineers around the world we provide the expertise, partnering with clients to define, design, deliver, and test their products and services. We work with our clients to turn product ideas into reality, de-risking decision making, accelerating time to market and delivering competitive advantage. -
Founded in 2020, Justt is the world's first smart chargeback solution that tailors each response and improves over time. Unlike template-based solutions, it uses AI-powered automation and domain expertise to generate dynamic arguments, customizing each response, no matter the volume or complexity. With a machine learning engine that's continuously running A/B tests in the background, Justt is the only chargeback solution that self-improves over time—helping merchants win more disputes effortlessly.
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TrustCommerce, a Sphere company, is the leading fintech company trusted by the top health systems to facilitate secure, compliant patient payments. TrustCommerce’s Cloud Payment solutions deliver a modern payment experience that supports all card payment types, including Apple Pay and Google Pay. Clients using TrustCommerce can enhance the patient financial experience, untangle payment workflows, and process payments while being connected with core software including EHRs like Epic and Veradigm.
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The sky’s the limit with Elavon.We are trusted by the world’s leading airlines to provide a 1st class service. Create the payment experience you want for your customers wherever they are. For over 35 years, Elavon has delivered secure, reliable, flexible, and compliant payment solutions for airlines around the world. We understand the unique airline industry challenges and we are proud to provide payments solutions to over 100 of the world’s airlines.
MAG INSIGHTS
View past newsletter articlesNEWS FROM OUR SPONSORS.
Jan 9, 2026
Optimus Fintech — Tillo trusts Optimus Fintech to Power High-Volume, Complex Global Payment Operations
Jan 8, 2026
TodayPay — 44% of U.S. Consumers Would Rather Visit the Dentist Than Wait Seven Days for a Refund
Jan 7, 2026
Bluefin — Bluefin Announces New Patent Expanding Data Security Beyond Payments
Jan 6, 2026
TrustCommerce — KLAS Report Shows Strong Early Results for TrustCommerce Cloud Payments
Jan 2, 2026
Chargeblast — Chargeblast Releases 2026 Payments Industry Predictions Highlighting AI, Fee Compression, and Regulatory Shifts
Dec 22, 2025
Chargebacks911 — Fi911 Launches ResolveLab, a White Label “Disputes-as-a-Service” Platform for Resellers & Payfacs
Dec 16, 2025
ACI Worldwide — Payments Leaders Unprepared for 2026 Disruption, Warns ACI Worldwide
Dec 11, 2025