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Advancing Payments
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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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MAG Insider
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Erica Forman Fall is In the Air; End-of-Year is In Sight
Oct 30, 2025As we head into Q4 and the holiday shopping season, it’s a perfect time to wrap up 2025 goals and prepare for what’s ahead in 2026.
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International Perspective
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Paul Tunstall A Year of Momentum, Growth, and Global Collaboration
Oct 20, 2025As we move into the final stretch of 2025, it’s inspiring to reflect on the incredible progress the Merchant Advisory Group (MAG) has made across our international markets. This year has been a defining one, marked by record-breaking participation, deeper merchant engagement, and a growing global voice for merchant payments advocacy.
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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
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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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Policy Perspective
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Josh Pynn Fed Spotlights Pay-by-Bank While FTC Rule Is Vacated
Aug 19, 2025On July 7, 2025, the Federal Reserve Board (Fed) published a FEDS Note exploring the current and potential role of Pay-by-Bank (PBB) as a consumer-to-business payment method in the U.S.. The note, authored by Federal Reserve economist Byoung Hwang, reviews the conditions under which PBB might gain traction in merchant transactions and offers insights into adoption trends, enabling technologies, and regulatory frameworks.
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MEET OUR NEW MEMBERS
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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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.png?sfvrsn=6ac856fc_1 "Peoplefinders")
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.
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Vivint Smarthome
Vivint offers a smart home security system that’s custom-built for your unique home.
MEET OUR NEW SPONSORS
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firmly.ai, is an AI Commerce Platform that powers native checkout and cart orchestration for various AI Search Engines, digital wallets, marketplaces, social networks and publishers. Its unified "Buy Now" technology stack standardizes fragmented commerce protocols so that any merchant can make their products shoppable anywhere with zero engineering effort and no cost while remaining merchant of record.
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Chargeflow is the AI infrastructure powering chargeback automation for modern commerce — a fully hands-off solution that recovers and prevents lost revenue with unmatched efficiency. Our platform protects billions in revenue for tens of thousands of businesses worldwide, driven by a proprietary AI engine, a security-first architecture, and extreme scalability. Chargeflow isn’t just software — it’s an autonomous domain and tech layer built to democratize the unfair chargeback and friendly-fraud problem.
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Method Financial enables instant, permissioned connectivity to consumers’ credit cards, loans, and liabilities - powering the next generation of embedded financial data experiences.Method provides a secure, consent-based API that allows merchants, gateways, and payment platforms to instantly authenticate and retrieve a customer’s active card credentials (including full PANs and metadata) using only basic PII. This removes friction from checkout and re-enrollment flows, reduces failed transactions, and unlocks real-time payment orchestration opportunities.Backed by leading investors including Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Truist Ventures, Samsung Next, Emergence Capital, and Y Combinator, Method is trusted by top fintechs, lenders, and payment innovators to simplify credential management, improve conversion, and deliver seamless payment experiences across the consumer payments lifecycle. -
Creators of EVC® (Ellipse Verification Code), the technology that generates a Dynamic Card Security Code every time the payment card is swiped, dipped, tapped, or triggered with an app. Ellipse is a FinTech company shaping the future of smart cards. Our mission is to address the payment ecosystem’s varied needs with our solutions and to make digital payment safer. Founded in 2017, Ellipse is based in Los Angeles, with a global team.
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Triple-A is a global stablecoin payment institution licensed in the United States, Europe, and Singapore. It enables businesses like Grab, Farfetch and Razer to pay and get paid in both stablecoins and local currencies—without having to hold or convert cryptocurrencies.
Triple-A offers 2 key solutions:
A) Stablecoin Acceptance – A payment gateway that allows merchants to accept USDT, USDC, BTC, ETH, PYUSD (Paypal USD) from 560M+ digital currency owners globally with next-day settlement in local currency.
B) Global Stablecoin Payouts – Enables businesses to pay suppliers, employees, and vendors in stablecoins globally, at lower costs.
The company is led by Eric Barbier, a seasoned fintech entrepreneur who previously founded and scaled Mobile 365 (acquired by SAP) and TransferTo (now Thunes & DT One).
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At Nomupay, we're all about making global payments simple. Since 2021, we’ve been on a mission to remove complexity and help businesses expand. Operating across Europe, EMEA and Asia, we’ve built a seamless, all-in-one payment solution. From pay-ins, and payouts to acquiring (leveraging our domestic licenses), our platform fits every business model - whether you're an e-commerce or a brick-and-mortar merchant, or a marketplace. Along with cards, we support global wallets and local payment methods in local currencies, optimising conversion in every market and driving the growth of 1,500+ merchants, including Netflix, Spotify, IKEA and Nike. Payments shouldn’t be holding your business back. We're here to simplify, streamline and enable global commerce - one payment at a time.