Episode 3 | Understanding and Managing the Risks of Moving Money Part 1

In the third episode of PayFAQ: The Embedded Payments Podcast, brought to you Payrix, host Bob Butler interviews Billi Jo Wright, the Chief Risk and Compliance Officer of Payrix. This is part one of a two-part series on understanding and managing the risk of moving money.

Billi Jo Wright has been in payments for over 25 years. She first spent 10 years on the issuing side and moved over to the acquiring side of the business with stops at Worldpay, MerchantE and Elavon over the past 15 years.  

It is good business for software companies to monetize payments and own the customer experience, but there is a lot of risk associated, which can be very complex. According to Billi Jo, there are at least six categories of risk including underwriting, fraud risk, transactional risk, chargeback risk and then regulatory risk and compliance. As a payments company, you are responsible for every transaction and every merchant that you process payments for. 

Billi Jo goes on to provide a brief description of each kind of risk and states that the biggest risk is underwriting risk – where there are a lot of regulatory and compliance requirements to assess the overall financial viability of each and every merchant.