In the evolving world of digital transactions, the GENIUS Act is a recent initiative aimed at streamlining how online payments are processed and protected.

Officially titled the Generating Enhanced National Infrastructure for User Security (GENIUS) Act, this legislation encourages innovation in payment technologies while enhancing and regulating cybersecurity standards and consumer data protections.

By setting clearer regulatory frameworks, the GENIUS Act has the potential to reshape how businesses and consumers interact in the digital economy.

We should start by explaining the players: Our clients who are accepting payments are called Merchants. You then have Payment Gateways and Payment Processors. Some Processors will be the ISO (Independent Sales Organization), which essentially means they own the relationship with the Merchant (our clients). They will also be monetizing that relationship. Some may offer crypto, some even offer the new Stablecoins.

There is a growth market in automating Accounts Payable also. You will see Paymerang at Vendor booths in our industry (Corpay acquired Paymerang in 2024). Their model is to use debit cards, which typically do not have a fee, to pay online. They start by mailing paper checks. FormedAI is a new player.

We only work with NMI as a Gateway today, and Net1 and EVO are the main Processors in our space. EVO is part of Global Payments, and Net1 is an ECI owned company. While there are hundreds of choices for credit card processing in the US there is really only Paya for ACH (acquired by Nuvei in 2024).

 

The fees you pay to use Paya will depend on who the ISO is and can vary from $0.15 per transaction to 5.1%. Our average transaction is $500 so that range is $0.15 to $15.10 or 100 times more expensive. The length of contract, termination fees etc. are all determined by the ISO. CEO Juice can be your ISO for Paya and that contract has zero additional fees and is month-to-month. Our NMI gateway is designed to allow you to easily switch processors, with just a few minutes notice! You can also, in theory, have multiple processors and we support rules to determine which one to use, e.g. for Amex use this, if over $1k use that. In practice the base monthly fees may negate this, get ID734 reporting correctly 1st.

 

If you have an existing banking/card relationship and want to use that with ID669 just ask them if they support the NMI.com gateway.

 

Typically, your fees for using online payments are hidden. The Gateway will just take fees from the same bank account that they send money to, often the invoices are hidden. Clients need to take the time to find the bills, enter them broken out by payment processor and then use our AR Dashboard (ID734) to see your actual cost per transaction.

 

When money moves online it is not actual cash, it is just data. Banks in the US can take days to move money, all while earning interest on it. Crypto currencies in the past were very volatile. You could lose everything but also see great increases in value. With the GENIUS Act and Stablecoins Crypto is moving mainstream.

 

PayPal lets you transfer money in seconds, often for free. PYUSD is the PayPal Stablecoin. Stablecoins will be the competitors to ACH and conventional banking, we are not there yet however, pay attention now!

 

We are learning about the dark side of online payments also. Card testing is when a stolen credit card needs to be tested before it is resold on the black market (dark web). This involves running a batch of stolen cards against a site that accepts online payments, typically a $2 charge against an open invoice. We had to make an urgent site change in May after our site was used for card testing.

 

As of July 2025 we have 20k transactions a month ($10m) going through our gateway. That is with just 20% of our clients using it (30k users) and only 4% of the transactions expected to be paid online. The NMI gateway and the processors all refuse to be level 1 support, passing that to the Juice team and resulting in ID669 being more support intensive than all of our other processes combined.

 

As the landscape of online payments continues to evolve under initiatives like the Genius Act, it's more important than ever to stay informed and adaptable. We are eagerly exploring new technology like Stablecoins to see how we can automate more and reduce fees. Whether you're a business leader, IT professional, or just someone curious about where digital finance is headed, your perspective matters.

 

 

We’d love to hear your thoughts!

What opportunities or concerns do you see in these changes? Share your insights in the comments or reach out directly.