Agent vs. ISO: What It Really Takes to Build and Scale a Payments Business

Most people do not plan a career in payments. I certainly did not. About fifteen years ago, I was managing hospitality operations and working a schedule that looked nothing like the life my family needed. The PM shifts were difficult, my wife and I had just welcomed our first child, and it became clear that I needed to find a Monday-through-Friday role.

That search brought me to a local ISO as an office manager. It was not a straight-line move into sales. I handled pieces of HR and accounting, sat in executive conversations, listened to department leaders work through tradeoffs, and learned how a payment business functions when the different parts have to agree. Being the person who saw work move between teams gave me a broad view of the company before I was ever responsible for making the sales numbers go up.

Alexis Lichterman entered the business from a different direction: a Craigslist advertisement for an appointment setter. She moved from setting appointments into processing and management, later built her own agent office, and ultimately returned to lead an agent channel. The details of our entry points are different, but the lesson is similar. Payments tends to create well-rounded leaders when people stay curious enough to learn what happens outside their first job description.

That is the operating idea behind this article. Selling merchant accounts is one discipline. Operating the infrastructure, risk, compliance, finance, technology, and relationships behind those accounts is another. Strong production can create the opportunity to become an ISO. It does not, by itself, establish readiness for the responsibility.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

Mentom Payments: The New Kid on the Block, Built by Industry Veterans

Jordan Stewart and Alexis Lichterman join Bill Glass to discuss Mentom's people-first operating model, agent support, specialization, AI, embedded payments, and the real lift from agent to ISO.

Runtime 43:29

Originally recorded for and hosted by the SEAA Podcast, hosted by Bill Glass, COO of AltruPay LLC. This Mentom-hosted edition is presented with permission.

Read the edited transcript ↗

Episode chaptersJump to a segment

1. 00:00SEAA Podcast introduction
2. 00:25Meet Jordan Stewart and Alexis Lichterman
3. 00:41How Jordan and Alexis entered payments
4. 03:40Building a payments company around people
5. 06:21What an agent-first operating model requires
6. 10:54Defining and approaching high-risk payments responsibly
7. 13:52The agent perspective on difficult-to-place verticals
8. 16:11From sales leadership to operating an ISO
9. 21:59The LegitScript enterprise certification program
10. 25:26AI as an operational tool, not a people replacement
11. 27:52Agentic commerce and merchant readiness
12. 31:39Embedded payments and the distribution question
13. 35:07Agent versus ISO: the real operating lift
14. 40:00Supporting different agent models and markets
15. 41:46The Mentom agent program and closing

Why build a payments company around people?

When Bill Glass asked why Mentom puts so much emphasis on relationships, responsiveness, and integrity, my answer came from seeing several ISO environments up close. Every company had practices worth learning from. Every company also had friction I did not want to repeat. Building Mentom gave us a chance to keep what worked, address what did not, and make ownership part of the operating model from the beginning.

For me, people-first has three audiences: employees, agent partners, and merchants. Those groups experience different parts of the company, but they depend on the same underlying behavior. A service promise only means something when a person owns the next step, communicates what is happening, and stays involved until the issue reaches an outcome.

Smaller scale can help preserve that access, provided the company has the systems and experienced staff to support it. The value is not simply that a partner can call an executive. The value is that fewer handoffs reduce context loss. The person answering understands the relationship, the vertical, the history of the opportunity, and why the question matters.

That also requires honesty about fit. No ISO can responsibly support every merchant, agent, vertical, platform, and operating model. We know the opportunities our people, underwriters, risk team, platforms, and sponsor-bank relationships are equipped to evaluate. We also need to be candid when another partner may be a better fit. Telling an agent that early protects time and trust on both sides.

What agent-first means in practice

Agent-first can sound like a recruitment slogan if it is reduced to compensation. Economics matter, but the operating model behind them matters just as much. Mentom does not maintain a direct-sales channel that competes with our agents. We depend on partner production, which means our incentives begin with helping those partners build durable portfolios.

That starts with fit-based partner selection. We are not trying to sign an arbitrary number of agents every month. We want partners whose markets, expectations, and working style align with the programs we can support. A strong fit creates better communication before the first application arrives and more shared accountability after a merchant is approved.

In practice, an agent-first ISO needs experienced decision-makers who are reachable, underwriting and risk teams that understand the submitted verticals, and a willingness to explain what can and cannot move forward. It should respect the work that occurred before the file reached underwriting. The agent found the opportunity, learned the business, gathered the processing story, and assembled the package. That effort deserves a serious evaluation.

Alexis made this point well during the podcast because she has operated on both sides of the relationship. When an agent sends a difficult opportunity, the file should not receive an automatic yes, but it should not receive a careless no. The ISO has a responsibility to understand what was submitted, identify the real gaps, and determine whether a defensible path exists. Thoughtful review is not guaranteed approval. It is respect for the work and for the risk decision.

The accountability continues after approval. An agent may own the front-line merchant relationship while the ISO owns or supports onboarding, underwriting, boarding, risk monitoring, platform coordination, and escalations. Neither side can disappear when a problem crosses that boundary. A healthy relationship makes ownership clear before the issue occurs.

Specialization is more useful than calling yourself high risk

High risk is not one universal merchant category. Agents, processors, sponsor banks, and acquiring partners can view the same vertical differently. A business that one party describes as moderate risk may fall within a higher-risk policy at another institution. The applicable program and sponsor-bank view matters more than the label used during a sales conversation.

That is why I prefer to describe Mentom as an ISO with experience in selected verticals that may be considered higher risk. The distinction creates discipline. It asks whether our underwriters understand the business model, whether our risk team knows the expected activity, whether our sponsor-bank relationship supports the category, and whether we have the operational capacity to monitor it after approval.

Experienced teams can work toward a defensible yes. They can identify the missing document, explain the concern, distinguish a manageable issue from a fundamental conflict, and advocate for a well-supported opportunity. They cannot manufacture an approval where the facts, program, or sponsor-bank requirements do not support one.

Specialization also means knowing when not to stretch. Chasing every opportunity described as high risk creates noise for agents, underwriters, risk teams, and banks. A defined set of strengths gives everyone a clearer market, a better submission standard, and a more realistic expectation of what happens next.

What changes when an agent becomes an ISO?

The biggest change is not the title or the economics. It is the scope of accountability.

Before Mentom, I had been exposed to many parts of the business. I had sat in the meetings, heard the department-level feedback, managed sales teams, and participated in broader growth conversations. But my primary responsibility was still commercial: make the numbers go up. Building and operating Mentom meant becoming responsible for the company around those numbers.

Sponsor-bank negotiations were one of the clearest examples. The work included evaluating agreements, coordinating with attorneys, understanding program obligations, and aligning what we wanted to sell with what the relationship could support. That negotiation is not a one-time gateway to a BIN. It begins an ongoing accountability relationship in which portfolio performance, risk decisions, compliance, reporting, and communication continue to matter.

Processor and platform implementation added another dimension. A sales office can work within systems an ISO has already selected and integrated. An ISO has to evaluate critical platforms, coordinate implementation, understand dependencies and change windows, manage vendors, test workflows, and support the environment after launch. Delays that once looked like somebody else’s operational issue become your launch plan and your responsibility to explain.

Underwriting changes in the same way. Agents often perform valuable pre-underwriting: they review the business, identify obvious concerns, collect documents, and prepare the story. That work improves the file. It is not the same as maintaining the ISO’s delegated underwriting process within sponsor-bank requirements, documenting decisions, escalating exceptions, and accepting ongoing portfolio accountability.

Risk continues after the merchant goes live. The ISO needs monitoring, escalation procedures, reserve practices, loss controls, and people who understand what normal and abnormal activity look like for the merchant base. It needs a process for information requests, emerging concerns, and decisions that affect merchants and partners. Approval is the beginning of that responsibility, not the end.

The financial exposure expands as well. Fixed costs appear across staffing, technology, compliance, security, vendors, legal work, audits, insurance, and reporting. Reserves and losses can affect capital. Reconciliation and residual reporting must remain dependable. A business that is consistently profitable as a sales office can still underestimate the cost and variability of operating the infrastructure behind its portfolio.

Information security and compliance become broader organizational responsibilities. An ISO needs governance around systems, data, vendors, access, incidents, policies, and the obligations created by its agreements and operating model. The exact allocation differs by relationship, so this is not a universal legal checklist. The practical point is that responsibility extends beyond following a partner’s requirements; the ISO has to maintain and evidence its own program.

Then there is management. Building underwriting, risk, finance, technology, and support teams is not identical to building a sales team, but the core leadership lesson travels well: understand the job, put the right people in the right seats, establish clear ownership, and give them what they need to succeed. The hard part is not simply hiring department heads. It is creating a company in which those departments can challenge one another, make coordinated decisions, and still move with urgency.

The table describes a practical shift, not a universal contractual allocation. Every sponsor-bank, processor, and ISO relationship has its own structure. But the direction is consistent: becoming an ISO adds operating responsibility to the sales work. It does not replace the need to keep producing, either. The business has to maintain growth while leadership attention expands across the company.

Bill’s observation gets to the center of the decision. Boarding volume creates revenue opportunity. Retention and operation create portfolio value. An ISO has to do both, through normal months and difficult ones, without allowing one function to consume the other.

A practical decision framework: Should an agent become an ISO?

There is no blanket answer. Becoming an ISO can be the right decision for a capable sales office with sufficient scale, capital, operational leadership, and a clear strategic reason. It can also become an expensive distraction if the decision is driven mainly by the idea of keeping a larger share of the economics.

I would work through ten questions before treating ISO registration or a direct BIN relationship as the logical next step.

1. Is production consistent enough to support fixed operating costs? Look beyond the best month. The business needs durable volume and revenue that can support staff, technology, professional services, vendors, and the costs that remain when sales fluctuate.
2. Is there a strategic reason beyond economics? Greater control, a defined vertical, a platform strategy, or a material limitation in the current relationship may support the case. A larger theoretical margin, by itself, does not describe an operating strategy.
3. Does the team understand the responsibilities it is accepting? Leadership should understand underwriting, portfolio risk, potential losses, compliance, security, sponsor-bank oversight, financial reporting, and the practical consequences of weak controls.
4. Is adequate capital available? The plan should account for reserves, implementation, staffing, vendors, legal work, insurance, audits, unexpected losses, and the time between investment and a stable return.
5. Who will run daily operations? If the sales leader becomes the default owner of every bank, risk, finance, technology, and support issue, production and decision quality can both suffer. Put operating leadership in place before the workload proves the need.
6. Is the current ISO truly limiting growth? Sometimes the relationship is the constraint. Sometimes the existing platform, people, or programs are underused. Be specific about what a new structure would solve.
7. Has the business developed repeatable expertise? A defined market or vertical gives underwriting, risk, sales, support, and bank conversations a shared operating context. General production without a repeatable model can be harder to scale than it appears.
8. Can the company retain and support what it boards? Evaluate activation, service, merchant communication, attrition, chargebacks, losses, and the agent experience—not only monthly approvals.
9. Is leadership prepared for ongoing external accountability? Bank, processor, security, audit, legal, and reporting obligations continue after implementation. The business must respond consistently even when the issue is not revenue-generating.
10. Would a stronger infrastructure partner create more leverage? A capable ISO relationship can let an agent keep selling, specialize, improve the portfolio, and learn the operating side without rebuilding every function independently.

The answer may still be yes. Mentom made that decision, accepted the lift, and benefited from it. My advice is to make the decision with a complete view of the responsibility. Being good at acquiring deals is an important input into ISO readiness. It is not the whole case.

Technology should increase capacity, not erase accountability

Our podcast conversation moved into AI because it is already affecting underwriting, reporting, risk operations, support, and how merchants prepare for commerce. My view is straightforward: AI is a tool for improving and accelerating processes. It can summarize a report, organize information, reduce repetitive work, and help an experienced person review more efficiently.

What it cannot do is erase accountability. If an agent needs an explanation, a merchant has an urgent issue, or a risk decision requires judgment, somebody still has to own the answer. The best use of technology increases the capacity of good people. It should not become a reason that partners can no longer reach them.

Alexis applied the same practical thinking to agentic commerce. Ecommerce merchants should make product information accurate and complete, maintain usable checkout flows, and cultivate credible customer feedback. Those practices help people make decisions today and make a site easier for emerging commerce tools to interpret. They are useful operating improvements without requiring unsupported predictions about how fast buying behavior will change.

For an ISO, the standard should remain clear: use automation to make strong processes faster and more consistent. Do not use it to disguise missing ownership or to pretend that regulated and risk-sensitive decisions no longer require experienced people.

Embedded payments still needs distribution and operations

Embedded payments can create a valuable revenue stream for a software company, but integration is not the complete go-to-market plan. A technically strong product still needs distribution. Software builders are not automatically sales organizations, and building an internal sales team can be a significant investment.

The ISV also needs payments operations after the integration launches. Merchants require onboarding, underwriting, support, reporting, risk coordination, and escalation. Those responsibilities do not disappear because the payment experience is embedded inside a software interface.

That is where the right ISO relationship can create leverage. The ISV can focus on its product, users, and market while an experienced payments partner supplies the acquiring infrastructure and operating support. The structure has to fit the software company’s strategy—direct sales, agent distribution, ISO partnership, or a combination—but the distribution question should be answered before projected payment revenue is treated as inevitable.

Mentom’s approach is to remain ready for the models our agents and technology partners actually bring us. We do not need to describe ourselves as the universal solution for embedded payments. We need the right platforms, people, and relationships to evaluate the opportunity honestly and support it well when the fit is real.

Scale the responsibility, not only the sales count

Mentom was built by people who had seen the strengths and weaknesses of different ISO environments. We wanted to build an operating company where agents could grow without losing access, context, or accountability. That required more than a strong recruiting message. It required underwriting, risk, finance, technology, support, sponsor-bank relationships, and employees who understood how their work affected the partner and merchant experience.

The same standard applies to an agent considering the next stage. Sales count is visible, and it is easy to use as the main measure of readiness. The less visible work—retention, risk, reconciliation, security, management, service, and external accountability—is what determines whether the model remains durable after the volume arrives.

Becoming an ISO may be the right step. A stronger ISO partnership may be the better step. Either decision should begin with an honest view of the business you want to operate, not only the economics you want to earn.

Growth becomes durable when the operating model can support what sales creates.