Peptides, Telemedicine, Pharmacy & Compliance: The Future of Peptide Healthcare

Speaker A: Welcome to the Biz2Biz podcast, your number one source for all business news. You're now watching B2B Vault, the Biz to Biz podcast, hosted by Alan Koppelman, powered by Nationwide Payment Systems, the number one solution for payment processing. Hey, Everybody. Welcome to B2B Vault, the Biz to Biz podcast, sponsored by Nationwide Payment System and our new gateway, NPS1. For more information, visit nationwide paymentsystems.com check the link in our bio for all our information. Now, today we are having a fantastic guest. This is, uh, a company that I've want ahead of the podcast for a really long time. We're going to have Angela Salter, vice president at Legit, uh, Script. And this is really important for merchants. This is, uh, this podcast is for merchants today. So if you're looking to be in the telemedicine pharmacy business, this is the podcast for you to listen to, pay attention because we're going to learn a lot today from Angela. So, Angela, introduce yourself to the audience.

Speaker B: Thank you, Alan. Hi, everybody. Pleasure to be here. My name is Angela and I'm the vice president of enterprise Certification, Sales and Partnerships. So I oversee our enterprise, um, new customers, as well as our account management for our certification customers, as well as the relationships with our strategic partners. And what that means is the ad platforms or card brands that recognize or require our certification.

Speaker A: So today we want to educate everybody because I get phone calls probably every week. Oh, I'm putting up this platform and they show it to me and it's telemedicine and pharmacy related. And then I'm like, you need to be Legit Script certified. And they're like, what, why? What is Legit Scripts? Why Legit Scripts? I explain it's required, send them over the information, and then they're left scratching their heads. And some people come back, some people are like, wow, that costs a lot of money. We're not going to get into the money today because, you know, everything is relative, but it's something that you have to have. And we're going to get into the who, what the why. So let's start with the basics. Someone hearing the name Legit Script for the first time, what does LegitScript do? And what does becoming LegitScript certified mean? Uh, to a merchant.

Speaker B: I love this question. So let's start with LegitScript as a whole, the highest level. LegitScript's on a mission to make the Internet safer and more transparent. And what I mean by that is that commercial component, right? So we partner with the world's leading platforms and payment companies to identify businesses that are legitimate, legal, trustworthy and frankly, which ones aren't. Um, we combine deep expertise and in complex regulatory spaces with advanced technology. And that gives companies the confidence to connect with compliant partners and protect their brands from risk. Okay, now to bring that down to the merchant level, we said that's our audience today, Certification. So that's my line of business. That means a business has gone through our review process and demonstrated that its model, its marketing, its automated offerings, they meet a defined set of legal and regulatory standards. So once certified, that status tells a platform, this merchant's already been vetted by a neutral third party. So that platform isn't starting from zero.

Speaker A: Right. And people have to understand a lot of these rules come from the FDA and the ftc. This isn't stuff like I'm making up or the processor is making up, or the banks are making up, uh, or Visa, MasterCard and the rest of the card brands are making up. This is all, you know, a framework for compliance. And at, ah, my company, we, we are really entrenched in compliance for our merchants and help them and guide them through being compliant. And compliant. When you're talking about looking at the wording on the website, you're talking about making sure that there's no crazy promises on there or products that are not legally allowed to be sold.

Speaker B: Exactly. And I think that's such an important, um, call out with regard to those regulations. We look at and we'll get into this for sure. But we look at local, state, federal, every, every jurisdiction that a business is doing business in, where the patients are located for that telemedicine business, where the providers are, we take a look at that through the review itself. Um, to offer that deeper level of assurance and to help mitigate risk for the payments processors or the ad platforms that are uh, requiring certification.

Speaker A: Right. And then when they're approved, they get the Legit Scripts logo to put in the footer of their site, linked back to Legit Scripts, which gives the signal to Google and Meta that they can see that this is a legitimate telemedicine and pharmacy platform.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker A: M. Okay, so that's. And that would. We got to that part. So why has LegitScript become so important to the payments industry and the advertising industry online? So we see telemedicine companies online, pharmacies, weight loss clinics, other healthcare businesses come to us because the pro, their processor that they came to, or the sales rep and um, you know, Visa, MasterCard, Google and Meta is asking where's Your legit script certification. And so certification is effectively become the gateway for these businesses to do business. Right. This,

Speaker B: I, I would like to reframe that just a little bit. So I would say these platforms require certification to align with their policies. Um, essentially they're looking to reduce that risk of fake or dangerous or misleading healthcare advertising, especially advertising that can lead to a prescription medication. Um, when you think about what's at stake there with those advertising or with that processing someone ending up on the wrong medication because of maybe a slick ad or a merchant, that's false. That's genuinely scary. Um, I talk to our customers all the time with regard to, well, why do we need legit script? What is the point? Why are they requiring it? Well, if my mom is looking for maybe some urgent care, maybe a telemedicine provider and she throws that into Google or she goes to a provider, um, we want to make sure that my mom is someone who is going to provide, get care provided to her by a legitimate and trustworthy and compliant business offering. So it's sort of like um, sort of like a driver's license really. Like we're essentially providing this licensure with, via the certification to prove that you're qualified to be on the road, but you still have to follow the rules of the road. And so once you have that certification, it's something that you can kind of go forth and conquer. We do continual monitoring, et cetera. But it's really a signal to those, to those payment processors and to those ad platforms that it's not necessarily a gateway, but it's essentially sort of the, the bar that the platforms have set and we're the ones helping the merchants, um, clear that bar.

Speaker A: Right. So it's, you know, it's establishing them that this is a legitimate business. The stamp is on there, there's continual, you know, I always tell clients, doesn't matter what kind of business you're in, if you're going to add new products to your website, you need to make sure that they're cleared beforehand. So let's say you're uh, you have legit script and you're selling ED medication and then you're going to add something else, you need to reach back out to them and go, hey, we added this. Are we still good? Right?

Speaker B: Uh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: You know, so that, so that there's no misconception of, you know, you can't just add on a willy nilly product and start selling it.

Speaker B: Exactly. If you add new services, if you're adding new products to your Product catalog that you're offering for your services. Um, we do ask for certified entities to update us within 30 days of that change on the website. Um, so that we don't have to reach out to you or to the, to the uh, certified entity and get additional information if need be. But yeah, absolutely.

Speaker A: And a lot of processors are partnered with LegitScript either for getting you set up with LegitScript. And some banks that we work with in processors use LegitScript for continual monitoring on higher risk websites. Nutrients, Correct. Pharmacy, telemedicine. Um, these sites are being monitored.

Speaker B: Exactly. We do offer, um, I always like to say on the certification side. So kind of my side of the house and certification. We're here to shine a spotlight on the good actors, give them that badge to put on their website. Right. And then our other business lines, we work with merchants, uh, or we work with processors, um, for example, to help them with their merchant monitoring in their portfolio. Um, so that we can help detect trends or we can help detect patterns that um, maybe are indicative of illicit behavior, um, and help again mitigate a little bit of that risk and help call that out so that it can be adjusted.

Speaker A: Right. Okay, so let's, let's talk about the craziness. Yes, that's going on. And uh, Peptides has been in the news a lot lately. There was an FDA hearings, um, that was like three days long. And at the end they made some decisions and then tabled the rest for later for more for. I guess they're going to look at it more. But then also yesterday popped in the news that Lily, um, went, they went wild. And if you don't know, Lily is one of very large pharmaceutical company. They filed several lawsuits. They reported 14,000 websites to the authorities, federal authorities, to Visa, MasterCard. 14,000. So that, that, that's in the news. Reuters broke the story yesterday. And so you know, there's enormous interest in peptides, BCP157, uh, TB500. There's a whole list, MOT, C, Cmax and a whole bunch of others. And the FDA recently took a look at those and several other compounds. And can you like. So I know that some of this stuff can be compounded by 503A and 503B pharmacies. But what are they legally allowed to sell? Like right now? Like what's going on with that? Yeah, because I'm sure you guys are getting a ton of people trying to get certified to sell these compounds.

Speaker B: Yeah, we, we started getting inquiries as soon as um, frankly the advisory committee meeting was mentioned back in April. So, uh, we've been fielding those ever since then. But let's talk about it. So right now, specifically in this moment, nothing has actually changed from a legal standpoint. And as we referenced earlier in our conversation today, um, we certify based on current applicable laws and regulations. And so what shifted is that the FDA's own advisory committee signaled that these peptides that you'd referenced eventually might have a legitimate compounding pathway. But there are a lot of steps to get to before that's put into place. So until that rulemaking is final, our certification standards don't move. We certify based on, again, current regulations regarding what's compoundable and prescribable today, not what a committee thinks might be true in a year or two. So a lot of hubbub I would say right now, but there's a lot of steps to go that the FDA needs to put into place with regard to that rulemaking. They'll publish it, they open it up for, um, public comment commentary. They decide whether or not they want to take the commentary into place. So there's quite a few steps administratively that need to happen prior to anything being enacted.

Speaker A: And there's also a lot of talk about the GLP one being sold. And you know, prior to, um, there was a shortage like two years ago and then they were allowing some compounding and then as soon as that shortage was fixed, then there's no more compounding and a lot of people still trying to get accounts to compound that. So speak on that a little bit.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I'm so impressed with how well versed you are with the history of this. Um, you're absolutely correct. There was a shortage which opened up the ability for, um, compounding pharmacies to um, custom make these name brand GLP1s. When that shortage was deemed over, the FDA announced there's a certain time frame that these compounding pharmacies need to cease those operations. Um, and that is something that, again, we had referenced earlier that we do monitoring. Right. And so that's part of what, um, our program was doing is we were reaching out to merchants that we knew were selling GLP1s under that compounding, um, sort of open window that was then allowed. We reached out and we verified, hey, what's your plan for business to cease those by these time frames that they had announced? And, um, we checked back in with them when those time frames came to and we had 100% compliance. For those merchants that had to flux, um, their business. Right. They fluxed into uh, compounding them and then they fluxed out of them. And so it's definitely something that again we follow the FDA's regulations very, very closely. Um, and it does cause confusion. But I think that that's part of the beauty of our industry and the depth um, that we've been around is that we have this thought leadership. And so we had a lot of blog posts and educational material that we were sharing um, to help explain what exactly is going on because we know it's confusing.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's very, it's very confusing. And also the other thing that's going on is all these sites, they call them ruo. Where that comes from I still haven't figured out. But research only peptides being, I guess it's research.

Speaker B: Research only. Yep.

Speaker A: Research use only peptides, right?

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: And well from a standpoint of I'm not giving anyone a merchant account for that. So don't, don't call nationwide payment systems. I get calls for these all the time. And uh, and I've even talked to like a lawyer and they're trying to explain to me like it's legal. I started, I'm like, listen, I don't make the rules. And the banks are not going to go for it. Visa, uh, MasterCard's not going for it. And when they find it, I can tell you. I could show you a list of emails that I have from various industry attorneys and from merchants themselves who have been put on the match list who have been fined anywhere from 50 grand, 200 grand. I know a couple people who were fined into the millions that I spoke to. Yeah. One over millions and getting sued there in the article. In another article, one of the research only peptide companies had a payback that'd pay a, that it pays 70 million plus dollars out of there. Uh, a font like I guess a lawsuit settlement with all the pharmaceutical companies and they went and they, and got like seven years in jail or some craziness. And uh, some of their employees had to pay back money that worked there and a whole bunch of, there's a lot of craziness with that. Ouch.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And um, so these sites are out there selling these research only peptides. They're trying to you know, hide them with uh, fake website selling something else as a mirror. You know they come cloaked sites or they're trying to go through um, payfax to board this stuff, crypto solutions and all kinds of stuff. And you know, and I've seen videos on Instagram like oh, I bought this box and it's got like all this powder and then these people are sitting in their kitchen putting it in, in containers that you don't know if those are sterile. Right.

Speaker B: That is so scary.

Speaker A: Mixing it with water and then shipping it to you with instructions of how to, you know, go get a needle and inject yourself with this stuff.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: And uh, and the websites clearly say research only, not for human consumption consumption. Yeah, but they still out there. So do you guys get calls from people with those sites wanting to get certified?

Speaker B: Oh yeah. Yes. I'm really glad you bring this up actually. What, um, I would say is these sites popped up and we really saw um, I think the, the pitch of it. The highest point I think was probably mid winter or so. Um, it's been dialing back a little bit. I think people are understanding that there are limitations. They're not going to be able to get a processor, they're not going to be able to advertise their services, they're to get pulled down, et cetera. It's definitely a red flag every time that's entering the conversation. So, um, if a website is labeling a product as research use only on the bottle, but the entire page is talking about fat loss or recovery or anti aging or longevity, any of these hot topics. Right. The label and the marketing are telling two different stories and frankly, the marketing is going to win that one. So regulators do look at the intended actual use, not the disclaimer just buried in the fine print. We treat that mismatch as a compliance failure. And it's not, it's not the clever slick workaround that ah, I think people thought it was when they started to spin these up. So it's actually one of the clearest patterns that we do flag when we're reviewing a merchant.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's pretty crazy, but the fines that I've seen and you're on the match list. Just so you know, people don't know what the match list is. It's the list by Visa and MasterCard that basically once you're on that list, there's the chance of you getting credit card processing again is slim to none. And you're on there for five years. Beyond that, processors after five years can go look and go, this guy was on the match list. And if you were on match for, you know, uh, selling illegal products, the chances of somebody giving you another chance are probably really, really slim because we get calls like, oh, I'm on the match list. And listen, sometimes we can help clients get off the match list, but other times we can't help them because maybe the volume is, was too low or the reason that they're on the match list is, you know, egregious. Where they owe money to the credit card processor. Illegal products is one that this, the credit card companies have no, uh, no, they have, they have no charity. They don't want to.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker A: You, we mentioned that they're like forget it, we're not dealing with it. Oh, they were selling peptides. Forget it. They're, they're done. The one thing I don't like about what's going on now is there's like a lot of peptides and pills, right? And the company's wholesaling those products are still processing credit cards, selling this stuff to stores or other people putting it on the Internet. And then these smaller companies are getting in trouble and the manufacturers is sitting there still processing credit cards. And I've seen that a few times

Speaker B: and that's, that's really tough. And uh, it would be remiss of me not to call out the fact that one of our standards that we look at in our compliance review for certification is our affiliate standard. And so we take a look at who is your, who is your pharmacy that you are contracted with? Who is your compounding pharmacy? Who are your affiliated partners that you work with on a, ah, on a regular basis? Because we ensure that they are acting compliantly as well. Because we don't want a situation like that like you just referenced to happen where someone unknowingly doesn't understand that they're working with an entity that maybe isn't acting compliantly and that's going to fall back on you as the merchant of record, right?

Speaker A: Yeah, the merchant that falls back on them. You know, and some merchants have, you know, like they link up with these companies, whether it's a nutraceutical company or a company that's selling other types of products and then they're just getting a feed onto their website and they're not looking at that feed. And then there could be some illegal products on there. And that's where the problems come from is, you know, merchants, ultimately you're responsible to check all the products and you can't just willy nilly just have this open feed you need to be checking. Just like now we have the, there's um, a, there's a war on vape going on where the FDA is, this has a list of the products that can be sold and there's a list of about five or six things like absolutely, you will get in trouble and get your merchant account shut off if you have it in your store, on your website. You know, we've been warning people for months about this and now there's even more warning letters going out. We saw a letter that went out by the national association of Convenience Store Owners the other day that went out from a card brand telling everybody that several products that they need to remove from their shelves. Yeah.

Speaker B: And while, while, um, of course we always look at websites on the certification side and making sure that what they are selling is permissible. Right. And not violative content or illegal under regulations. But our other business lines that we do have, we have a lot of um, insight. We've been tracking um, the trending, um, vape progress I would say for a very long time. I feel like we could do a web, A uh, webinar or uh, a podcast, all on vapes alone, to be honest with you, so. Or impermissible products that are very similar.

Speaker A: I'd have to have you back on the podcast because it's a big hot topic right now.

Speaker B: Yeah, it is.

Speaker A: And you know, this one of the, like dive into it. But really. So what separates a legitimate telehealth company from one that's going to have problems if someone wants to launch a telehealth business today? And pharmacy, what does a compliant operation need to have in place before they apply to Legit Scripts? And I can answer some of these questions, some of that.

Speaker B: Should I quiz you?

Speaker A: Well, you know, when a client comes to me and they say, hey, we want to go to Legit Scripts, well, the first thing is we get an application from them. Then the next thing we do is we review the website with them. We explain to them what possibly needs to be changed. We also tell them, you know, because we have a program through a couple of our processors for the expedited approval from Legit Scripts. So explain to them how that program works. Reach out to me. We're not going to discuss the, the what, what the cost are and so on and so forth of that. Then, then you know, you have, you have to supply your, you know, you have to show your website. You need to check all your wording before you send it in. And you need to give a list of all the doctors or the telehealth company you have a contract with. And probably the contract, who's your pharmacy? Where's their licenses? Are they National Board of Pharmacy or do they have Legit Script and your contracts with them? And then you have to fill out all bunch of paperwork and it goes to Legit scripts. That's pretty much the deal. Right. Perfect.

Speaker B: What do you need me here for, Alan?

Speaker A: Well, I'm here. You're here to validate like.

Speaker B: Oh, got it, I got it.

Speaker A: This is what it is.

Speaker B: Let's chat through a few here of uh, the hot ones, I would say it's um. One, does your platform facilitate the sale of compounded medications? If so, we're going to ask you to fill out a compounding addendum. Um, is your website still under development? This is a, this is a which comes first, the chicken or the egg situation. Right? We want to spin up this website. You want to drive business, but you don't have a processor yet or you, you don't have the business yet. Your website's not live, that is. Okay, you can apply and you can prepare wireframes or screenshots with that application. Um, and the expected timeframe for completion of the website when you want to go live. And we can um, get everything ready so, so that as soon as you're live we'll do that final cursory overview, make sure everything is as you had provided via the screenshots and get you up and running as soon as we can. Um, I always recommend doing that because compliance shouldn't be an aftersight, it shouldn't be a, uh. Well, we're up and ready. We're ready to open our doors but we've forgotten a few things here that we need to kind of check those off. Um, one other, I would say number three. Um, I referenced this earlier but are your affiliates or affiliations, um, with your businesses, are they compliant with our certification standards? So, um, co owned businesses of business owners or principals, supplying wholesalers, partner pharmacies or provider networks, are they also legitscript certified or an ABP accredited? Um, ensuring that your website has uh, a US HIPAA compliant or if you're operating in a different country and you're listening to this privacy, uh, policy that applies in your country, have one ready for our review for what will be on the website. Um, if you do have an online pres, of course. And then lastly, are you prescribing or dispensing those controlled um, substances? We're going to need an ah, uploaded copy of your DEA certificates just like you had referenced. If you're serving patients outside the US we're going to need you to provide your country's equivalent registration for prescribing or dispensing controlled substances. If you are doing that. I would say those are the biggies, to be honest with you.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's pretty much what I said, you know.

Speaker B: Yes it is.

Speaker A: But one thing for sure is you're not going to get a merchant account without a finished website. So yeah, you have to, uh, you know, I tell people like if the website's not completely finished, you can still start going through the process, but you're not going to get your certification from legit Script and you're not going to get, you're not going to get your merchant account turned on without a finished product.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker A: So what, frequently what will cause an application to get rejected by legit script? What are a few things or that you see? Merchants,

Speaker B: um, first and foremost we've been chatting a lot about this, uh, you and I today. But products that fall outside of what's legally sellable. So Peptides are a really great example of this, um, selling legitimate GLP1s but then also layering in retatrue tag which is impermissible. One thing on the website that's impermissible or violative against regulations will cause that certification to either be delayed or if you refuse to remediate it, denied altogether. Um, like I said, we don't like to get to that point. We offer that time frame and that work of the remediation, but it's definitely something that's there.

Speaker A: Yeah. So when somebody's website has maybe like wording on it or a product, you basically tell them say hey, this needs to be adjusted, this needs to be removed.

Speaker B: Right, exactly.

Speaker A: Coaching.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker A: To get you as much as we

Speaker B: can because again we're a third party independent compliance review so we don't give advice but we can set, say this is violative. We need a HIPAA policy that is legitimate, you know, that, that falls under regulations etc. But um, secondly I would say incomplete or evasive answers during the review itself or failure to disclose, um, past disciplinary issues on the provider side, um, that transparency can speed up everything, to be honest with you. Um, let's see, claims they have to

Speaker A: make sure like they're dealing with pharmacies and doctors or telemedicine platforms that also, you know, they need to check them out to make sure like you know, do they have anything that, anything that they've done wrong in the past that could affect the merchant.

Speaker B: Exactly, yeah, exactly. And that ties back to that affiliate standard I referenced. Right. You need to know who you're working with, whether that's a provider or whether that's a pharmacy network. Um, you need to know who you're working with and that they're legitimate and Acting compliantly. Um, what else? I would say claims on the domain that kind, um, of outrun, uh, the product or service that is actually being delivered. So we don't want to see things like guaranteed weight loss or as good as XYZ, GLP1 brand name insert here. Right. We don't want to see that. That's a violation of FDA regulations. Um, for marketing claims.

Speaker A: Yeah. Um, curious. Rheumatoid arthritis.

Speaker B: Exactly. It's a, it's a cure, it's a guarantee.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Um, pharmacies or prescribers that aren't properly licensed in the state that they are operating in, um, people, I think in, in today's modern age, especially with telemedicine, we are looking at where that patient is, we're looking at where the prescriber is, the pharmacy. We want licensure for all of those. There are certain states and feel free to reach out to me, but there are certain states that also require businesses to be registered as telemedicine, um, with a, with a business type of a telemedicine provider. It's specific and so we do verify that information. And then um, last but not least, sort of the delay or get you to a no is kind of treating the certification as a one time checkbox. Um, again it's not a rubber stamp, it's an ongoing relationship that we do ask. And so getting your website spun up with everything that meets the mark and then a month later changing all of your information on the website or adding in BP BPC157 or something along those lines after the fact, that's going to be a problem. And again we'll reach out and depending on how egregious it is, it's either going to be something that um, we need to have remediated or there have been circumstances where there have been merchants that have acted in such an egregious way that it's an instantaneous loss of their certification. But I wouldn't say that that sort of thing is a surprise to those merchants when it does happen is what I'll say.

Speaker A: Well, uh, you want, you also could get warnings from the card brands and then get put on the cash list.

Speaker B: So you don't want that very much so. Right.

Speaker A: You know. Okay, so here's my last question. And then you can add. So does getting LegitScript certified mean the payment processor will automatically approve you?

Speaker B: I love this question. And I, uh, would say very definitively no. And that's an important distinction to make. So certification tells a processor that a merchant has cleared that rigorous independence compliance bar that we referenced earlier. It's a strong signal, but it's one input into their own underwriting decision. Processors still have their own risk appetites, and I speak with processors all the time that have different and very disparate risk appetites. You have your own policies, it's your own final call. We are not the approval, but we're a credential that can make approval decisions faster and better informed.

Speaker A: Yeah, there's definitely. I've had conversations with several banks about telemedicine platforms and what they're trying to sell and what they. And you know, I was told by three different banks because we speak not just to the processors that we work with, but we also speak actually to the bank, uh, in many cases because I have some very large clients. So I've access to people in the high places who are making decisions and you know, 25 years in payments, you know, and you get to know people, they move up. Yeah. So you can have these, so you can have these conversations with people and ask them about it. And they say, hey, you know, there are some products that we're not comfortable with. So we're not going to say, oh, we're going to give, you know, oh, you bring us a legit script client, we're all in on that. You know, they, they're giving, giving themselves like an inch to move around that there could be something on that website that they're not comfortable with. I could say that any merchants who we've dealt with, that I've dealt with personally, they have legit script, they're doing everything right, they're getting approved, I can tell you. And if they do business the, the right way, there's no shenanigans going on. There's very little chargeback activity on these sites. Very, very little. The sites who decide to go rogue or doing something they're not supposed to do, they get shut off very quickly because the banks don't want to deal, especially they do not want to take any. This is one thing that a lot of people don't understand. Reputational risk, okay? And that's one thing banks talk about all the time. And I remember the very first time when I was very new in this business and this guy who's still a friend of mine today, 25 years later, he goes, when we look at a merchant account, he goes, we got to do the, the, the uh, front page test. People are being like, what, what's the front page test? They go, uh, if that guy ends up on the Front page of the newspaper today. The equivalent would be they end up on the Internet. Right, right. In a news story. Right. Do we want our name mentioned in there? Because they sold something that made somebody sick or whatever deep could happen, right? Or worse than that. And that's exactly, you know, that's what banks are doing. They're looking at their. They're looking at their reputational risk. Um, we had a client that had a. I don't want to say what kind of business, but they decided after, like, they were a client for a couple years, and the guy was. Earlier in life was involved in some kind of, uh, some kind of business, and he got in trouble and decided to make. Go on, like, do some TV show where they did an expose on this thing that went down year, like, probably 15, 20 years ago, right? And the TV show went everywhere. And this guy's in the TV show. I was like, what possessed you to do. And I get a note from the bank. They're like, this account is closed. Blah, blah, blah. Go, look at this. I was like, man, oh, no. I had to call the guy on the phone because I'm like, dude, like, why would you do that?

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: Uh, he had a bunch of businesses, and the guy ended up on the match list.

Speaker B: Oh, no.

Speaker A: So you got to be careful, like, what you put out there. You know what you. What's in. Like, you have to watch what's in your advertising. You have to watch what's in your. Like, a lot of these websites have affiliates, right? So they have affiliate links out there, and you have to monitor, like, those affiliate links because we've had merchants where we'll get a warning and it'll say, hey, this client, XYZ Merchant has this ad out there. It's an affiliate of theirs. We want it taken down. And you know, and some pro. I will tell you, you know, there's processors that give out warnings, right? They give out warnings and they go, hey, this has to go. You know, this has to go. This. Just take care of this and we'll be good. And you have, you know, two days. Get rid of it. You know, get rid of this affiliate. So you really. You're responsible as a merchant for all these affiliates. And we'll touch on vape a little bit right now. I can tell you if you're a vape merchant, you need to go look at your Google business profile, your Facebook's, Instagram, whatever social medias you have. You need to take a look at your website, and you need to seriously look at the list that's on the FDA website of the allowed. And that's actually down to, like, a couple of things. They're talking about, um, flavored vape. There's that. There's vape juice, whatever. The. The stuff, I guess they call it the juice. And then there's actually the, the. The device and devices that are on the list that cannot be sold anymore. Physical device. But we could do a whole podcast

Speaker B: to talk about this. But it's a wild world, that's for sure.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's the warning on vape. And I can tell you they are on the warpath. Letters are going out, emails are going out from processors now. I mean, they sent something out, card, brand, sent a whole thing to the national association of, of, um, of Convenience Store Owners. So everybody is getting warned about this upfront. Hey, you need to get this stuff off the shelf. I mean, there's a lot of stuff going on from a regulatory standpoint, you know, and then CBD and hemp. There's a new rules about that too. So believe me, we could have legit script on here for three hours talking

Speaker B: about, you know, ever changing landscape for sure.

Speaker A: Right. So there's a lot of compliance going on that people need to be aware of in the business and be, you know, to be compliant. But today we covered, you know, what is legit scripts, what. Why do you need to have it, how does it work, how to get certified? So if you want more information about how to get your telemedicine pharmacy business certified by LegitScript, you can reach out to me at nationwide paymentsystems.com we can help you with that. We can get you hooked up with people at LegitScript so that you can go through the process and get approved for your business. So, Angela, any parting words?

Speaker B: No, I just. I've enjoyed it. And if I had one last sort of, um, item to share, would be just a gentle reminder. That certification doesn't replace anyone's judgment. Ours, the platforms, the processors. It just means everyone's starting with the same set of verified facts. So, you know, we're here to help and shine a light on the good actors and, you know, reach out if there's anything that I could do to assist or answer, um, questions. Our website has a lot of really good collateral and FAQs and information on it. So there's a lot of great starting point.

Speaker A: There's a lot of good stuff on there. And we also have information that we got from you guys and we can give to merchants. So thank you. And, uh, thank you to Legit Script for allowing me to borrow Angela today. And I am going to have her back. And again, because there's a lot. Compliance is becoming very big in the, in the industry of payments. And, yeah, it's becoming really big because as the Internet is blowing up and it's gotten, you know, bigger and bigger every year, more people buying online, there's more compliance, so.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker A: Thank you for being on the show today. Again, B2B Vault, the Biz to Biz podcast, um, sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems. And thank you again to Angela Salter from Legit Script for coming on today. I appreciate it.

Speaker B: Yeah, thanks for having me. It was so great to be here.