The Hidden Profit Lever Most eCommerce Businesses Ignore is Costing You Money | Maria Sparagis

<p>Payment processing sounds boring. That's exactly why most merchants ignore it, and exactly why Maria Sparagis says it's one of the highest leverage levers in your business.<br /></p><p>Maria has spent almost 25 years in payments and founded DirectPayNet to help high risk merchants stop losing revenue to default settings, bad decline handling, and a checkout flow nobody ever tested. In this episode she breaks down how a few overlooked toggles in your payment gateway can move conversion by 3 to 10 percent, why a decline should never be treated as a dead sale, and why relying on one payment processor is one of the riskiest things an ecommerce brand can do.</p><p><br />=================================<br /><b>What you'll learn:</b></p><ul><li>Why default settings on Stripe and Shopify Payments are quietly killing conversions</li><li>How to turn a declined transaction into a recovered sale instead of a lost one</li><li>Why every merchant needs to know their decline ratio, refund rate, and chargeback rate</li><li>Why relying on a single payment processor puts your entire business at risk</li><li>How AI powered chargeback alerts are starting to predict fraud before it happens</li><li>Why testing your own checkout flow with a fresh set of eyes can expose the friction that's costing you sales</li></ul><p><br />=================================<br /><b>About Maria Sparagis:<br /></b>Maria Sparagis is the founder of DirectPayNet, a payment processing company built for high risk ecommerce merchants in supplements, subscriptions, travel, and more. She has nearly 25 years of experience in payments and also hosts the Click and Convert podcast, with over 600 episodes on conversion, customer service, and turning overlooked parts of the business into profit centers.<br /></p><p>=================================<br /><b>Key moments:</b></p><ul><li>Why Stripe's default settings might be actively hurting your conversion rate</li><li>The real cost of treating a decline as the end of the sale</li><li>Why she recommends every serious merchant run a backup payment processor</li><li>Her take on where AI is headed in fraud prevention and approval decisions</li></ul><p><br />=================================<br /><b>Connect with Maria Sparagis:<br /></b>Facebook:<a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.facebook.com/maria.sparagis" target="_blank"> https://www.facebook.com/maria.sparagis<br /></a>LinkedIn:<a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariasparagis/" target="_blank"> https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariasparagis/<br /></a>Instagram:<a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.instagram.com/mariasparagis/" target="_blank"> https://www.instagram.com/mariasparagis/</a></p><p>Website: <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://directpaynet.com/" target="_blank">https://directpaynet.com/</a><br /><br />=================================</p><p><b>About The Built To Scale Podcast:</b></p><p>Follow us on LinkedIn at: <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/" target="_blank">https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/</a> </p><p>For more information about Built To Scale visit: <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.builttoscale.co/" target="_blank">https://www.builttoscale.co/</a>  </p><p>If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="mailto:podcast@builttoscale.co" target="_blank">podcast@builttoscale.co</a>.</p>