Total-Apps — Advanced Payment Processing Solutions

Rey Pasinli

Payments Engineer · 27 years · 85,000 merchants · ~250 banks, processors & PayFacs

Rey Pasinli, Payments Engineer at Total-Apps
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Rey Pasinli is the payments engineer behind Total-Apps. He holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from California State University, Fullerton, and an MBA from Pepperdine University, and began his career as a mechanical engineer on the International Space Station program before moving into e-commerce during the dot-com era.

Over 27 years he has worked directly with more than 85,000 merchants across roughly 250 banks, processors, ISOs, PayFacs, PSPs, and wallet solutions. He helped design fraud-scrubbing logic still used inside one of the industry's largest payment gateways, authored a 100-page compliance guideline covering CBD and peptide processing, and personally launched, secured approval for, and certified four separate PayFac licenses.

His approach treats payments as an engineering problem, not a sales problem: the right components, correctly matched to the business, built to hold under pressure. That perspective is why complex and high-risk merchants, the accounts most processors freeze or decline, come to Total-Apps to get placed and stay running.

Credentials

  • B.S., Mechanical Engineering — California State University, Fullerton
  • MBA — Pepperdine University
  • Launched, secured approval for, and certified four separate PayFac licenses
  • Authored a 100-page compliance guideline covering CBD and peptide processing
  • Helped design fraud-scrubbing logic still used inside one of the industry's largest payment gateways

Areas of Expertise

  • High-risk merchant underwriting
  • Chargeback prevention & dispute resolution
  • CBD, peptide & nutraceutical processing
  • Reserve structures & processing limits
  • PayFac licensing
  • Split payments
  • Card-network risk programs (VAMP, VIRP)
  • Fraud scrubbing
  • Payment gateway architecture

Rey writes and reviews the payment-processing guidance across the Total-Apps resource library and industry news.

Interviews & Podcasts

Rey is a regular guest on payments, e-commerce and direct-response shows. These are conversations about how merchant accounts actually work, from the underwriting side of the table.

On Video

Longer-form conversations on fraud, chargebacks and the card-network programs that decide who gets to process.

More on Rey’s YouTube channel (opens in a new tab).

Featured In

Profiles, features and interview transcripts covering the route from aerospace engineering into payments.

Common Questions

The questions merchants ask Rey most often, answered plainly.

What makes a business “high-risk” in the first place?
Rarely the product. It is usually the billing model, the traffic source, the ticket size, and the dispute history. A supplement company selling one-time orders through search traffic and the same company running free-trial continuity through affiliates are the same product and completely different risk files.
Why do so many banks decline me without really looking?
Because most of them were never registered to acquire your category and could not have accepted you under any circumstances. Under Visa's Integrity Risk Program a bank must be approved before it may even solicit certain business types, and most never apply. A decline is far more often a category mismatch than a judgement about your company.
What is the fastest way to get a frozen account resolved?
Get a human on the phone, specifically the risk manager who owns the account, and find out which metric actually triggered it. Then fix that specific thing and report the completed fix back to the same person. Merchants who arrive with a solved problem get treated very differently from merchants who arrive with a plan.
How low does my chargeback ratio need to be?
Treat 1% as the operating target and the formal network thresholds as the cliff rather than the goal. If you run affiliate traffic, hold yourself to half that, because you want room to absorb one bad campaign without crossing a line.
Do I really need more than one processing relationship?
If your business depends on card payments, yes. Category-wide policy changes happen for reasons that have nothing to do with your conduct, and a single acquirer means a single memo can take you offline entirely.
What do you need from me to get started?
A clear description of what you actually sell, your processing history if you have one, and an honest account of anything that has gone wrong before. Disclosure early is always cheaper than discovery later.

For Journalists & Podcast Hosts

Rey takes interview and commentary requests. He is an operator rather than a spokesperson, so the useful material is specifics: what acquirers actually check, why accounts get frozen, and how card-network rule changes land on real businesses.

Topics he covers:

  • High-risk underwriting and why applications fail
  • Chargebacks, disputes and card-network monitoring programs
  • CBD, peptide and telehealth payment compliance
  • Frozen funds, reserves and processing limits
  • PayFac licensing and gateway architecture
Request an Interview

Contact Your Total-Apps Team

From custom setup to improving performance to stopping business-critical problems, Total-Apps brings 27 years and 85,000 merchants of payments expertise to businesses across the United States.

Prefer to talk? Call us today:1-949-274-8975

Rey Pasinli, Payments Engineer at Total-Apps
Rey Pasinli
Payments Engineer · 27 years in payments

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