House rules
We are building a trade sheet, not a software awards show
ISOStack is for people who run merchant-services shops: ISO owners, residual managers, boarding leads, ops directors. The weekly (ISO Stack Weekly / The Interchange) is the same audience on a shorter leash: BIN sponsors, brand rules, acquirer news, tool changes that affect month-end.
If Slashdot files Zoho Projects under merchant CRM, that is their problem. We will not copy that mistake into this sheet.
What goes in a row
- Lane: crm, residuals, boarding, or platform. Platform means it honestly covers more than one core job.
- Processor / data notes: only names we can point to on a public page, or marked unknown.
- Pricing: public list price if it exists. Otherwise quote-only / not published.
- Adjacent products: labelled. Centrex sits here as MCA CRM so nobody mistakes it for a TSYS boarding desk.
What does not go in a row
- Invented numeric scores or lab-coat “methodology” that is really vibes.
- Paid placement that reorders the matrix as if it were editorial ranking.
- Copying a vendor’s “#1 in merchant services” blog post as evidence.
Sponsorship
Vendors already buy ink in Green Sheet. We will sell quarterly packages that include a marked placement on the sheet and a case study or teardown slot in the weekly. That money keeps the sheet free to read. It does not buy a fabricated score or a silent rewrite of a competitor’s row. Soft rate card lives on the sponsor page. Outreach waits until audience exists.
Corrections
Public-source rows will be wrong sometimes. After this preview, vendors can claim a profile and send integration docs. Until then, email corrections with a URL we can check. Unsourced “trust us” updates wait.