The Payments Processor Regulatory Risk Register

Description

What is the The Payments Processor Regulatory Risk course about?

One register that reads cleanly to PCI assessors, supervisors, and the card schemes' risk programmes, without three parallel rewrites. Your risk register has to satisfy a PCI QSA, a banking supervisor, and the card schemes' risk programmes at the same time. Right now it lives across three spreadsheets and a slide, and every quarter you rewrite it for whoever is asking. Includes.

Why this course?

What do you take away from the The Payments Processor Regulatory Risk course?

Stand up a single risk register architecture that produces PCI, supervisory, and scheme views without parallel rewrites. Produce a board-ready regulatory risk paper that holds up to QSA, supervisor, and scheme questioning. Map every control once and have it surface correctly in the QSA RoC, the supervisor return, and the scheme attestation. Run a settlement, authorisation, and clearing operational resilience scenario library.

What you get with this course?

Twelve written modules in the Art of Service learning environment. A register data model and worked example tailored to a payments processor with multiple acquiring entities. Downloadable templates for the PCI mapping table, the supervisory risk-appetite statement, the scheme risk view, the resilience scenario library, the outsourcing register, and the board risk paper. The hand-built implementation playbook produced for your specific authorisation.

What you will have in hand by Day 1, Week 1, Month 1?

Within 24 hours your account in the learning environment is provisioned and the tailored implementation playbook is delivered alongside it. Modules 1 to 3 take roughly a week of part-time study and produce the register architecture and the appetite statement. Modules 4 to 9 take two to three weeks and produce the scheme view, the resilience scenarios, the outsourcing register, and the.

What does the The Payments Processor Regulatory Risk cover on before and after?

Three spreadsheets and a slide. The QSA, the supervisor, and the schemes get different views of the same risk and ask why the numbers do not reconcile. Every audit feels like a fresh build. One register, three views derived from it. The QSA RoC mapping, the supervisory return, the scheme attestation, the resilience scenario log, and the board paper all draw from.

What happens if you do not address this?

The next supervisory dialogue, scheme review, or QSA cycle exposes the gap between the three documents. Findings land on the regulatory risk function. Remediation eats the quarter and the board loses confidence in the second line's grip on the register.

Who it is for?

Regulatory risk professionals inside payments processors, acquirers, and issuer processors, sitting between the second line risk function, the compliance and PCI programme, scheme relationship managers, and the operational resilience team. You report into a head of regulatory risk or a CRO and you are the person who has to make the register stand up under questioning from a QSA, a supervisor, and.

More answers: what you get with every course, refund policy, all help answers.

A focused course, tailored for you

The Payments Processor Regulatory Risk Register Playbook

One register that reads cleanly to PCI assessors, supervisors, and the card schemes' risk programmes, without three parallel rewrites.

Your risk register has to satisfy a PCI QSA, a banking supervisor, and the card schemes' risk programmes at the same time. Right now it lives across three spreadsheets and a slide, and every quarter you rewrite it for whoever is asking.

$199 one-time

Tailored to your situation. Access within 24 hours. 30-day money-back.

Includes a hand-built implementation playbook delivered alongside course access, generated for your specific situation.

Why this course

Regulatory risk inside a the firm processor is not one register, it is the same risks expressed in three taxonomies at once. The QSA reads it as control compliance against PCI DSS 4 requirements. The supervisor reads it as prudential, conduct, operational resilience, and outsourcing exposure under the regime that licences each acquiring entity. The card schemes read it through their own risk and incident programmes, with chargeback, fraud, settlement-failure, and compliance-programme signals. When the same risk has to be expressed three different ways, the team ends up maintaining three documents, none of them fully current, and every committee asks why the numbers do not reconcile. The fix is not better cross-referencing, it is a single register architecture where the risk is captured once with all three views derived from it.

What you walk away with

Stand up a single risk register architecture that produces PCI, supervisory, and scheme views without parallel rewrites.
Produce a board-ready regulatory risk paper that holds up to QSA, supervisor, and scheme questioning.
Map every control once and have it surface correctly in the QSA RoC, the supervisor return, and the scheme attestation.
Run a settlement, authorisation, and clearing operational resilience scenario library that satisfies impact tolerances and scheme resilience expectations.
Tie chargeback, fraud, and complaints trend data into the register so the conduct view is evidenced, not asserted.

The 12 modules

Module 1. The three-audience register architecture

Walk through the register design where each risk is captured once with PCI, supervisory, and scheme views derived from it. Covers the taxonomy mapping between PCI DSS 4 control families, prudential and conduct risk categories used by central-bank examiners of payment institutions and e-money institutions, and the scheme risk programmes such as Visa's risk and Mastercard's compliance programmes. Includes the data model and a worked example for an acquiring entity.

Module 2. PCI DSS 4 control mapping into the register

How to record PCI controls so the register doubles as the source for the QSA RoC mapping table. Covers customised approach versus defined approach, the targeted risk analysis evidence the QSA expects, the network and CDE segmentation arguments, the SAQ scope decisions for partner entities, and the way scheme compliance programmes consume PCI attestation. The register row design supports all of these without parallel documents.

Module 3. Supervisory risk-appetite statement for a payments processor

Drafting the risk-appetite statement that your prudential supervisor and your board both accept. Covers the appetite categories typical of a regulated payment institution or e-money institution: settlement, liquidity, operational resilience, conduct, outsourcing concentration, financial crime, and capital. Each appetite metric ties back to a register row so when appetite is breached the register reflects it immediately and the SREP-style supervisory dialogue is grounded in evidence.

Module 4. Card scheme oversight and the scheme risk view

How Visa, Mastercard, the firm, Discover, JCB, and the regional schemes treat processor risk. Covers the scheme compliance programmes, the chargeback monitoring programmes, the fraud monitoring programmes, the data security programmes, and the dispute lifecycle reporting cadences. The module shows how to project the same register data into each scheme's expected reporting format so scheme reviews and audits draw from the register, not from one-off extracts.

Module 5. Authorisation, clearing, settlement risk modelling

The processor-specific operational risks across the authorisation, clearing, and settlement lifecycle. Covers stand-in processing risk, network downtime exposure, clearing file integrity, settlement timing risk, sponsor bank dependency, intraday liquidity, and the cross-border settlement exposures specific to multi-currency processing. The module produces register rows that the operational resilience team and the treasury team both recognise.

Module 6. Operational resilience scenario library for payments

Building the scenario library that supports impact tolerance work under the UK Bank of England and FCA operational resilience regime, the EU DORA regime for in-scope entities, the Australian CPS 230 regime where it applies, and the equivalent supervisory expectations in other jurisdictions. Scenarios cover authorisation network outage, clearing partner failure, settlement bank failure, encryption key compromise, cardholder data exposure, and scheme reconnection failure. Each scenario maps to register rows.

Module 7. Outsourcing and third-party risk in a processor stack

The outsourcing register that satisfies prudential third-party regimes and scheme third-party expectations. Covers cloud providers, tokenisation vendors, fraud-screening vendors, KYC and AML vendors, settlement banks, sponsor banks, gateway partners, ISVs, and the chain of subcontractors. The register captures concentration risk, exit-plan adequacy, scheme-mandated supplier reviews, and the supervisory third-party reporting that has tightened across jurisdictions.

Module 8. Financial crime and conduct overlays

How AML, sanctions, fraud, and conduct risk show up in a processor regulatory register. Covers merchant onboarding risk, high-risk merchant categories, transaction laundering, sanctions screening at acquiring and at processing, conduct outcomes for cardholders and merchants, complaints and disputes data feeding the conduct view, and the financial crime supervisory expectations under FATF-aligned regimes. Each row carries both the prudential and the conduct supervisor view.

Module 9. The QSA, supervisor, and scheme audit calendar

Treating audits as a programme rather than three projects. Covers PCI RoC cycles, ISO 27001 surveillance audits, SOC 2 Type II coverage, scheme on-site reviews, supervisor inspections, internal audit cycles, and the way each audience's evidence draws from the same register. Includes the cadence template for a global processor running multiple acquiring licences across regions and a single evidence library that all audits draw from.

Module 10. Board regulatory risk paper for a payments processor

Drafting the quarterly board risk paper that the CRO signs and the audit and risk committee accepts. Covers the structure that holds up across regulatory and scheme dialogues: the risk-appetite dashboard, the top regulatory risks with the three-audience view, material incidents and near misses, supervisory and scheme open items, resilience scenario outcomes, and the forward-looking regulatory horizon. Includes a worked board paper from register data.

Module 11. Horizon scanning and rulemaking that moves the register

How to keep the register current against the live regulatory and scheme rule pipeline relevant to a payments processor. Covers PCI DSS evolutions, scheme rule bulletins, EU PSD3 and PSR developments, EU instant payments rules, MiCA touchpoints where relevant, UK FCA payments and e-money rule changes, US state money transmission updates, Australian Reserve Bank and AUSTRAC updates, and the comparable rule streams across Asia-Pacific. Each change has a triage path into register rows.

Module 12. Operating the register day to day

The operating model that keeps the single register actually used. Covers the second line ownership model, the control owner attestation cycle, the first line evidence intake, the way scheme and supervisor responses are logged back into the register, the integration with GRC tooling commonly used in payments, and the handover protocol to internal audit and the QSA. Closes with the running checklist that keeps the register board-ready every week.

How this addresses your situation

Specific modules that map to what you said you are dealing with.

Module 1 to 3 give you the architecture and the appetite statement, so the register stops being three spreadsheets.

Module 4 to 6 cover the scheme, the lifecycle, and the resilience scenarios, so authorisation, clearing, settlement, and scheme reporting all draw from the same source.

Module 7 to 9 cover outsourcing, financial crime and conduct, and the audit calendar, so every external dialogue uses the same evidence.

Module 10 to 12 produce the board paper, the horizon-scanning intake, and the operating model, so the register stays current and the CRO can sign quarterly without rebuilding it.

What you get with this course

Twelve written modules in the Art of Service learning environment.
A register data model and worked example tailored to a payments processor with multiple acquiring entities.
Downloadable templates for the PCI mapping table, the supervisory risk-appetite statement, the scheme risk view, the resilience scenario library, the outsourcing register, and the board risk paper.
The hand-built implementation playbook produced for your specific authorisation, clearing, settlement, and scheme reporting footprint, delivered alongside course access.
30-day money-back if the register architecture does not apply to your processor.

What you will have in hand by Day 1, Week 1, Month 1

Within 24 hours your account in the learning environment is provisioned and the tailored implementation playbook is delivered alongside it.

Modules 1 to 3 take roughly a week of part-time study and produce the register architecture and the appetite statement.

Modules 4 to 9 take two to three weeks and produce the scheme view, the resilience scenarios, the outsourcing register, and the audit calendar.

Modules 10 to 12 take a final week and produce the board paper, the horizon-scanning intake, and the operating model.

Before and after

Before

Three spreadsheets and a slide. The QSA, the supervisor, and the schemes get different views of the same risk and ask why the numbers do not reconcile. Every audit feels like a fresh build.

After

One register, three views derived from it. The QSA RoC mapping, the supervisory return, the scheme attestation, the resilience scenario log, and the board paper all draw from the same rows. Audit cycles become evidence pulls rather than rebuilds.

What happens if you do not address this

Who it is for

Who this is NOT for. Not for fraud operations staff who only handle case-level chargeback and dispute work, not for merchant-facing sales risk, not for engineers building anti-fraud models, and not for general enterprise risk roles outside payments. This is specifically for the regulatory risk seat inside a payments processor.

How it arrives

Text-based course in the Art of Service learning environment, plus downloadable templates and worked examples for every module, plus the hand-built implementation playbook delivered alongside course access.

Time investment. Roughly four to six weeks part-time at three to four hours a week, faster if compressed into a sprint.

Why $199 is the right number

A Big4 advisory engagement to consolidate the register typically runs into six figures and twelve to twenty weeks, with deliverables tuned to the firm's methodology rather than your processor stack. A scheme or supervisory consultant covers only their audience. The PCI QSA writes to PCI scope. This course gives the regulatory risk seat the architecture that holds for all three audiences, with the implementation playbook hand-built for your footprint.

FAQ

Is this for issuing, acquiring, or processing risk?

All three, with worked examples weighted toward a processor that runs acquiring entities and issuer-processing services. The register architecture is the same.

Does it cover PCI DSS 4 customised approach?

Yes. Module 2 covers customised approach and defined approach, the targeted risk analysis evidence the QSA expects, and how that evidence lives in the register.

What about DORA, CPS 230, and the UK operational resilience regime?

Module 6 covers all three with the scenario library design. The same scenarios feed impact tolerances under each regime.

Is the implementation playbook generic?

No. It is hand-built against the specific authorisation, clearing, settlement, and scheme reporting footprint you describe at enrolment, delivered alongside course access.

Refund policy?

30-day money-back if the register architecture does not apply to your processor.

30-day money-back guarantee. If after a week of working through the materials this is not what you needed, reply to the receipt email and a full refund is processed. No questions, no forms.

Within 24 hours your account in the learning environment is provisioned and the tailored implementation playbook is delivered alongside it.