Merchant Counselor
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About Merchant Counselor

Built around a simple idea: understand the merchant first.

Merchant Counselor was created to give businesses a more thoughtful way to navigate payments — one that begins with how the business actually operates rather than the product someone wants to sell.

Our ApproachTalk to a Merchant Counselor

The people behind Merchant Counselor

Different perspectives.One merchant-first approach.

Experience in banking, business ownership and payments, focused on understanding your business.

Raul Vasquez

Founder & Payments Advisor

A broader view of payments.

Portrait of Raul Vasquez smiling in a blue shirt against a dark background

Raul Vasquez helps business owners understand and improve the payment systems behind their operations. His work spans in-person and ecommerce payments, POS technology, gateways, recurring billing and the connections between providers.

He evaluates processing costs, investigates approval and decline patterns, and helps merchants assess fraud and chargeback tools. He stays involved through implementation and ongoing review, looking for practical changes that fit how the business operates.

Raul founded Merchant Counselor in 2013 after a career in banking and merchant services that began in 2005. His approach starts with the merchant’s needs and looks at the entire payment environment before recommending what to change—or what to keep.

Doug Woolley

Payments Partner

East Coast Division

A business owner’s perspective.

Portrait of Doug Woolley smiling in a navy blazer and light blue shirt

Before entering payments, Doug owned a landscaping company and ran an ecommerce business selling on Amazon, Walmart and eBay. He understands the challenges of running a business firsthand.

He began in payments working door-to-door with local business owners. Today, he helps merchants of all sizes, including established ecommerce brands, navigate processing costs, chargebacks, approvals and payment solutions.

At Merchant Counselor, Doug focuses on business development, partnerships, merchant onboarding and ongoing account management—from initial outreach and underwriting through account monitoring and optimization.

Understand the merchant first.Recommend the solution second.

Payments are complicated enough without starting from the wrong question.

Many payment conversations begin with:

  • Which processor?
  • Which terminal?
  • Which POS?
  • What rate?

Those questions matter. But they usually come later.

We prefer to begin with:

  • How does your business work?
  • How do customers pay?
  • What is working today?
  • What is not?
  • What are you trying to improve?

Once those questions are understood, the technology and payment structure become much easier to evaluate.

Understand the merchant first.Recommend the solution second.

Merchant Counselor works across multiple processors, gateways, POS platforms and payment technologies.

That flexibility allows us to evaluate more than one path.

  • Sometimes the right answer is a new processor.
  • Sometimes it is a different gateway.
  • Sometimes it is a better POS system.
  • Sometimes it is changing only one piece of the existing environment.
  • And sometimes the best recommendation is to leave things exactly as they are.

The goal is not change for the sake of change. The goal is a payment environment that works better for the business.

Payment processing is only one piece of the conversation.

Merchant Counselor's work has expanded beyond selecting processors and equipment.

These pieces often affect one another.

That is why we look at the payment environment as a system.

What a payment decision may involve today

  • 01POS technology
  • 02Ecommerce infrastructure
  • 03Gateways
  • 04Recurring billing
  • 05Approval rates
  • 06Chargebacks
  • 07Fraud controls
  • 08Merchant account structure
  • 09Routing
  • 10Orchestration
  • 11Reporting
  • 12Processing costs

Experience matters most when it helps make a better decision.

Merchant Counselor combines experience from traditional banking, merchant services, payment technology and hands-on merchant support.

But experience is only useful if it helps simplify the decision in front of the merchant.

We do not expect business owners to become payment experts. That is our job.

How we work.

  1. Laptop displaying payment analysis beside a sketched workflow.

    Assess

    Understand the business, current environment, operational needs and payment challenges.

  2. Three payment option cards arranged for comparison.

    Advise

    Evaluate appropriate technologies, providers and payment structures.

  3. Payment terminal showing a completed setup check.

    Implement

    Help coordinate the transition, configuration or deployment when changes are needed.

  4. Laptop showing payment performance improving over time.

    Optimize

    Continue evaluating the environment as the business and payment landscape evolve.

Tell us what is happening in your business.

You do not need to know which processor, gateway, POS system or payment technology you need. Start with the problem, the goal or the question. We will help you work through the rest.

Talk to a Merchant Counselor

No product pitch required