Michael Tomko the COO at CardX is our special guest this week on episode 75 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. Michael grew up Columbus Ohio, went to Harvard College studying philosophy and then went to Harvard Law School and initially worked in real estate. He actually went to high school and Harvard Law School with the CardX CEO Jonathon Razi. CardX is a fintech company that makes it easy for businesses to accept payments – with a focus on the credit card surcharging model. The company was started in 2013 and actually doubled their headcount during the last year. Their distribution is through their channel partners – so ISOs, ISVs and others sell the CardX solution. CardX is the only company in payments that leads with surcharging. Everything that CardX has built is focused on the surcharging model first. They are most differentiated for larger merchants typically selling online with larger ticket items. The surcharging model doesn’t work well for smaller ticket card present businesses.  There are 47 states that now allow surcharging – so only three states left that don’t allow surcharging.  The latest state to allow it was Kansas and CardX was the primary driving force behind that change.   Michael has a professional passion for helping solve new use cases for surcharging and a personal passion for being in the outdoors, especially hiking.