Why This Record Matters to Anyone Buying Outreach in This Niche
Every action tracked on this page shares the same underlying pattern: a payments-adjacent company using an outbound channel, prerecorded ringless voicemail, telemarketing, or a deceptive processing pitch, in a way that drew a class action or a federal enforcement action. That is directly relevant to anyone buying appointment-setting or lead-generation services in merchant services, because the vendor doing your outreach is the one whose calling practices carry that legal exposure, whether or not you are the one who gets sued.
The National Retail Solutions case in particular is on-point rather than adjacent: NRS Pay sells merchant and POS services to small retailers, the same buyer category most merchant services outreach targets, and the underlying violation was an automated, prerecorded outbound channel, not a live conversation.
Where a Human-Dialed, SMS-Based Model Sits Differently
The NRS Pay case specifically involved unauthorized prerecorded "ringless voicemail" calls, an automated channel with no live person and, per the underlying allegations, no verified consent trail. VA Horizon's merchant services outreach runs differently: Human + AI SDRs hold a real, two-way SMS conversation on the VA Horizon Private CRM, not a prerecorded or automated broadcast. That structural difference does not make TCPA irrelevant to any outbound channel, compliance discipline matters regardless of channel, but it is a materially different practice than the automated, one-way broadcast at the center of the NRS Pay settlement.
The Numbers
880 TCPA lawsuits were filed between January 1 and April 30, 2025, a 44% increase year over year.
By September 2025, 2,128 TCPA lawsuits had been filed year to date, up more than 50% year over year, with 78% of that September's filings being class actions.
National Retail Solutions, Inc. (NRS Pay), which sells merchant and POS services to small retailers, settled a TCPA class action for up to $6,510,240 (up to $135 per class member) over unauthorized prerecorded ringless voicemail calls sent via VoiceLogic from January 8, 2020 through final approval. Case: Walston v. National Retail Solutions, Inc., No. 24-cv-00083. Preliminary approval was granted January 14, 2026, the claims deadline is April 14, 2026, and the final approval hearing is scheduled for June 30, 2026.
ClassAction.org, NRS Pay TCPA settlement, Walston v. National Retail Solutions Inc.
Payment processor Paddle.com paid a $5 million FTC settlement in June 2025 and was permanently banned from processing payments for tech-support telemarketers, over allegations it enabled deceptive schemes through merchant-of-record accounts.
National Law Review, payment processor FTC settlement, June 2025
First American Payment Systems: the FTC secured more than $2.6 million in refunds to small businesses over the processor allegedly trapping merchants with surprise exit fees and undisclosed post-cancellation charges, per FTC announcement coverage. The primary FTC settlement page returned a 403 error during this research and was not directly accessible; verify the exact figure against ftc.gov directly before republishing it elsewhere.
Sources
The external data in this article draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.
- ActiveProspect, TCPA lawsuits updates, 2025
- CompliancePoint, TCPA lawsuits on the rise in 2025
- ClassAction.org, NRS Pay TCPA settlement
- National Law Review, payment processor FTC settlement
- FTC, First American Payment Systems settlement (per FTC announcement coverage)