Payments veteran Ken Musante joins Arkonyk advisory board

CLEVELAND, October 6, 2026 — Arkonyk, the payments intelligence company, today announced that Ken Musante has joined its advisory board. Musante has spent more than three decades in merchant acquiring, from founding and running an ISO to product leadership at WePay, a division of JPMorgan Chase. He will advise Arkonyk on bringing Descriptors.com, its descriptor verification platform, to acquirers, ISOs and issuers.

Musante founded Humboldt Merchant Services in 1993 and stayed on as an executive after Moneris acquired it in 2008. He went on to co-found the ISO Eureka Payments and lead gateway product at WePay. Since 2021 he has run Napa Payments and Consulting, which advises merchants, fintechs and platforms. He has also served as an expert witness in payments cases for the US Department of Justice.

Musante and Arkonyk founder and CEO Rick Lynch have spent their careers discussing what drives chargebacks and sharing their perspectives. Descriptors.com addresses one of the biggest causes. It maps the cryptic billing descriptors on card statements to verified merchant profiles, so cardholders can recognize a charge instead of disputing it.

“Rick and I frequently discuss chargeback drivers. The issues look technical, but the real problem is getting information into the hands of cardholders. When I saw what Arkonyk was building with Descriptors.com, I thought it was brilliant, and my first question was how I could help,” said Musante.

“For my entire 35-year career, people have talked about consolidation in payments, and at the macro level it has happened. But inside that consolidation, hyper-specialization and niche services have become increasingly necessary. Large companies will keep getting larger, but there will always be room for innovative solutions that serve the ecosystem,” Musante added.

“I have worked with Ken during my time at both CardinalCommerce and Verifi. He has always been a source of wisdom and guidance for me. Having someone with his depth of knowledge, respect and caliber validate what we are building is an incredible compliment. And now his willingness to accept our invitation as an advisor — even more so. We are fortunate to have his support and I do not take it for granted,” said Rick Lynch, Founder and CEO of Arkonyk.

About Ken Musante

As founder of Humboldt Merchant Services, co-founder of Eureka Payments, and a former executive for such payments innovators as WePay, a division of JPMorgan Chase, Ken Musante has experience in all aspects of successful payments platforms. He has also served as an expert witness on numerous complex civil and criminal cases in payments, a service he provides, along with consulting on merchant services, FinTechs and platforms, as founder of Napa Payments and Consulting.

napapaymentsandconsulting.com · LinkedIn

About Arkonyk

Arkonyk is a payments intelligence company on a mission to bring truth to payments. Its flagship product, Descriptors.com, tackles one of the most preventable causes of chargebacks: cardholders who don’t recognize the merchant name on their statement. Descriptors.com is a neutral data layer that maps every billing descriptor to a verified, enriched and authoritative merchant profile.

The platform gives acquirers and ISOs a live risk signal across their portfolios, including consumer search activity, volume, descriptor collisions, friction alerts and compliance issues. Arkonyk also offers a free utility, WhoBilled.me, powered by Descriptors.com, where cardholders can look up any charge. The company’s portfolio also includes FeeSuite, a payments reconciliation platform, and ARKITEKT, its payments advisory practice. Learn more at arkonyk.com or become an early adopter at descriptors.com.