Alternative Payments & The Current State of Traditional Payment Methods

You are now watching the Biz to Biz podcast with Allen and Justin. Yo, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the Biz to Biz podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by this guy, the Ricky Bobby of payment processing himself, Allen Kopelman.

Yeah, if you ain't first, you're last.

Damn right. What's up, man? So yeah, that's the, that's the, that's the intro.

He fucked me all up. But yeah.

Anyway, yeah, man, how you doing? Doing good.

Had a little side trip vacation up to the Daytona 500.

Nice. That was, that was a surprise. Office was so quiet, dude. You could hear a needle drop on Friday. Yeah, it was kind of scary. Uh-oh, spooky. But we were all working hard, everything, trying to make the money, man. All right, so how was the trip?

The trip was cool. We got to participate. One of the companies that we do business with, GET, shout out to Steve Bryson. We got to participate in the Miami—

There's no way that guy's doing the podcast.

Steve, he probably won't. But with the Bonacani Fund, the cure for paralysis, which started in Miami by Nick Bonacani, who was a Miami Dolphins linebacker.

What is paralysis?

When you're paralyzed. Oh. And then there's a chapter in Daytona for Darrell Gwynn, who was a NASCAR driver. So there was a fundraiser.

So he got paralyzed in a car accident?

Yeah. Okay. And then—

So paralysis, paralyzed.

Okay, now I get it. Right, so there was a fundraiser and they raised money. And every year, I guess one of those electronic wheelchairs where you blow air into it and all that to move it.

You know, like it, you know, not familiar, but okay, the one that Stephen Hawking's at.

Yeah. Okay, so I guess those are super—

I guess I shouldn't have mentioned him. He was on the Epstein list.

So, oh really?

Wow.

Drones are coming.

I didn't say anything.

No. So the— so every year they do this fundraiser, and the fundraiser people come out. There was like 10, 12 boats with 2, 3, 4 fishermen on there. And so, and everybody donates, and then all that money goes to the foundation. And they— there was a girl there, she's 13, she outgrew her wheelchair, so that they got her a new upgraded fancy wheelchair. So she was the recipient.

That's cool.

That's very cool, you know. And then other money goes to the foundation. —get to the program. —get to the program to raise money for more wheelchairs.

I seen you caught a fish too, bro.

Yeah, so it was really cool. So I got to fish with Steve and Steve's childhood friend Fred. Shout out to Fred. And we had Ryan Blaney, whose number 12 car was in the NASCAR and the Daytona 500, although he wrecked with 8 laps to go. And he was in another wreck the night before in another race. But the night before we were fishing, we saw it later on TV. It wasn't on— it was like replayed later. It was some other qualifying race. Oh yeah, right. He was involved in another accident.

There's like 3 qualifying races to be in the Daytona.

Yeah, so he was really nice. It was a really nice time. How many is it? I don't know. It was very confusing, all the rules. They have so many rules.

Yeah, before— there is a lot of rules.

Yeah, so, and they're saying they need to change the rules for NASCAR and I was telling Sean, our video editor, how the cars are going 180 to 200 miles an hour and they're so close together. One piece of car falls off and the next thing you know, 20 cars are— Disaster. So it's really, it's really crazy. So I was happy to participate in the fundraiser. And, you know, that's a fundraiser.

What kind of fish did you catch?

A bass. Ha! Well, there was a bass lake. I was surprised.

I'm surprised you knew that it was only bass.

It was like, well, there was—

They stock it with bass, right?

But there was some crappie in there too because Fred caught a crappie. He caught a crappie. They're good eating. So you have to— I don't know. So every boat is— so every boat's limited to 3 fish. Oh. So the guy weighs them and makes sure you have your best 3 fish. And in the beginning, we didn't think that we won, but we came in 3rd place. So that was pretty cool.

Did you get to keep the fish?

No, they throw them back in the lake. Good, because they have them in like a live well. Yeah. And then the guy brings them out like in a bag up there, and then they take the fish out and wham! Then we held them up, took pictures and everything, and then he talked with Darryl, and then the guy tosses them back in.

Good for the environment, good for the fish.

And the lake is in the middle of the racetrack, which is kind of crazy. Oh, that's cool. So people that are like camping out in their Pampers and stuff are out there fishing to catch some lunch.

That's awesome. Yeah. I didn't know that.

I didn't know that either. We saw some guys after we were done fishing, they were over there fishing to catch fish.

I mean, just thinking about it, I mean, it's smart. There's a lot of water. If there's a car, someone fired, they need some water, I suppose they could pump it right out of the lake, eh?

I guess. I don't know how they deal with that, but that's the— Yeah, man, but it was a cool trip.

Yeah, we didn't do much over here.

Unfortunately, we didn't get to see the race because the race didn't happen until late on Monday, and I had to get back before then. So hopefully next year I get invited again. Well, you have to—

you got to stay up there the whole time. That's how, from my understanding, that's the only way. You just got to stay.

Well, no, we just need to plan better for— come a little later. And stay, make sure we're there till Monday and come back on Tuesday or something like that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because the rate, you know, so that was— but that was a very nice trip and I enjoyed it. Shout out to GT. Yep. Shout out one of our partners.

Yeah, we, uh, down here we held down, we held down the fort, um, and we were off on Monday for Presidential Day. President's Day. President's Day. I was very presidential. I didn't do a thing. I played in my— I played in the dirt. Okay. Oh yeah, even though it was kind of gloomy outside this weekend, kind of was crappy now that I'm thinking about it.

Yeah, it was raining up there the whole weekend.

Wasn't a very pleasant weekend, but I mean, what am I complaining about? You know, could be worse.

I could have swore I saw you on American Idol last night.

He was a little bit bigger than what I am, but I could see— He just reminded me. I could see the resemblance.

He reminded me of you because he had on a hoodie and he had a beard.

Yeah, I am definitely growing my beard. So I was like, oh, Justin.

That's not American. I am trying to gain some weight back too. You laughed when I said that.

No, it was funny. I was like, wow. All right, so the CFPB, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. Protection Bureau, yep. Is looking into merchant cash advances.

Advances. Yeah. That's where people borrow money against their credit card processing. Yeah. It's not something that I try to promote at all. Yeah.

You don't promote it.

Yeah. I will not promote that.

I mean, when you broke it down to me about how, like, it's just like a payday advance, it's, uh, it's very— it— but it's— what's the word? It's, it's like predatory. Yes, that's the word. And it's— that's— it's right and exact. I would, uh If it's anything like a payday advance, uh, that those things— I got into that myself a long time ago. Long time ago, like 10, 15 years ago, before I got hurt. Yeah. Um, yeah, there was one company I was, you know, just in a tough time, and I went there, and then, you know, they make you put like your car as like collateral. They come and got— they came and got my car. Yeah, they made that illegal.

Yo, they made that illegal in Florida now. Yeah, they can't do that.

I went and paid it the same. I was like late by like a day. Yeah. And they came and got my car.

Like, well, they know you're gonna pay if they got your car.

Oh yeah, no, I know. So yeah, I would, uh, stay away from that if I'm a merchant. Cash merchant.

So because what happens is, is they tell the people, oh, we're going to take 20% of your funds out of your batch every day. And then the merchant's not paying attention to the interest rate, and the interest rates are like 30%, 35%. I've seen them 50% or more. And then they get themselves in trouble. Then they get another cash advance on top of that one. Then they have 2 or 3 going at the same time. And so the, you know, Congress is looking into it. There was 2 articles. One was in a trade journal that said they should be treated as people getting real credit, you know, because right now it's not like credit, it's like a loan. It's a loan, I think, for your business, but they don't report it on your personal credit.

But that's, to me, that's— you got to separate the two.

How do you— no, but I'm saying like, because that business owner's probably—

sometimes they're not even, you know, they can't qualify for a personal loan, right?

But I'm saying this, they're not— they don't report it on people's credit. Currently they're saying it should be reported, but the business credit and personal credit is separate anyway. Yeah, you think that, but it's really not. When you don't get a credit card for the company, they ask you the federal tax ID.

Yeah, I know the truth because, you know what I mean, it— on paper it looks cute. Yeah, but in reality, no. Like, you miss a payment on— for your business, that's hitting your personal account, right?

But they're not asked But they're not, these loans or loans or advances are not being reported to you.

Advance, what a shitty term, sorry.

It is, that's why I don't offer it. You ask me all the time why I don't offer it.

I don't offer it because I think it's crap. I used to ask you all the time, yeah.

It's crappy, it's not a good product to be associated with. That's why I tell people I go to OnDeck or go to Kabbage, you know, you'll get a better interest rate.

That's, Kabbage is crowdfunded too, right?

No, Cabbage is owned by American Express now.

When it first started, it was crowdfunded though, wasn't it?

Somewhat. Some of it was. Then they, then they went private, and then they went—

then because you would have to, like, for Cabbage, you'd have to put up like what your project was for. Like if you had, you know, say you wanted— that was a—

that I think you're thinking of a different one. Not GoFundMe. No, not GoFundMe. I think you're thinking about Kickstarter. No, it was Cabbage. Oh, Cabbage. Yeah, there's a couple.

I think there's just different tiers or like maybe different ways you can get money through Cabbage.

There's another one called Prosper that was crowdfunded too.

I mean, I'm all for crowdfunding, so I like that.

Listen, a lot of people do private crowdfunding.

I mean, that's how businesses get started every day.

But, you know, some communities do that. Everybody puts in money, then the first guy goes, and then everybody keeps putting in money, then it eventually becomes your turn. You know, you have 10, 20 people doing it.

I just watched a guy from Chicago talk about, uh, I don't know, it's a whole nother— but he's just saying how like a group of, uh, he said Mexicans, but, uh, you know, who knows if they're Mexican or not. They're Spanish, right? Spanish people moved in and how there was 30 of them living in one house. Wow. But then two, two 3 months later they bought the house next door, right? So then now there's 20 living in a house, 10 live in the next house. 3, 4 months later they own the whole entire block, right? You know what I mean? And I think, you know, that's just the culture. Take notes. We should take notes over here.

Yeah, they do it in a lot of cultures, do that for sure. They do their own crowdfunding, so they buy real estate, businesses, and things like that.

So the CFFB is telling— basically saying it's causing too many businesses to go bankrupt, huh? Yep.

It was two articles. One in the Wall Street Journal was specifically focused on that. It's putting companies out of business because, especially the ones that have more than one going at the same time, and because it's not reported on the credit report, you know, it's not control— you know, it's not being controlled, you know, properly. Right. And, you know, then these business, you know, then somebody doesn't pay and then those companies have a UCC and they come in and get, take the equipment and whatever else they can get from the business. And then the other funny story I saw on the news, we let, we, I know we mentioned this on the podcast probably like a year ago.

I mean, during the tax time.

Yeah, tax time. IRS sends out an announcement today, uh, they want you to report illegal illegal earnings like sale of drugs, gambling on your tax return.

Believe it or not, it's pretty funny. Believe it or not, I know, I mean, I don't— there's people who do it. Yeah, because it's, it's at the end of the day, it's if they get caught, they're not going to get caught for tax evasion, right? Which a lot of times will hold more time. Yeah. Than, than, you know, than drugs. So I guess I'm not saying I know anybody personally, right? But I, I've, I've known people that would pay— say they earned a million dollars, right? They would pay the tax on that.

I'll tell you what's interesting. They want to collect.

They don't say exactly what it was for. Like, there was just cash, like, you know what I mean? Like, but yeah, it's not a, it's not a bad idea, ladies and gentlemen. No, but here's the thing.

They want to collect money from your illegal thing, but they don't want to collect taxes from people that own marijuana dispensaries. How does that even make sense?

It, it, and how that people are still in jail for marijuana. I don't, it doesn't make sense. The tax, the IRS needs to really figure that out. Yeah, I mean, that's going into a whole nother segue of, of the shitstorm that we're still under as far as payment processing. Yeah, like, how, how can all of this money just be out? There's just so much money being lost on, on everyone's— like, it's the IRS is missing out, the banks are missing out, and then payment processors, payment processors are missing out. Credit card companies are missing out. Yeah, I mean, I don't get it. Like, yeah, I really don't get it.

Like, it's baffling. It's baffling to me, especially we have a huge deficit. Like, hey, let's put that back on the table.

And to be honest, I mean, I, I don't know, I'm— I don't want to talk about Joe Biden or politics, but if, if they were smart, he would go ahead and knock that out real quick.

Exactly. It's what I think. He would do it.

He would go up in polls, I would say, but whatever. Or down from that. Or down again, yeah. He might fall asleep or at the wheel, who knows? But yeah, so the IRS wants all the dope dealers to report their earnings. Well, anything illegal. Yeah, you know, you selling dope. Stolen cars. Stolen cars. Home invasions. I don't know how you would report that, but.

You were involved in a jewelry heist. And then you fence the jewelry.

You're supposed to report that? Yeah. Ooh. Hey, you guys, is he stealing paintings? You know, fine art? Yo, did you ever, just because of that, do you remember hearing about the time when a group of people stole the violin in Milwaukee?

I think I remember something about that.

One of my homies was a part of that.

Was it a, it was really expensive, right?

Millions and millions of dollars. Yeah. Buyer and everything all set up. Yeah, yeah, man.

Did he get away with it?

No. Okay, that's crazy. No, they did not.

Oh yeah.

So yeah, man, go ahead and report your illegal earnings to IRS for us. Uh, be— call me if you do first, but you know, if you think about doing that, give me a call first.

Yeah, we'll have you on the podcast, tell us why, wear poo shiesty, we'll, you know, change your voice and everything. Yeah, we'll do everything.

Uh, what do you got on here? Sweepstakes models for your business. Oh, we were— you're just talking.

Yeah, we were just talking about that. Like, will you pay? So you go to a website and they're selling shirts, right?

Or yeah, you were asking me if I've ever heard about this business model before, and it's—

yeah, for sure. No, but would you pay?

You know what? Yes, I would. Because what I heard, if most of the time it's like it was for video games And that's where I think that they got this from. Okay. And video games and then streaming. Okay. So like, what's the Twitch? Right, Twitch. So a lot of the streamers have the same type of business model. Okay. So if you enter this contest, to enter the contest, you gotta buy a shirt. Right. Well, the shirt is $150. Right. That's just how it is. Okay. That's always, and then they, like he had the mystery box on the one side, et cetera, et cetera.

Well, that's just you don't get to pick out the designs on the shirt, right? Hoodies and stuff that they send you, or you get an NFT.

Well, no, there's no NFT.

Oh, sorry. No, so the— no, I just was wondering, like, will people pay more? Like, I saw another website where these guys were selling t-shirts, and then they have the contest goes on for 90 days, and the t-shirts— I don't remember the price of the t-shirts and the hats. So you could buy t-shirts and hats and then they would give away like a, like a Ford F-150 truck. Yeah. Or a Dodge Ram truck. Yeah. I mean, it's crazy.

No, I'm just saying, like, I myself would spend $150 to join a sweepstakes. It's just me. I don't know. It's hilarious.

Well, you're getting a shirt. Well, I'm just saying, how many people are willing to tell us, are you willing to— maybe Sean will make a reel— if so, are you willing to spend more for the t-shirt for the chance you could win a truck or a motorcycle?

Or would you enter a sweepstakes and pay $150 for entry and you get a t-shirt, right? Right. And you possibly could win a motorcycle. Yeah, that's a truck.

Or a truck. Yeah. Okay, interesting.

It's— it— I mean, that guy had a lot of followers, so I'm sure that—

yeah, the guy's like 50,000 followers on YouTube.

Yeah, I'm sure it's great, you know, I'm sure it's working. All right, so it's platforms versus merchant accounts.

Yeah, so Stripe, Square, PayPal. Shopify.

Back to the— those guys, ugh, I don't even want to talk about them. No, like, we're getting a lot of people getting kicked off Stripe lately, but we, we kind of, I don't know, predicted this happening because at the end of last year we were talking about how Stripe is— they want to sell.

Yeah, they're trying to sell and they're— or go public. So I think that they're going through their merchant accounts.

No, they are going through their merchant accounts.

Right. And they're going, hey, this one doesn't look good. That one doesn't look good. This doesn't look good.

And they just get rid of you. Yeah, that's— and there's no, like, when he's saying it doesn't look good, it's just whatever doesn't look good in their portfolio. That doesn't mean that you don't have a good business. So like, he's talking about CBD companies. Oh, it could be business types.

Could be you have too many affiliate links on your website. That they don't like leading back to CBD. So recently I'm trying to help somebody and they're— they have to clean off— they have to clean up their website because they were advertising CBD and some nutraceuticals on there, and it's unacceptable to the bank to have links to go back to these companies. So, you know, so you have to clean that up, you know. But Stripe doesn't give you a warning, they just say bye. Yeah, no, they do not give you a warning. Yeah, so they Got bye-bye. And that was the end of that. So that's, you know, it's kind of difficult to deal with that. And then the sweepstakes guy, same thing. He got— he was with Stripe and then he went to another credit— he was with another credit card processor. As soon as that company saw he had the sweepstakes on there, they were saying no.

Just like the coaching—

the coaching guy too, right? Yeah. Coaching also is getting a very hard time from Stripe. We're getting a lot of people like, oh, I have a coaching business. And, you know, all it takes is a couple of chargebacks. So if you have a high-ticket sale like a coaching thing where it's, you know, $500, $1,000, $700, $5,000, right? You get 1 or 2 chargebacks and maybe you pay them, but then— or maybe you don't pay it, you're going to get booted. And then a lot of processors are scared of those, those accounts because it's a certain I always tell people there's a big difference between you're selling a service and a product, right? And especially like a digital service where, oh, it's a coaching. So it's basically a service. It's like hiring a psychiatrist. Yes. My— except more expensive. I say that I did it.

And if I said I did it, I did it type of thing. I get why business, why companies are looking at it kind of like, I don't want nothing to do with this.

And then there's a lot of people trying to do that in like a side hustle. Oh, I'm just gonna have a coach— I'm gonna have a coaching business where— oh, all of a sudden they're gonna resell like these, uh, funnels, right? We find— we get calls from people all the time. Oh, I'm using this funnel or that funnel, right? And they're using these funnels and then they want to get, you know, credit card processing for that. And then they're locked into like Stripe where it's locked up to PayPal, and then they get kicked off because the product or service that they're offering is not something that they'll approve. Right. Be careful. So it's, you know, that's when you're, you know, you have to kind of think about like, oh, well, how am I going to structure my business? Right.

It was the Stradivarius violin, by the way. That's what I was— Oh, that.

Yes. Yes. I remember. Yeah. All right. Yeah. I remember there was like expensive violin. No, but when you think about the Houston Taser, I'm sorry. Yeah, no, but you got to think about with your business is before you settle on the platform, you need to say, hey, are they going to accept my business type? Yes. You know, because if they don't, then why am I going to use this platform? And I think people do it in reverse. They choose the platform and then they find out—

they choose the platform out of simplicity and ease of access, right? That's it. And they're like, okay, I'm going straight to PayPal. I know this is all I need. Boom, boom, boom. You know, they'll give you— as long as you got a heartbeat, PayPal will give you a merchant account. Yeah. So, I mean, it's, you know, whatever. But yeah, these businesses need to do their due diligence to see if their business type is really accepted. Yeah, they might say a CBD or cannabis-related business, but then they look into the fine print and come to the realization that they fall under the big no-no.

Right. And then you have to pay extra to these platforms to use an outside company. Like we had somebody that had a WordPress site, then they went and built a Wix site, then they had to buy a plugin that charges them an extra 60 basis points just to get— because Wix won't— they will not take them because they're on Stripe. Right. So you have to, you know, you really need to do your homework on like, oh, is my product accepted acceptable product before you go to the, before you go to the platform. Absolutely. Because otherwise then you're, you know, either A, using an outside processor, paying them extra money unless you can convince them otherwise, right? Saying, oh, well, you don't accept my business, you should have told me that before I built my website. Good luck with that. No, I'm just saying maybe some people can present the argument and get their— not get the fee waived, but that doesn't always happen. I'm sure it doesn't happen very often. No, we have a client that had a— they had—

well, I mean, you, you go and take care of that for them.

Well, I tell them what to tell them. Exactly. And then maybe they get the— they get, they get the fee waived. No, we had somebody, they have this POS system. The POS company got bought by another company, then that company partnered with Stripe And then said, oh, you have to switch your processing to us. So they sent— so then they got a letter saying, oh, we can't do your processing, but we want to bill you $400 a month for using our system extra. So then I told the lady to write back.

Like what, on Shopify?

No, for something called Lightspeed. Oh yeah. And it was only— only thing it was is a lingerie store. And they said it wasn't acceptable for them to process the credit cards. Well, whatever. Just, man, come to death row. There's other items in there. We'll process anything. We'll process any—

if you're tired of those whack payment processors all in the videos dancing, doing all this and that, come to Death Row. Come to Nationwide Payment Systems. I'm, I'm joking. It's a Suge Knight reference for all of you lame-os out there. If you don't know what I'm talking about, he was at the Grammys and he was talking about Diddy and them, but whatever, man. Sorry, I just— okay.

No, so you got to do— you got to do your research before you, you know, jump onto a platform and make sure, you know, or you got to know somebody like me who can present the argument back to the company, which we did. I wrote a letter for her on her behalf. She's, you know, she signed it. She emailed it to them saying, oh, you were— you know, I've been using an outside processor. You can't service my business. There's no reason why I should be paying you $400. You know, because you just don't want to process my business. And they ended up waiving the $400 fee. Well, shout out to Allen Kopelman and Nationwide Payment Systems for always doing it. Doesn't always work. It doesn't always work. But you can, you know, you can present. They were, you know, they were letting her use an outside processor for the last like 5 years. But then they want to switch everybody because they partnered with Stripe.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for tuning in to another episode of B2B Vault, the biz to biz podcast. Signing out until next time. Smash that like button, subscribe to the channel, and share to your fellow peoples. Peace out. Carpe diem. Peace.