Caleb Avery CEO of Tilled PayFac-As-A-Service Joins B2B Vault For A Talk On Entrepreneurship | Episode 225

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 Mario Andretti of payment processing himself, Allen Kopelman. And in today's podcast, we're finally going to be, uh, interviewing a guest. Well, not finally, but we've had other guests for the first time this year.

That's what I meant, 2024.

Uh, finally got a guest. On the show, Caleb Avery from TILD, PayFac as a Service.

Yes.

Uh, yeah, so this should be good. We, uh, we met him, uh, I think 2 years ago at the ITA.

No, last year at the SCAA Southeast Acquire. No, the Southeast Acquire.

See him at another show?

No, we're at the Southeast Acquire show at the Diplomat Hotel. And I know that time but I feel like there was another time. No.

Well, anyway, his company's located in Colorado, um, somewhere. I think Denver.

Well, that's—

we're gonna have to ask him when he—

when we get in there.

Um, so yeah, man, looking forward to that. Anyway, how are you doing? Real quick check-in.

Yep, everything's good. You know, a lot of stuff going on in the news. We'll have to see how all kinds of crazy stuff shakes out here. With mergers, acquisitions, and, and the payments industry. There's a bunch of rumors flying around.

Got it.

So we'll see how that, how that all pans out in the future.

It's a lot to worry about, right?

Yeah, we don't worry about it, just saying there's a lot of action, there's a lot of activity.

Indeed there is.

Yeah, with the, with mergers and acquisitions.

So mergers and acquisitions, I was just The way that they make that sound is M&As.

Yeah, M&A.

So jargon.

Yeah, jargon.

We've been talking about that all week.

Yeah, yeah, we should do it. We should do a podcast on industry jargon.

It's just like the gatekeepers make up these words so that like if you don't know the meaning of the word, like you, you know, it's like, oh, uh, for instance, M&A is like, yeah, we're gonna be discussing M&As.

I'll tell you a word that I don't like I get in emails all the time.

What's that?

They say, oh, the democratization of something. Like, what is that supposed to mean? I don't even know what that means.

Neither do I. Yeah, democratization.

Yeah, something like that.

It's like Democrats are—

yeah, democratizing the whatever this— whatever it is that they're doing. And I'm like, I'm like, that doesn't make any sense.

So much politics.

No, no, I'm just saying it doesn't make sense. Like the word doesn't make any sense. Like they're just putting it in there so everyone says they're traumatized. You have this long $10 word, you know, and you're like, ooh, what's that? Sounds kind of fancy.

It does. Well, I'm good, you know, I'm ready to hop right in here.

Ready to hop in?

Yeah, I think it's more—

hit the button.

Better time now than the present, right? Yeah. So without further ado, let's bring in, uh, Caleb. Hey Caleb, you there?

I'm here. Appreciate you guys having me on the show today.

Absolutely, man. How's Caleb doing today, bro?

I'm doing great. I had Benihana for lunch and I feel like anytime you get a Benihana experience, it's going to be a good day.

Did you go in person though?

I went in person for the full Benihana extravaganza. So it was a really nice lunch experience.

The guy made a fire.

He did the onion You know, volcano, choo choo train. There was no, there was no shrimp catching today.

Okay, very good, my friend. We avoided that. Other one, other people.

Yeah, we'll leave that to the professionals.

Yeah, exactly, we leave that to the, to the professionals. Yeah, so yeah, man, thanks for, uh, coming by, dude. Your first guest of 2024, that's, uh, you know, that's an accomplishment on its own. Round of applause.

I appreciate the honor. My goal today is to use as much industry jargon as I can. I think that's, uh, that's the name of the game.

Hey, it is. It's so crazy. Like, isn't it? Like, I feel like the gatekeepers, like, they've made up in words, like, just so that we can, like, be intimidated.

Yeah, it makes you feel smart, you know. You're talking about ISOs and ISVs, and people are like, I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, but it sounds really cool.

It does, right? It's like when I started talking about SEO and Google Analytics and, you know, GA4, and people are just like, this guy knows what he's talking about. He, he knows. It is very intimidating, right? Right.

Yeah, you throw out the $10 word and look smarter.

Indeed.

So where's your company located, Caleb?

So I'm, I'm calling in here from the podcast studio in Boulder, Colorado. Uh, you, you guys have a pretty nice setup yourself. Uh, but yeah, I'm calling in from Boulder.

I like the sign. I was gonna, I was gonna compliment on the sign. It's, it's—

you gotta have a neon sign. You absolutely have to have a neon sign if you're gonna do a proper podcast setup. I, I do need one of those on-air signs though. I feel, I feel a little left out.

Yeah, they're cool, right?

I love it.

It's definitely a good addition to have for the studio. We're missing a plant. I want— you ever seen the, the podcast Between Two Ferns?

You gotta, you gotta have a plant. I feel like, you know, today you need to go out and find a plant. That's, that's your—

there you go, just right here.

Okay, next time I—

Costco. Costco has the plants out, I heard.

Oh yeah, they have a lot of plants in Florida.

Down here in South Florida, Costco, it's like a big thing when the— when Costco puts out their, their outdoor plants, you know. It's like all you see on Instagram and TikTok is people rushing this, the store, to get their plants.

That and those bamboo tree things.

Oh, yep, yep, yep. The, the gate, the fence, right?

The bamboo.

Oh no, you're talking about the lucky bamboos.

Yeah, the lucky bamboos. I have a big one in my house.

Hot commodity. Hot commodity. Well, before we hop into all the good stuff, you know, we, we like to, you know, just, you know, just talk a little bit, you know. It's a conversation. It's not, you know, we're not promoing so much, you know what I mean? It's just a conversation, a bunch of business owners and stuff like that. So we had a conversation the other day, well, a podcast, and, uh, it was, it was good. And the premise of it was, you know, what's your morning routine look like? Like, what's the, what's the morning of Caleb? What does he do to get himself, uh, you know, energized and ready to tackle the day? What's, what's that look like?

My, my morning is absolute chaos. So I, I have 3 kids under 6. And so that's, uh, just, just setting the stage there. And so, you know, my morning could start anytime after 4 AM, whenever, whenever somebody decides.

He gets up earlier than me.

Not on purpose. I, I'm not the one waking up at 4 AM. I, I am serving at the pleasure, uh, of, of my children. And so when they decide it's morning time, you know, I, I get up there, there's definitely a, a period of feeling like a lunch lady trying to get breakfast, you know, ready for, for 3 kids, and everybody needs a pouch and a banana, and I've picked the wrong TV show, and there's at least one person crying, you know, at, at all times, essentially. And this year, for whatever reason, we decided we were going to pick a school that starts an hour earlier than the, the one last year, and so it's, it's turned into absolute chaos. We're trying to scramble out the door by 7:30. And so there's not a lot of like me getting ready for my day. Like if I have, you know, a shirt and two shoes on, I feel like I've done pretty well. You've accomplished that. Yeah, yeah, we're there. And so for me it's like get the kids to school and then 8 a.m. it's like, all right, do I have calls? What's going on with emails? And that's, that's when the day really starts for me.

And be lucky if the shoes match, right?

I have— I will admit that I have brought my kids to school on multiple occasions with either one shoe, which that, that was really embarrassing, or mismatched shoes, which they, they tend to think is pretty cool. So that, that's less of a problem. The one shoe, the one shoe, I felt pretty bad. I was just like, here, here's, you know, Gray for the day. I, I apologize, he has one shoe.

Here you go.

I got 6 daughters, bro, so I can totally relate. I mean My kids are all in high school now, so I mean, I'm, I'm kind of free of that. But I still got one, the youngest, and she will not, uh, walk to school. For the school is literally 5 blocks away, bro. She will not walk.

It's not gonna happen.

No. So I, I, I— yeah, man, I, I relate and I feel the pains, bro. But embrace it, because within the little bit of time that is— that you have it's just gonna go, you know what I mean? And just hold on to it. Get— remember, keep those memories close, bro. It's a great thing, man.

Yeah, my kids are big, 28 and 30.

Yeah, so I got a kindergartner now, and that, that already feels like time's flying.

Yeah, that's fun stuff though. That's when you get to go to like— well, I don't know, do you got pumpkin patches there?

And like, there's, there's pumpkin patches. Oh yeah.

Yeah, so I mean, you gotta do all the stuff.

That's the fun stuff, you know. When it gets into like piano lessons and, and all that—

I've been to all of that.

I'm gonna play— I'm gonna push on to want my wife—

plays, sports, pumpkin patches, activities, birthday parties.

So many activities.

I did it all. Story time.

That never ends, story time, right?

No.

So, so yeah, man, um, what else, what else was— well, let's, let's hop into it, right? Let's just go. So let's do it. Um, what, what, uh, what, what, what, what bit you to start the company, or, or what gave you that entrepreneurial bug?

Um, and what did you do before, like, you started Tild that led to Tild, right?

Were you always an entrepreneur or, you know what I mean? Or was it, I started here and then boom, I wanted a company or how'd it go?

Yeah, I would say I have always had an entrepreneurial spirit. Started my first company when I was 19. That was an ISO going door to door selling payments to small business owners. And so for me, that was my start in the payment space, really learning, you know, what direct merchants, you know, wanted. And, and that was, uh, you know, whatever, a dozen plus years ago, and the landscape looked very different, you know, at that point in time. There wasn't a lot of integrated payments, uh, happening within the, the direct merchant ecosystem. And as we started to scale up that first business, I started to see more and more of these verticalized integrated softwares, uh, taking hold within a lot of the merchants that, that we were going out and talking to. And I just got really curious about what was happening within that space. And so I really took a step back from the ISO business and started doing more angel investing and consulting for vertical software businesses and really leaning into that side of the payments business. And when I was doing a lot of that consulting work, this was, you know, 7, 8, 9 years ago before vertical software companies wanting to monetize payments was nearly as mainstream of a concept as it is at this point., you know, today. And so most of the guys that I worked with were using Stripe or Braintree and just passing along the 2.9% and 30 cents onto their merchants. And so, you know, at the time there weren't a lot of options for those, you know, ISVs— to, to throw the, the jargon out there— uh, and these vertical software businesses that wanted to monetize payments. And so, you know, originally we were just recommending gateways and introducing them to ISOs to get their, you know, payment solutions set up. But, uh, about 5 years ago, I had this idea that ultimately became Tilled, that ultimately became PayFac as a service, to offer a better solution for vertical software businesses that wanted, you know, better technology, better support, and a better experience for, for the merchants on their platform.

Very cool, man. But, but what— why payments though? Like, at 19, like What was—

Why not?

Were you selling something and you didn't like the way PayPal treated you or something, or what was it?

Yeah, I think for me, so when we first got started, it was really just us going out and talking to business owners in the Greenville, South Carolina area to see, you know, would they even consider working with a couple of 19-year-old, you know, college students. And I think for me, the residual income was certainly a really, appealing part of the business. Also, when you read online about the true animosity that merchants have towards a lot of the legacy processors, it felt like, hey, maybe there's an opportunity to get into this business. I was also able to control my own schedule. So, you know, when I wasn't in class or, you know, playing sports or whatever, hey, let's go out and try to, you know, earn some money. And so for me, it just ticked a lot of the boxes for what I was looking for at that point, uh, you know, in my life, and really had no idea what that business would turn into. And certainly at that point wasn't intending to pick a career in payments. That wasn't, uh, that wasn't the path that I started down. It's like, hey, how can I earn, you know, some money, uh, on the side in, in college? And, and that was, that was the start.

Very cool.

Yeah, I think a lot of people, you know, I've been doing this for 23 years. I think when you speak to— when I talk to most people in the business, residual is definitely what attracted them in the beginning, and the flexibility to—

yeah, I mean, I, I started my own digital marketing company, you know, almost 15 years ago. But, um, you know, that was the freedom, right? That I had kids, you know what I mean? I, I didn't want to have to punch the clock and you know what I mean, and be on someone else's time. That way, at the drop of a dime, if I needed to pick up and go get them, I could. So it's definitely one of the main benefits for me of being an entrepreneur. But the payment side, I, I never— I, I didn't put the pieces together until I started working with Allen, you know what I mean. And there was so much money that was just being left on the table. Um, so you got any good questions for him?

Yeah, I think so. One of the things that I find when we talk to a lot of software companies, you know, obviously we come in contact with them over the years. It's a lot of them, like you said, you know, you were an investor in those companies and a lot of the companies are, you know, they're looking for money and they don't even have any— they don't even have any customers yet. And I think that's kind of a challenge. And the other challenge, whenever I talk to other people in the business is, is that a lot of these companies, they'll get hooked up on Square, not make any money. Stripe, not make any money. Braintree, not make any money. Or maybe they'll go to an ISO, or maybe they're with you, and then they don't think outside of the box that maybe they should partner with any kind of like sales organizations to, to kind of like to get more sales. And I see like there's like a disconnect with that. What do you think about that?

Yeah, I would say both in my consulting experience prior to Tilled and then in my experience with Tilled, a lot of the software companies that come to us really underestimate the amount of work that's involved in a successful go-to-market motion to actually sell payments. To their underlying merchants. I think a lot of them look at the success stories of like a Toast and a Shopify where payments is just included. It's an assumed part of the sale. It comes with, you know, the, the SaaS offering. And certainly, you know, some of our ISVs, you know, operate in that model where you can't sign up for the software without payments. But for a lot of the companies that, that we work with, or that I worked with in the past, there's a sales motion. You have to convince a small business owner to change their payments infrastructure from whoever they're using, you know, currently to, to go with you. And on the whole, there's a lot of benefits as a small business owner to using payments that's integrated, you know, with your, your core software. But a lot of the software companies aren't experts in payments. They don't understand interchange-plus pricing. They don't, you know, they don't even know what interchange is, you know, to, to begin with. Um, but they, they don't understand a lot of the nuances around payments. I mean, we, we've got, you know, a fairly sizable customer right now that we were trying to explain what Level 2, you know, Level 3, uh, payments were because they were paying way more in interchange, you know, than they needed to. And it's like this concept is just going completely, you know, over their head.

Time—

every time when you talk about it, 100%. And, you know, we actually have a couple of like fairly sizable like ISOs and reseller organizations that work with some of the ISVs that we partner with. And so we actually have, you know, clients that have realized that they need assistance and have brought in a partner that works with us and with, you know, the software company to help drive their business forward. And a lot of those are the software companies that are seeing the highest attach rates. So the most percentage of their merchants you know, signing up for payments and are the happiest with the revenue that they're generating, you know, from working with us. Because it doesn't matter— and I talk about this a lot— but it doesn't matter what your, you know, Schedule A or your buy rates look like. If you don't have merchants and processing volume going through your system, it's kind of all for naught. And I think a lot of ISVs really over-index, especially, you know, they've been on one side of the coin with a Stripe or Braintree making zero money and all of a sudden they're like, oh, well, we have to make, you know, 95% of the money. And it's like, great, well, good luck. Go, go do that on your own and let us know, you know, how it goes. Or you can partner, you know, with, with folks that understand the space and can help you grow your business, which is ultimately what's going to generate more revenue for you.

Yeah, I think, you know, I've talked to a lot of companies and they're like, oh, we want to get like 100,000 merchants. And I go, you don't really need 100,000 merchants. If you had like $1,000, $2,000, $3,000, right, between your SaaS revenue and payments revenue, and you partnered with somebody and you said, hey, you doing all right, Mr. ISO? Hey, can you help us drive some sales and we'll give you 50% or 60% of the residual? A lot of sales reps won't work for that, but some companies will. And, you know, and then build up to that number. I mean, that's a multi-million dollar business.

100%.

I think a lot of them look beyond that. They look at the toast, and I go, yeah, you're looking at toast, but they're not making any money.

Yeah.

Which I don't understand. Like, I've never— I, you know, it's— see, it blows my mind, you know, from a business standpoint, when you see the toast And you see Stripe and you see Square and other companies, and they're just constantly losing money. And then the investors are just pouring money into these companies.

I don't know where—

how they're going to turn the corner.

Who knows? I mean, a lot of those guys have achieved a lot of scale. They've got a lot of merchants, they get a lot of processing volume, they've got different product lines, they've got a lot of different ways that they're making money. I think on the individual software company side of things, I think we often see a disconnect between those aspirations. Hey, we want to be like Toast. We want to own the payments. We want our own BIN. We want to get registered. It's like, hey, you have 10 customers on your platform. Like, you're not ready to take that step. And I think especially if you kind of rewind the clock 3, 4 years ago, there were some of our competitors that were advertising that every company should become, you know, a registered payment facilitator. And it's like, tell me more about that argument. Tell me more about this guy doing $1 million a month in payments that's going to profitably, you know, go register as a payment facilitator. And like, the reality is it's nonsense. That's just not— that's not how the game works. Certainly, you know, if you're doing $40 billion a year in payments, you know, like, like Toast and some of those guys, sure. It makes sense at that scale, but there's a lot of folks in the middle, uh, that really need, you know, the, the help and support, uh, you know, that someone like Tilt can provide that gives them all of the infrastructure and the benefits and the support. And hey, if at some point in the future you grow to that scale that you want to take it in-house, you know, go for it, but you've got to get there and you got to find a way to bridge that gap, you know, in a way where you can earn revenue all along the way without having to go add a ton of headcount.

Yeah, I was talking to somebody with a gateway. They were telling me, they said, oh yeah, we have 1,000 ISVs on the gateway. I said, well, how many of them are scaling? They told me none.

Yeah, I believe—

I was like, are you kidding me? I go, what are they doing? He's like, well, they have 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 customers and that's it. And I'm like, well, why don't they partner with somebody to help them make sales? And You know, I asked them, I said, well, why don't you give me a list of, you know, 5 or 6 of these people? Let me see what I can do.

Go scale them up.

Yeah. Try this and try to scale them up because, you know, when you look at our business, I mean, even Jack Dorsey came out and said he's trying to figure out now how to set up his— his— I don't know if they're going to do it on the web or they're just going to do it on the sales side to verticalize a lot of business types. At Square. That's their goal anyway, he said on an interview recently.

It's the direction the market's headed.

I mean, yeah, no, to be like, oh, salons, restaurants, you know, whatever it is, auto repair, things like, things like that.

Well, I mean, nowadays when you look at, you know, from a small business owner's perspective, it really doesn't matter what vertical you're operating in. There's several softwares that are purpose-built to help solve the problems, you know, from your industry. And if you're a gym owner, you have different problems than a salon owner who has different problems than a, you know, used car repair, you know, shop owner. And so if you have a software that solves those particular challenges for your vertical, it's oftentimes adding a lot more value than just payments. I think that's the piece that sometimes gets lost in this conversation, especially for us payments guys. Like, we're thinking about this from a payments perspective. How do we go get the payments volume? How do we, you know, generate basis points on this? But for the small business owners that are choosing that verticalized software, they're using the scheduling functionality, the, the payroll functionality, the payments functionality. They're getting help with their taxes. Maybe there's an integrated financing option. There's a lot of value that they're getting from that suite of software, which is also frankly part of the reason why there's so much more margin on payments for integrated, you know, verticalized software payments than there are if you're just selling a standalone, you know, Pax device that sits on the counter. You're just not able to justify, you know, the kind of margin that these vertical software players are, uh, that are adding a ton of value to these businesses.

Yeah, I agree. I think you hit the nail on the head, bro. Like, especially before when you were mentioning about how, you know, these business owners, they're just if you saw— if it solves one of their problems, like, they don't even care about how much money it's costing them, the fees involved, and they don't— they don't never even look into it. And that's why it goes over their top of their head when you're trying to introduce them to a, a better product or something like that. Yeah, I agree 100%.

Yeah, people aren't interested. Like, you talk to a merchant with Toast, unless they're being like abused by them, they're not leaving. Probably like half of them, almost 3% for credit card processing.

Huh? You said like half.

Yeah. But what do you know? One of the things that I see now with a lot of companies who do like have SaaS products is, and we have quite a few of them, they're getting a lot of chargebacks. And I think a lot of that's attributed to the, you know, recurring billing, not sending out notices that, you know, you're going to get billed again this month and giving people a chance to cancel. And also, you know, the advent of things like Rocket Money, and like you log into your credit card and your credit card company says, hey, check out, click here to look at your recurring payments.

Yeah.

And then gives that, gives the consumer a chance to opt out of those, those, those, you know, out of those services. And are you seeing that like from your, in your end of the business too?

Yeah, I think you touched on a couple of points there. I think one side of it is certainly from a technology side, it's gotten easier as a consumer to manage your money and understand what you're being billed for, but I think the bigger piece of that that you were talking about is really on the education side for these software companies. It goes back to one of the things I was saying earlier where a lot of these ISVs and vertical software businesses are not payments experts. They don't necessarily know the best practices around billing and notifications and receipts and invoicing practices. And so I think for those of us that do come from this space, that's a part of our job is to help educate, you know, our partners so that they can do a better job educating their merchants, you know, and their customers to help prevent some of these, you know, challenges. Like no one wants to deal with a chargeback. It's expensive and painful for everybody involved, you know, in the entire chain. Pain. And a lot of, a lot of the chargebacks, uh, especially in, in recurring billing scenarios, are preventable just by following basic best practices when you're setting up, you know, your, your, your business and your, your, uh, process from the beginning.

Yeah, we just recently had a client come to us and they have all, you know, ton of different products with recurring billing. And I was like, you can't just keep billing people if they don't want it. They don't have to pay for it. And I said, you know, you're, you're way over in chargebacks. I said, we're willing to get you a new account, you know, you're gonna, you know, we're willing to give you an account, but you know, you're gonna have to do some, you know, present a chargeback remediation plan to the bank, you know, on how you're going to deal with this. You can't just say all sales are final, we're going to keep billing you. My lesson on that is, I tell them, I go, the gym business is the perfect business, you know, gym Yeah, Jim's. Jim's used to have, you know, these like non-cancelable 3-year, 5-year ironclad contracts. And now, now, you know, they— tons of them went out of business, they got sued, they had a gazillion chargebacks. And, you know, now everything's like month to month. So, and I told them, I said, you know, you have to— you can't do this because the consumer is gonna— they're gonna go to their bank. You know, you got a lot of pressure in the on that side of the business because we have the FTC trying to make rules on that. You have Joe Biden and his junk fee rules, you know, that they're trying to come out with.

And, you know, get him going on the Dick Durbin and all that.

No, I'm not going to talk about Dick Durbin. Oh, okay. We don't like Dick Durbin.

I'm just, I'm just staying silent. I didn't even hear him. Didn't even hear him.

No, good choice.

I didn't even mention him. No, but I'm just saying, we, uh, you know, with the, you know, with recurring billing, there's this— and even Visa has new rules and MasterCard on recurring billing. And, you know, I see like a lot of merchants just don't want to go along with that and they get themselves in trouble and then they get, you know, 5% chargebacks and then they wonder, hey, Stripe shut me off.

Why do I have such a problem?

Yeah, what's going on? They're not educated.

Yeah, well, you try to— we try to educate them a lot of times and they're like, no, why do I have to do that?

Right.

Yeah. The problem is a lot of times they're only wanting to listen after it's actually an issue, you know, for them. And I think, you know, like you're saying, people come, you know, to you trying to solve their problems. They come to us and like, oh, we ended up on the match list. We have no idea, you know, what happened. We were just going about our business and then all of a sudden one day, you know, we're on the match list and it's like, I don't think that's the actual series of events, you know, that happened here. Why don't we rewind a little bit and reflect on, you know, the role that you played, you know, in, in this incident. But it's, it's funny, the perspective, you know, that some of these guys come to are like, oh, I didn't, I didn't do anything wrong. Like, I, I have no idea what happened.

I have a guy now, he's going down the rabbit hole with, um, with, um, a lawyer trying to get him off the match list. I told him, I said, I said, there's no way you're getting off the match list. You violated the, you violated the rules, right? He has—

it's difficult.

Yeah, he has some adult products on his website, and some of the pictures are showing things you shouldn't be showing. So I said, you have two choices. A, register, you know, because there's a lot of businesses that have to register, you know, vape businesses, cigar businesses, adult businesses, you know, any, you know, medical type businesses, some of them have to register, right? So I said, or you just register and pay the $1,000 fee at the door, and, uh, then you can just leave all your pictures on your website. But it's next to— and he got put on by PayPal. And I said, you're never gonna get off— PayPal's never getting you off the map. PayPal— I think the, the hardest ones to get removed is probably PayPal and Square and Stripe.

They're—

you're just not going to get anywhere with them.

They're just fighting it, going up against a brick wall. We, we did have one instance recently where we were actually able to help get somebody off the match list. But that was a unique case where it was an identity fraud issue. So their identity was stolen, and then the fraudster, you know, got them onto the match list. And so in that particular case, they actually hadn't really done anything wrong. It was one of the first times where I was like, okay, I actually feel like you didn't do anything wrong, you know, in this particular, you know, instance. Like, all right, you got all the police reports, let's, let's work with you, and let's, let's go, you know, see if we can you know, help resolve the situation. But most of the time, yeah, you're, you're, you're just, uh, talking.

In some cases, banks will give, give an exception, you know, if you can show them that, you know, wasn't your fault. Identity theft, I've seen dozens of those over the years.

A friend of mine, I, he was in trouble. He owned a CBD business and we got him hooked up.

And he was on the match list.

He's on the match list. And, and and now he, he got himself into a, a whole scam thing, and now his, his whole business is basically ruined. It's done, you know. I mean, it just sucked. That sucked.

Yeah, it did suck. He had a good— he had a nice—

he's got a great business.

Got a great business. But yeah, we get— because banks will look at it and go, hey, you— the guy was processing for 3 years on the processor, and now all of a sudden you're gonna send— put them on the match list. Right.

Cut his head off.

We sent it to the bank. They were like, oh, the guy processed for 3 years. He didn't do anything. All the statements were clean. So they, you know, they did an exception.

An exception.

Yeah. So, you know, you can get around— we've gotten around that several times with, you know, the bank. Some banks can be very forgiving, but not for, you know, and especially like during COVID we saw tons of people on Match. Oh, they didn't pay the fees. There was a ton of chargebacks. We had a couple of hotels on Match. Hotels?

Well, COVID, I feel like, was just a wild, wild time for all of us, especially in the payment space. It's like, you know, what once were these incredibly stable businesses and industries overnight, all of a sudden you're like, yeah, we can't touch that. This is way too much risk.

Yeah, we had a hotel and the guy had like $100,000 in chargebacks. So he's— his lawyer is trying to get him off the match list. I said, I said, let's get on the telephone. We called up the processor and got the guy off. You know, he paid the money and they turned the guy— let the guy get a merchant account.

Yeah, right around the start of COVID I was starting the process to go acquire credit card processing portfolios. I thought, hey, this is going to be this great, great opportunity. I've got all this financing. Let's, let's go buy. You know, these residual streams, had LOIs out on, on multiple portfolios, and then all of a sudden, you know, half these businesses are, are shutting down. And it just— thankfully, we, we hadn't, you know, pulled the, the trigger on any of those. But I mean, just crazy time.

Real quick, where did we meet you at? SEAA. But did we see you again at another conference?

I'm, I'm at most of the conferences, and so I feel like it's, it's very possible.

He keeps saying that we only met you one time, and I feel like I definitely— we definitely bumped into each other more than that, that one occasion.

Let's assume it probably happened. Let's—

yeah, I'm assuming that it probably happened.

Yeah, well, I'll be at SCAA again.

I'll be there as well. I think I'm on a panel, uh, this year for, for SCAA.

Okay, nice.

So before we wrap it up, man, is there anything, you know, looking into the future that's happening for Tilt that you, you want to spill the beans on, or you know, just plug yourself, shameless promo for the, for the last, uh, self-promo. It's a shameless self-promo at the end of the show here for yourself, you know what I mean?

Yeah, I think, I think anybody that has a neon sign in their background is probably willing to, to give a shameless, you know, promo from, from time to time. Uh, it's just, I, I don't know if there's, you know, statistical evidence to back that up, but I'd go out on a limb and say probably more more likely than not. I think, you know, for, for us here at Tilt, you know, we've got two, two core, you know, parts of our, our business today. We've got the direct, you know, ISV opportunities. So if there's ISVs or vertical software companies that, that need a better partner, need a better solution, you know, I'd love to talk to them. But we also work with tons of ISOs, agents, and payments consultants that want to refer, uh, you know, ISV opportunities to Tilt. I think today we've got like 170+ ISOs that refer, you know, deals to us. And so it's a huge, you know, growing part of our business. But when you got— think about that kind of forward-looking, where, where are we headed? Uh, over the course of this past year, we've had some really interesting opportunities start to pop up with some of the larger strategics, uh, in the payment space that have come to us wanting to white label our entire technology stack. And so think folks like card brands, acquirers, super ISOs, that are coming to us and saying, hey, we really want to be more active in this vertical software ecosystem, but we don't have the technology to really effectively compete, you know, in this category. And I think for us, my favorite stat about Tild is that our average integration for a software partner is only 9 days. And so if you really want to get up and running quickly and have, you know, that rapid integration, that great technology experience, but also generate revenue, on your payments. You know, that's, that's what we do here at Tilt. So, you know, if you want to follow along on the journey, you can follow Tilt, uh, on LinkedIn, or me, Caleb Avery, on LinkedIn. But appreciate you guys having me on the show.

Absolutely, man. All right, anything you want to ask?

Or— no, it's great having you on the show, and nice seeing you again. See you in New Orleans.

Yeah, I definitely appreciate you for stopping by, man. You know, it's, uh, 2024 has been kind of— it's been a little difficult to to getting people committed to being on the show. But I see you got your whole setup, so it looks nice, man. And, uh, congratulations on all the achievements. And, you know, I've seen, you know, from just seeing you guys at SEA and the other time that we ran into each other, uh, maybe it was, you know, in the fourth dimension or whatever. But, uh, yeah, man, it's been great talking to you, man.

Yeah, I appreciate it. With the podcast room, I'm ready at a moment's notice to hop on a podcast.

So you made a special podcast room in your office?

I did. So I got it ready to go. It's nice.

Yeah, it looks great.

I like this. I like the soundproofing. We need, you know, we got the like the honeycomb. As we, as the podcast grows, I feel like we should grow the honeycomb almost like the, like a beehive or something.

Absolutely. Yeah, that's the opportunity. You need that and you need that plant.

The plan. Yes. Yes.

All right.

So, all right, Caleb, man. Well, good luck for the 2024, man. We'll see you at SEAA down in New Orleans.

Yep. Peace out. Carpe diem. And the pain— the future of payments looks bright for everybody.