Financial Brand Forum 2022 in Las Vegas | Digitization in Banking | FinTech | B2B Vault: The Payment Technology Podcast | Episode 126

Hey, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the payment technology podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by this guy, Allen Kopelman., and we'll be providing you educational information about small business, fintech, payment processing, and the technology businesses are using in the world today. And in today's podcast, we're going to be talking about the Financial Brand Forum 2022 Allen attended in beautiful sunny Las Vegas. I heard it was quite chilly.

It wasn't so sunny, it was more like freezing Las Vegas.

Yeah, I looked at the weather one time and it was 54 degrees. I said, wow, that's not the best.

That was the warmest part of the day. The morning, it was in the low 30s.

No thanks, buddy. No thanks.

It was pretty cold.

So Allen was down in Vegas for, uh, 3 days at the convention, um, with, uh, one of our partners, GoDaddy. Nice hat, by the way. Um, I just noticed that, that, that hat— did you— that the G and the O is what makes the heart.

Oh, okay. Do you see it?

Yeah, you see the G is sideways and then always sideways.

Yeah.

And then you—

yeah, all right. Or the G and the D. Oh, it's go, it's go. G and O. Yeah, G and O. Yeah.

Well, yeah, that was cool. Uh, so he was gone 3 days. Uh, pretty quiet in the office. Rocky was gone.

You guys miss Rocky?

It was really quiet. Really, really, really quiet. Uh, I heard my music all the way in the bathroom one day, and I was like, wow, I'm listening to music really loud. Uh, and yeah, so, uh, you He was down there, you know, rubbing shoulders with, with the bank, bank, banking guys, the bankers.

It was a very interesting, you know, conference. And, uh, shout out to, um, the guys who run that show, Will Bernstein and the CEO Jeffrey Pilcher. That they're, you know, we got to meet— well, I met Will real quick, he had to leave, and then we met with Jeffrey. Which was nice. Learned more about the Financial Brand, and, you know, actually surprised I never heard of this convention before. I—

when I, when I think of Financial Brand, I think of it like as more— I don't know, what was it? Was it about marketing?

Yeah, so there was a lot, you know, you learn, you know, whenever I go to a show, I look at it two ways. One, I'm there, you know, you're there to get business, you're there to tell people about your company, right? And then you're there to learn. So I tried to attend like a few sessions. They had some— the first night they were supposed to have Jay Leno, but then he got in some kind of accident with his car and burned himself. So instead they had Frank Caliendo. We talked about this before. Yeah. And he does impressions. And but that other, you know, but they had both. It was a mixture of motivational speakers, and then they had— and it's all about how banks should brand themselves. In fact, I met a guy there. I wish I brought the book with me, but I'm reading it at home. So, Digitizing Banking. And there was a— so the, the whole theme of the convention was all about, you know, how banks are going to digitize themselves to fight off the onslaught of fintechs. Like I was showing you earlier, there was this big— I've got one of the guys who spoke was showing this graphic Alipay.

Oh, the diagram, right?

And how that's like a super app. And that's like the big rumors that, uh, Elon Musk wants to turn Twitter into a super app like Alipay. That's what he wants to do.

So he wants you to be able to pay for things?

No, he wants you to be able to do everything you need to do by using Twitter. So you're going to use that for your social, you're going to use that as a payment vehicle. Maybe as a bank, who knows. Like, Alipay is a huge, massive conglomerate of— they bought up all these fintechs, right, you know, and piled them all. I mean, there's entertainment in there, you buy your tickets to concerts, you know. But, you know, Asia operates much differently than we operate, you know. Yeah, so it's, you know, but it's a unique concept, you know, the super app concept. But the banks are definitely feeling, you know, the banks— I talked to a lot of bankers when I was there, and I talked to a lot of vendors. So let's talk about the banks first. I met people from like a regular bank, people from a credit union, people from a community bank. One thing I learned is credit unions are like the biggest secret in the United States of America.

And it's— the secret's out, right?

Yeah, but I'm just saying, I don't think— like, I— when I go to open a bank account, I don't think about using a credit union.

Why?

I don't know, never thought about it. I use a regular. I always—

you know why?

Why?

Because credit unions, you— the, the stigma of it or something, it's not poor people.

It's not a stigma.

It was.

No, no, but I think, yeah, I mean, for me it was like—

for me it was always like, you bank at credit union.

Like, ooh, no, like, I was associated with a credit union with like— okay, like, give me an example. In the front up here in the office complex where we are is, I think, Space Coast Credit Union. No, who is that?

I don't know, some real—

I think—

yeah, I think—

I think credit union, right?

I think credit union, but it's— I think like iPhone.

Oh, iCredit Union. I don't know. Oh, some credit union, right? It's stupid, but it used to be the IBM Credit union.

Really? So I—

yeah, that's what it used to be. Maybe it still is and it just has a different name, like IBM, like— yeah, the company, right? So I always thought about credit union like the Navy Credit Union. You got to be in the Navy. The IBM Credit Union is IBM employees. Ah, that's how I thought about it.

I mean, that was the one— that is kind of what the— what a rule was too, I guess. It like used to be like that too, right?

But I didn't think about it and like, oh, anybody could walk in there.

No, I still don't think you— anyone can because Well, someone can't just go to Navy Federal, like you have to have a family member there, right?

But that's what I'm saying, that, that— but they don't all operate that way is what I found out.

Yeah, no, I blew my mind too. I walked into a credit union that when— before I moved down here, and I was, you know, I wanted to open a new bank account, and they were like, yeah, come on in.

Yeah, like I didn't realize that it— I thought of it more like, oh, it's an organization or company whatever.

But I get what you're saying now.

Apparently there's other ones. And then, you know, there's a lot of community banks, especially in, in Middle America, not so much in the big cities.

What's a community bank?

So community bank in like a small town, and like where my daughter lives, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I met a lot of people from Iowa that worked at banks, tons of them from Iowa, Virginia, every kind of state. Washington State, Oregon.

What are they looking to do, get out of the bank?

No, the, no, no, the credit unions and the community banks are now trying to focus in on commercial banking, and that's where we come in with our new product because we're able to give them our new web, you know, set them up a branded page. They can send their customers there, they fill in their information, so we capture that somebody was there, right? And then they click enter and they go to the solution finder and they answer 10— pick what their solution is, answer 10 questions, and in under 5 minutes they're approved for a merchant account. So I was walking around at the show introducing myself, hi, this is Allen from GoDaddy and Nationwide Payment Systems, want to tell you about our new payment product. Most people thought of GoDaddy like, oh, why are you guys at the show? We think of you as domain name, or you're hosting our website, right, or something like that. So now we're exposing the new program to banks and credit unions. So I found out that credit unions traditionally are just like B2C, you know, consumer bank, and not really doing commercial businesses. And now they're— community banks and credit unions are really trying to get more commercial customers. So we bring that aspect in, and then we bring in— besides that, that power, which is powered by GoDaddy— we're bringing all the power of Nationwide Payment Systems with that, you know, alongside of that, where we have banks that can handle other types of merchant accounts that can't go through GoDaddy, and a full-blown ATM managed service platform.

Nice.

So that, let's say you're a credit union, and let's say you're in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, or you're a community bank in another town, Waterloo, Iowa, and maybe there's a venue there or a mall that your bank is the principal finance of that venue or mall, and then you want to have ATMs there, but then you don't have the capability to go set up the ATM, load the ATM. That's where we can bring those type of things in there and other powerful type of, you know, financial services.

Very cool.

To these banks that they're not— that they don't have access to now because they'll go to like— because they're finding that their customers are going to the PayPal, Clover, Square, and they're not coming to them because they're sending them to go call a phone number, right, to go get their merchant service. And the trend is that I don't know.

So by the time this podcast comes up, yeah, I'm just gonna throw it that we're gonna have to like, like do some ads because as soon as people start hearing about you offering this, the competition is going to go through the roof, bro.

I don't know about that. I don't think so.

I don't know. You see that? I mean, I'm looking at the digital marketing thing. People are running ads against our— again, they're using— the competition is running ads against the company name already, bro.

Okay, it's good, good for us.

It's good for us, but it's also making our work harder.

Okay, well, we're gonna, you know, we're, you know, we're, we're in a unique position where we have, you know, we, you know, we're, we're trying to solve a problem. Problem is people don't want to go and call up and fill out paperwork.

No one wants to fill out, right?

So now we're, now we're giving people the opportunity to answer 10 questions to get a merchant account. And bring the best of both worlds. We bring them the PayFac, you know, the, the PayFac style, and then they—

what is that?

Where you just answer a few questions and you get your account, just like PayPal, Stripe, and Square. But then on top of that, we have full-blown customer service where you can chat through the terminal, you can chat through the dashboard, and you can get help for your— plus you can call our—

I know I'm a web developer, so I know people are who may listen to this podcast, they're looking at me like, Justin, I can't believe you're cosigning GoDaddy. I will say this, they have made leaps and bounds when it comes to their customer service. I have no complaints since starting, you know, building with them and working with them on a regular. They handle anything that we have issues going on. They, you know, it might be a little bit because of the partnership, I don't know. But I do know that I, I mean, I do know that I don't have that much influence. I do know that, uh, the customer support side of it, uh, they've had— they've made plenty changes. I know facts. You guys know too, so don't go hating too much, man. But yeah, man, shout out to GoDaddy.

But the banking business is starting to change because the biggest thing at the convention was two things: digital, you know, digitizing your banking, which we're doing, we're helping them with. The next thing was self-service, like kiosks in the bank. So when you go into the bank, someone can go up to a, um, like a large screen that was at least 5, 6 feet tall, you know, hit things on it, find out about bank accounts, this, that, about the bank's products, and possibly even open up a bank account using some kind of kiosk. And we were showing them that too with our system.

I like that.

We could put our— they could add us into their system. Someone says, oh, I need a merchant account, click here, boom, and then they could go right into the Solution Finder. I can dig that, right? And, and we could be in their kiosk. So there was a lot of different things. And then data was another big thing, right? So when we're talking to them about there was a lot of companies there selling the same thing. So there was probably— there was a bunch of companies selling kiosks and screens and equipment, and then software that went in the kiosks and the screens, and then other software to— so you could track that software. Yeah, yeah, tracking stuff, you know, how to track your leads into a CRM. I mean, Salesforce was there. And then, and then the other big thing they talked about at the show was data. Right? And also, like I said, there was companies there like how to open a bank account online, how to get— put your loan applications online, all this kind of stuff. But the other thing was the, the data part, right? So the data part was how can banks partner with these data companies, right, who can analyze your data, the bank's data, so they can sell to their customers better. So they could say, hey, oh, we know Allen owns a house and he has a 15-year mortgage and he's down to the last 3 years. Maybe he's going to want to refinance his house and take out cash and fix up his house. So you got to start feeding him emails for that. Or Justin has a car and it's— he paid it off.

You're saying that there's this company that has like proprietary software to aggregate this type of data?

Well, there, there were companies there that would analyze that— your, your customer, customer spending habits, spending habits. What are they doing? Who has a merchant account? Who doesn't have a merchant account? Who has a car loan? Not with them. Why not? So they need to know, like, why does Justin have a car loan from, from Ford and he didn't get a car loan from the credit union, right? So they want— they need to analyze why is that. They're, and they're getting that information. The one thing that we have that's an advantage is when we set up the bank and they get— and their customers are using our merchant services, the bank's going to be able to actually link in. They're not going to be able to see like the personal debt, that what we call the PII, personal information, right? But they are going to be able to capture that payment data and analyze it and know what that business's cash flow looks like with credit cards.

Nice.

So that's pretty interesting that they would be able to do that with this system. Yeah. So our system goes way beyond what, what other systems can actually do from a data standpoint. A bank could actually tap into the data, right, and see what's going on with their clients. So they could know, oh, Justin's Bar and Grill, hey, last month they did 50— they did $150 grand. This month they're only doing $100 grand.

What's wrong?

Well, that might be the time of the year or whatever.

Oh, maybe Justin needs a loan, a short-term loan, and so they'll push you out an email automatically.

So they're not— but they'll be able to, to use this information, right?

Yeah.

And do that. So it's very interesting to see like what was going on, what were the sessions about. They were talking about digital marketing and digital— everything was digitize your bank, digitize, digitize, digitize. Because this is what people want. And are the big, you know, what are the big banks doing, you know? And where's the threat coming from? The threat's mostly coming from fintechs, because every time you turn around, you're reading about another fintech company. They're becoming what we call, we've talked about on the show, a neobank, right? And then, so the same thing. So it's a threat, like, to— it's a threat to the banks because now You know, like, people are putting their money on—

keeping their money in PayPal, keeping their money in, uh, interest in any of that. Well, Robinhood, you get interest, right?

But I'm saying like they're putting their money in Robinhood instead of in your bank. Yeah, so why are they doing that?

I mean, my kids are doing that, right?

So the bank needs to become like more— yeah, in fact, it's crazy. I got an email from Robinhood that they'll pay 3.75% interest on your deposit. That's a lot. That's— the bank's paying zero, pretty much. Yeah, I mean, you're not getting any. I'm just saying. But you know, the banks are going to lose their capital, which they use to loan money out. Does that—

why are you saying with the Robinhood thing? Because that means you're basically— you're staking it in crypto.

No, they're not staking it in crypto.

How can they give you that much interest?

Because they're doing something with gold, it says.

Oh, gold is going up like crazy again.

Yeah, against gold. So they must be buying gold. I just don't know how safe it is. Yeah, FDIC insured. I mean, look what happened with FTX, right?

That's, that's exactly what I was thinking in my head.

And that was one of the speakers got up there and he was talking about that. He goes, yeah, he goes, a lot of people now, they broke from crypto because if you had your crypto and it was stored on FTX Well, basically you're done. It's worthless.

No, you don't have any. There's nothing. You can't even try to withdraw, dude.

Right. And also the FTC put out announcements like, do not fall for any scams where someone's contacting you saying, oh, I can get your crypto money back, give me $500, because that's not— that's not going to happen. You're not going to get your— it's not going to get your money back.

That's not a ting man.

Exactly, that's not going to happen. So, so it's very interesting to see like what were the— like the breakout sessions were all about digitizing, digital marketing, content creation, what kind of, you know, building up, putting, you know, getting a blog onto your— a lot of these banks don't have a blog.

No. So we're talking about putting out a blog because, you know, I've actually had a few sit-downs with a couple of community banks, I guess you could say, like, yeah, it's really small credit unions. And they don't, they don't operate it like a business, you would think. They depend on the traditional, well, we're a bank, people will come, right? You know, like the Field of Dreams things, if you build it, they will come.

Right, exactly.

But that's not the world we live in.

No, not anymore. And there needs to be a, there needs to be a merge, you know, the digital and the, and the brick and mortar, you know, they're, you know, and the banks that are going to bridge that together are going to be the ones that are going to be successful for sure. And the banks that don't bridge that together, and especially if you're going to attract the younger type of consumer, right, younger than us, then you have to make it super easy and super techno technological. Well, that's what we're doing, the latest in technology, use it, right? We're— that's what they were pitching there at the show. So someone could come into your bank, or you could put this kiosk out in the— let's say you were in a mall, in a mall, put this— keep your kiosk in a mall, and someone could open a bank account.

All right, just imagine all the teenagers, you know, school's gonna get let out, you know, they're just going to school, first, first job, You know, not everyone has the household structure or the family to, you know, oh, you need to go get a bank account, blah blah blah. Some kids don't even have a parent to go there, you know, because you need an adult.

You can't just go under 18, right?

So like, imagine how easy that would be for a kid, you know, at inside of a mall. He gets his check, goes talk to his boss, hey man, come here and help me sign up, you know.

But the other thing is, is they were talking about also is the lack of financial education, for sure. And there's a big lack. We saw— I saw one booth there that was providing financial education, and then there was a woman there from a company, a creator company, and she was also selling to credit unions, um, some kind of movie that did financial education, like a training.

Yeah, like a movie, like a class.

A class, yeah, that you could give to a school or whatever. And I think that, you know, that, that kids need to really learn. And we talked about this on FinTech Friday.

Before you go, I gave my daughter $20 the other day. Yeah, right. That wouldn't even do us $10 because she said she wanted to go to the store, to the corner store. And she looked at me and she was like, okay, right? Like she literally looked at me, she said, okay. Because I gave her the $10. She's like, I could do this, right? So I gave her the money and I said, well, how much did the stuff cost that you bought?

Yeah, she said, I don't know. Yeah, they got it.

I said, how do you not know? There's a thing that like the register shows you. Yeah. And so she gave me $2 and I don't know, 32 cents. I was like, so I gave you a $10 bill.

Yeah.

And you give me $2.32 back. How much did you spend? It's basic math for me, right? Yeah, like, you know what I mean? Like, what is it, $7.68?

Yeah, $7.68.

She was just looking at me like— and I said, this is what's wrong, because this is why you guys are always so, you know, you're so dependent on putting the card down, you don't even pay attention. Like, what if they charge you 3 times for the same item? I, I don't know.

I don't—

we really have to do something about that though.

Yeah, there's got to be—

the community has to like—

there's got to be some— for some financial training. Yeah, there's got to be some financial training going on, financial education.

Hello everyone, we'd like to take this time to thank our sponsors Nationwide Payment Systems and NPS Printer. We'd also like to shout out the listeners and everyone that subscribed to our YouTube channel. Thank you for tuning in. If you'd like to reach Allen or myself, head over to B2BVault.info where you'll find two forms, one to contact us and another if you're interested in becoming a sponsor. If you'd like to sign up for a merchant account, click the Apply Now button located at the top of the page of B2BVault.info. Where you'll answer a few questions, and you'll be on your way to processing payments in no time. The podcast is available on Spotify, iTunes, Pandora, and other popular streaming networks. Thanks again for listening.

You know, schools should invite people to come in and speak about financial education.

Yeah, I don't want— I'm not talking about business owner either.

What do you mean a business?

I don't want business owners to come and talk like how they used to. For me in high school, like, it was always the, you know, the, the real estate guy to come in and put on a—

well, no, that's just talking about business.

Yeah, I'm talking about somebody who, like an economics professor, needs to come in there and tell it. I don't know who's going to teach you how to spend money.

The economics guy is going to need to look at it from a much lower standard of, hey, you know, oh, you have to be beyond—

yeah, yeah, you dumb it down even below that.

You got to go, you got to start with the basics.

Like, how much? You got 4 quarters?

No, like, you have a big 3. Like, you have a bank account. Like, people need to understand about bank account, you know, develop a budget, you know, what's your budget, how are you going to budget what you're doing, you know, saving money. A lot of people don't save any money. Understand how credit cards work, you know what I mean? So people need to understand like the very, very basics of like what's going on. How's your credit card work? How does the debit card work? How to read the prices in the store. How do you—

how to— and also establish how much tax you paid.

No, but it's like funny, like I go to Publix now, right? So it's like Publix has gone digital. It's like blowing my mind. Right?

Everything.

So I had to spend time to figure out how to— they don't have coupons anymore. No. So now you gotta— before I go to the store, I gotta go in the app and I gotta look, oh, what's on the BOGO, what do they got a special for, blah blah blah, right? I had to put my credit card in this app because they give you back rewards, which I don't understand why they're— it does this.

What does the phone number thing do at Publix?

Oh, so when you put it— so if you go into your app and you— and your app, and you see like the— you see the— you see like items are on sale, you click those, right? So you get the sale, the special sale price, because there's no physical coupon. How do you get the—

you got to scan it at the—

no, you just put— do it on your phone. You go, okay, maybe I'm gonna buy this cheese, maybe I'm buying almond milk, maybe I'm buying this pizza crust. Oh, there's a sale on— and it would— No, so now it's in your app, right? I get it. Then you go to the— when you check out, you put in your phone number, any coupons you had, then go into the register. Oh, the register sees it through your app. Then you can just take the app and hit the button and pay, and then they're giving you 1% back in rewards.

Is that because they want you to not have— that's because they're trying to get rid of cash registers in a whole—

I don't think they're trying to get rid of cash registers. I think so, because did you see the other one place that they—

what they're doing?

At which place?

There's another— there's another grocery store where you scan the— you physically scan the product before you put it in your cart.

Yeah, I've seen— I've seen that before. They have that like Amazon Whole Foods thing.

That's pretty interesting.

Yeah, so you scan it and then you have to have Amazon account so you can pay for your stuff through Amazon.

Looks like it's going—

they ring when you walk out the door. Right, then it charges your card. People better start figuring out Amazon Go. No, but you know, there— I was talking to a couple of people that work. One guy that works at Walmart that I know, he was telling me the theft is through the roof because of the self-checkout.

Yeah.

And this guy at Target told me the same thing. He's like, because, you know, somebody that I know, one of my friends, one of my son's friends works at Target. Yeah. He's like, dude, he goes, they had a guy recently come in, goes up, goes through the self-checkout, and the guy must have been watching, like, to see, like, the security guard walked away, and the guy just cruised right through the self-checkout with a, with a TV. Oh yeah, just cruised right and went right out the door. And then finally somebody realized, like, the guy didn't pay, right? And the guy, you know, just—

he—

somebody was waiting outside and the guy ran out the door and he was successful in getting that TV into the back of a SUV or something and just took off. And he says it happens quite a bit. Yeah, so I find it to be, you know, no comment. I'm not—

I would never do that. It's happened a lot. I know it's happened a lot. A friend of mine used to work like that. Rocky, no stealing.

Rocky, no swiping. Rocky will catch you and bite your hand. Bite you.

No.

So the, so the banks are in the same boat because who's threatening their business? Fintechs. So banks need to partner with fintechs like us, Nationwide Payment Systems, our fintech hub, and power your bank with fintech.

Let us do the heavy lifting for you, and then you can just collect the benefits.

Yes, you collect a check every month. So you get the fintech side and mash it in with your bank, and now you're giving the services that your customers want. Because these banks, if they don't start giving the customers the service they want— the people opening up a business, they don't want to call on the phone and they don't want to deal with that. They want the new technology, right?

I mean, everyone who's like, who owns a business, I know that you have to see the way that the banking industry is changing, right? Like, I mean, it's just like going down, down, down.

Yeah, but it's going to be a matter of time before, you know, if the banking industry— you know, the banking industry, I think, has a challenge. So the challenge is, you know, how are they gonna— you know, how are they gonna make these changes, right?

I think that one, one thing real quick for me is that I think they need to do a better, like, a trust thing. The people don't trust banks anymore.

No, I mean, people, people don't trust— I could tell you right now, people don't trust Bitcoin. Bitcoin right now.

Well, people don't trust anything for the most part, but, but I'm just saying, like, people are having a hard time, like, putting their money in the bank. Yeah, they'd rather keep it at home.

Yeah, but people need to understand, like, if you're putting your money in the bank, that it's FDIC insured. So I think that banks have— when you have a business, I think people understand that. But I think banks need to look at, like, oh, what kind— how else can we digitize for our customers? Like, what kind of things should we do? Hey, you need to partner with some fintechs. Like, oh, partner with a, a, a— instead of partnering with ADP for payroll, yeah, partner with a payroll company where there's an app going on and the money can get— people can open up a bank account at your bank and then easy. Like, let's say I own a restaurant, right? I come to Justin's Credit Union, let's just say, and Justin says to me, hey, Listen, you just have your employees go on their phone, they open up their bank account, you run your payroll, and then their money goes in the bank right away. So they don't run to go to these apps. So banks need to get with it.

That's the ticket.

And get more services like that. The same thing, like the bank can say, Justin, oh, you're opening a restaurant? Here, go to this, uh, website, nationwidepaymentsystems.com/justinsbank. Get your points, click on there, get your, get your, get your credit card machines there. Boom, boom, boom, you're done. You answer 10 questions, they're shipped to your business. Boom. If you need help, there's help, you know, and everything. And they give, you know, and then Justin's like, oh wow, this is great. Now I can do all of this stuff really quick. My employees can get their paychecks right away because they're going to bank at my bank because I'm getting paid right away. You're getting paid right away because we give next next day funding. And then the bank's getting all this data and they're getting more customers. So they have to, they have to cut down the, the friction of opening up a bank account. Like, you go to the bank, they got to look up your corporation, they got to check the federal tax ID. All that can be done using that artificial— so long too. No, but it can be done now with all AI. We're doing it, 10 questions.

I mean, I don't know what it's like day, but I know when I set up my— when I went to go get my business bank account, that took me forever.

Right, but I'm saying, yeah, it takes forever, but I'm saying that's the friction with, with business banking. They got to check more. There's more to check out than just a personal bank account, right? But you have to start with, hey Justin, open your personal account here. Now you come, you open your business account. Now it's easy because they already know Justin.

Them, right?

So they have to like follow that, you know, they have to follow that road along and then get the rest of Justin's business, you know. Oh, we're partnered with this payroll service. Oh, we're partnered with GoDaddy and Nationwide Payment Systems. Oh, you need an ATM in your business? Here, call this guy, they can help you with ATM at your, at your nightclub or your mall. Or, you know, the, the bank wants to become more part of the, you know, be a better part of the community. Oh, we're financing this mall. Hey, Mr. Mall, why do you have Bank of America in here? We're the one loaning you the money. Put our ATM in the bank, and then we help you facilitate that so you don't have to have people go out loading the ATM and all that. We facilitate loading the ATM, making it surcharge-free for your customers. So we have a host of services besides just the merchant account, right, that we can do for banks. But it was interesting, like I said, the whole theme of this convention was digitize your bank, digitize your bank. And everything there was all types of, you know, Salesforce type of, um, you know, CRM systems. No, they— I didn't see Zoho. And then there were some cybersecurity companies there. AT&T was there. There was other cybersecurity But there was CRM, there was all kinds— oh yeah, and also like big TVs to put up in the bank to put stuff up there, you know, advertisements. And like LG, huh? Like LG? No, just companies who sold kiosks, like kiosk-type, uh, screen systems and things for people to do stuff with at the bank. I think banks need to just like reimagine themselves. I mean, look at Capital One, right?

Watch Back to the Future Part II.

No, but I'm saying like, okay, but Capital One, pretty cool, but you watch it, right? But Capital One has these like coffee shops.

I've seen that, right?

There's one in like—

they got one in New York.

There's like one in Delray. I think banks need to think about that, like, hey, maybe we need to offer like a little co-working space inside. Like, oh, you can— that would be a great idea to turn banks into co-working spaces.

Imagine all of the abandoned banks right now.

Yeah, there's a lot of it. I've seen them.

That is a great idea.

Like, there's a bank down the street from here, you know.

Dude, that is a great idea, bro. Like, could you imagine all of the banks that right now that are sitting there closed, right? They have all the offices, cubicles, they got the ethernet.

But they're not—

but I'm saying they don't need to be big because co-working spaces, you don't want to be in a—

no, I'm saying they could have—

when it's all loud and—

no, but they could have a bank in there too.

Exactly.

My point is, is have a small bank.

That is a great idea.

Yeah, like that's what they're doing with this Capital One, is like people can go in there and they can go get some banking services, get a cup of coffee and sit around and do a little work and then move on with their day. But it could be like a friendly place that I should go check one out and see how it works. Maybe we'll make a Nationwide Payment Systems cafe. Kind of crazy, kind of crazy, but it's inter— it's an interesting concept. I don't think they're all over the place, but you know, I've still only seen—

I've seen them, I've seen they launched in New York, probably LA, and well, I saw one in Del Rey. Like, they actually have one down here?

Yeah, Del Rey on the Atlantic Avenue.

We should go.

Okay, we'll go check it out one day. We can go, we can go in there and do a Facebook Live and interview the guy if if they allow that. If they allow it, we could ask them. Yes, I know you can't go in a regular bank and do a Facebook Live. It's like a big no-no. I asked because I said, oh, we want to pop out of the vault, it's B2B vault. They were like, no, no can do. So let's go.

We still haven't reached out to a bank that's closed though.

Not yet, we got to work on that. So, you know, so the convention was a success. It was in— I really enjoyed the convention, the motivational speakers that they had, the, the other speakers that they had that spoke about different things going on, the digital, you know, learn— going around to the vendors, you know, and learning about like what are they doing in the, in the business and how banks need to step up and digitize everything from their digital marketing, kiosk technology, cybersecurity, data using, using the data, you know, and because they're gonna have to stem the tide from— stem, stem the tide because to against these fintechs. But one thing that I think banks can do well where the fintechs fall is like, let's say you're a business and you need, you know, specialized things done for your business, you know, that's where, that's where I think banks come in. But I think that, you know, like I said, you can buy— well, Carvana is not doing so good right now. I think it's going to go out of business.

That's what they're saying.

And, uh, but you know, you can just do all these things online, like buy a car. That's a threat to the used car business, you know, if you buy a car off a website. But I'm saying it's, it's taking away a little bit of—

yeah, you see, like, I like it, but also it's one of those things where I probably wouldn't have bought my car if I would have gotten into it, you know what I mean?

If you went to the car dealership, yeah, you know, flipped out to— nope, not doing it.

Yeah, no, because I mean, there's a burn hole on a passenger seat. Oh, they like put some like patching over. It's just a bunch of little stuff that you can't— I mean, it's an internet, right? Like, so, you know, you're spinning a car around and you can go on the inside, but it's not like you're physically there, so.

Right.

You know, I mean, I don't know, maybe if you do a better virtual tour of it, maybe they got to get better cameras, better technology to, to really see what the inside looks like. Yeah, I mean, all in all though, like, the experience was really smooth. I didn't like the delivery process. I've said that before. They changed my delivery date.

No, but that's what I'm talking about. Like, I think that bank, you know, banks need to merge.

They need to figure that out for sure.

Digitization. You know, that's going on to fend off all these fintech companies. Because I mean, what— how much business, you know, people keep money on PayPal, people keep money in all kinds of apps. I mean, we talked to— we interviewed a guy in the podcast called Pocketbook, and Pocketbook enabled— has an app that they're connected to a bunch of those services, and you could just take their app, go up to an ATM, and then take your money out of that app into the ATM.

Pretty slick.

So, you know, so there is, you know, there's stuff going on. The movement of the moving money out of those apps to actually spend it and other stuff is a little bit choppy. And that's why if you haven't been doing it, for sure, right? But I'm saying like you have to move it, put it in your bank account sometimes because you want to spend it. Because you can't spend Robinhood somewhere, you can't— PayPal you could spend, but PayPal is a physical credit card, huh? Doesn't Robinhood have a card now? They're getting a card. Yeah, they're getting— so a lot of these companies, these fintechs, they're getting cards so people can get the money out of the place by using the card.

And that's why banks need to get ahead of the curve, right?

Bank's got to get ahead of the curve with everything— merchant services, loans, opening accounts, cars, car loans. They need to get better at it. I mean, you like— I buy Honda. I've had a lot of Hondas, so it's easy. Honda, the, the actual Honda, has Honda American— Honda Finance. Well, the bank can't even— I mean, my bank said to me, oh, why didn't you finance here? I'm like, you guys are at 3%. They're at 0.9%. Like, it's a no-brainer. Yeah, to finance with Honda. So obviously Honda can do it because it's their car so they can make less interest. They can—

oh, your bank said that to you?

No, my bank wanted to know why I didn't get the loan. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, and I said, well, why would I get a loan for you?

I'm gonna be paying 3.9% more than I would, right?

And also, you have to look at car loans too to make sure you get a simple interest car loan.

And people don't understand that either, because sometimes you buy a car loan, you're not paying any interest, you're paying all of the money on interest and you're going zero towards the principal, right?

Well, that's because you're gonna pay all the interest and you're not gonna— there's no opportunity to save the interest even if you pay more because of the way the loan is structured. So you always want to get terrible— a simple interest car loan.

I was just in that little position.

Yep, I'm saying you gotta—

I literally was in there. Like, my— I bought that white Toyota for my wife. For a whole year I'm sitting there, I'm like How is this loan is not going anywhere, right?

Anywhere, right? And that's what I'm—

yeah, that's the exact kind of loan I had.

Yeah, because you got to know the difference between— that's why I saw that financial education is important. Yeah. So that's the— fine, that's the roundup on the Financial Brand Conference and banking.

So all in all, what do you got to say?

I guess banks need to do get digitized, get digitized, and get your bank digitized. Talk to us, let's see how we can partner with you. I think it's important to digitize and offer digital services to your customers, but I don't think, like, you— I don't think we'll see a bank ever partner with, like, Square, because at some point, if somebody wants to talk to somebody, I think it's important that The bank has, has services where there is that human interaction and digitize. And that's kind of like what we did with GoDaddy is we took a digitized product and then matched it up with regular customer service to give like that balance of the best of, you know, the best of both things, the things that like our customers are used to having customer service, but give people that easy button on the ramp, on the ramp in, you know, the ramp in, easy button, onboarding, the onboarding, frictionless, seamless, easy, quick, fast, press the easy button, boom, 10 questions, get approved. Justin did it to test it out and it worked. So that's what, that's what you have to understand in the, in your business is how to what services, you know, to match up. And we're looking at adding other services onto our website that are going to offer that same seamless, frictionless experience to our clientele so that they can get other products in the same way that they're getting the merchant account. So they can get customer financing, loans, all kinds of different types of products like Everybody, the rage— they didn't even talk about it much at the show, but there's a lot of buzz going on about, you know, FedNow and bank-to-bank payments. And I think we're going to hear more about that. That might be one of the big, big things that's talked about in 2023. And we'll do another by the, you know, in December last year we did the payment predictions for the year. Now we're gonna have to go back and listen to that podcast, definitely see how my predictions did from 2020, my predictions in 2021 for 2022. How did my predictions do? Because we talked, I made some predictions, and then we'll make our predictions for 2023. So we're gonna have to pull that podcast and sit down and see what we predicted was gonna happen. For 2022. I think most of it did happen. I wouldn't doubt it because I've been doing this long enough and I think we're going to see— I think we're going to see— I think this is right now. I think there's a huge opportunity for credit unions, small banks, and community banks to make a big move in the digital space, digitizing, making it easier for people to get uh, loans, open bank accounts, merchant accounts, etc., etc., etc., down the road, they can make a big move and get— and make a big move and, and make— and take business away from the big banks. Because big banks, they're going to take a long time to make decisions, and, and make— to make their move could take years. A smaller bank can make decisions and move a lot quicker.

You can integrate this technology into what you're already doing, right?

Integrate— yeah, integrate the technology into what you're doing. But what I'm saying is, is a smaller company can make moves a lot quicker. Like us, we make— we can make moves quicker. So that's the podcast for today. Peace out. Carpe diem. We're out.

Thank you. Peace out.

Okay, 45 minutes, not bad.