FinTech Friday | Answering Questions From Listeners | B2B Vault: The Payment Technology Podcast

Yo, 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 today is FinTech Friday. Yeah, round of applause for making it another week around the office. Uh, lots of cool stuff going on, some stuff to announce coming up, uh, Yeah, just finished Entrepreneurship Month. So shout out to all the entrepreneurs out there still grinding. Don't forget to follow the podcast to keep up to date on all the announcements and stuff that we got going on. And listen to the advice that we gave you last month, man. You know, we don't just talk. You know, I've been doing this for 10 years, and Allen's been, been in the payment processing for 20 years. So together we got 30 years of entrepreneur—

preneurial, uh, and business and finance experience.

Experience. So I mean, yeah, so it's not like we're just talking to talk. Yeah, we have been through it. I know I've been through tons of things as far as business. Allen's got plenty of business experience.

So yes, starting businesses, helping people start businesses.

Yes, sir.

All the starting businesses. Drinking tea, drinking tea, drinking water.

Stay hydrated, my friends.

So the news, like, that we're, we're gonna do a thing where people asked like a few questions either on LinkedIn or sent me some messages, and we're going to talk about that. But in the news this week, the news was crazy. Like, it was a crazy week of the news as far as like the finance financial industries go, you know, we had the FTX thing. Yeah, pretty bizarre. I mean, who knows what's gonna happen.

Funny how like the media outlets have like, uh, um, they don't say his name, Sam Bankman-Fried. It's SBF.

Yeah, SBF.

And SBF from FTX.

Like, come on guys, it was a little weird. Like, he did like an over an hour video interview with some guy from the—

yeah, you said to me I didn't watch it.

I only watched them. I just like clicked through it. This—

he didn't say— it just looks like he literally looks like a goofy kid. Yeah, he looks like he—

what he basically said was true.

He said he didn't know that he was commingling funds. I believe him. He doesn't look like he know what anything he was doing when it comes to finance.

Yes, it was very weird. He's like, oh, maybe I should have spent an hour a day with on risk management. Like, I, I'm gonna just tell you, like, I don't believe that, you know, just transfer $20 billion here and $10 billion over there and buy 144 companies, right? Was like 144+ companies, right, that they bought, that, you know, some— somebody has to know what's going on.

There's a line inside of The movie Enemy of the State.

Yeah, with, uh, that's Will Smith.

Yes. And, and what's the guy?

Gene Hackman.

Gene Hackman says to him, great movie, either you are incredibly stupid or you are incredibly smart, right? So I don't know, we'll find out tomorrow. That's pretty much about how it goes.

Yeah, we're gonna see. I mean, they had a congressional hearing about it. They said it could take months months upon months before they could figure out what—

did you watch the, uh, the movie, the, the financial literacy movie? Me neither. I'm sorry.

No, we got to watch that. That's a kid's movie.

It stops.

I think we should watch it to see what they're— you know, you should really—

we should—

you should—

we should watch it, and then you're going to create a budget, and then we're going to shoot a new one.

Shoot a new one.

We'll shoot a better one.

A budget. Okay, well, let's watch it again. Idea of actually what was going on with the movie. We don't want to copy it because somebody spent a lot of time copying it, but we could definitely talk about what else happened in the news though. Um, yeah, a bunch of fintech companies are like in trouble with this PPP, PPP stuff going on. Like they got involved with, um, giving out PPP loans and then the forgiveness paperwork wasn't filed and There's— I don't— I mean, I read about 2 more today. Then there was, then there was, um, other articles about the Employee Retention Credit and these companies taking 20-30% commission off of the money. And then the businesses find out that they get the money and they have to give a bunch of money back. One company had to give back $900 grand that they were overpaid. Once they filed their, you know, and then, and then I read an article about how the SBA said that, you know, and we talked about doing a podcast like, what does the SBA do, right? Yeah. And you know, like, what do they do? So the SBA does a lot, but the SBA was saying that, oh, it was very successful, you know, with the PPP, like getting the money dished out, but But then on the compliance side, there was a lot of messed up stuff. People getting money that had no employees, had no businesses, set up fake businesses just to, you know, like set up an EIN number just to get money.

Yep.

Or had an EIN number and didn't have like a business.

Like I said, my business got denied, right? And then they sent me some more letters and said that I should submit this paperwork and I get approved. But at that point I'm like I don't want your money, right?

So it's crazy. Some people told— I was talking to somebody today on the phone and they were like, oh, you should have got a second round of PPP. You could— I'm like, I didn't need it, so I'm not going to take it. I'm not just going to take money from the government just to take it, because I don't believe that they're just letting people be forgiven. That they forgive up to a certain amount. And then what happens is, let's say you took too much and then you send in your payroll records, right? And then they go, oh well, uh, Mr. Owings, we sent you $50,000, but you should have really only got $30,000, and now you owe us $20,000 back. Well, if you already spent the money, they send you loan paperwork, and in that loan paperwork, you're basically personally guaranteeing that against your personal property, which could include business property.

See, the thing is, I read that. Yeah, I remember reading those terms and conditions Yeah, when we got one that was all happening and I was like, yeah, people don't realize they're not reading what they're signing.

Just like we read that story the other day about how the buy now pay later companies are getting pulled out on the— pull— getting the rug pulled out from under them because they're not doing truth in lending laws. And the same thing was going on with this PPP and the ERC and all these other EDIL loans that were coming through the SBA. They were using these fintech companies. Everything's electronically signed, but then, but then they're not— they were not disclosing the, the true terms of the loan. So that was a pretty much a big hot mess, you know, because they weren't disclosing it. So, but, you know, so today I wanted to answer some listener questions. So I actually just got off the phone I was talking to this guy about the 20%— somebody that has a restaurant, and they were discussing with me that they're having this huge problem. They're having— they were basically— we'll discuss the two issues. So the one issue was they're getting all these chargebacks because of the 20% tip tolerance, and they happen to see the podcast where we explained about the 20% tip.

Really?

Yeah. And he's like, oh, I saw your podcast. And he goes, this is exactly what's happening to me in my restaurant. So I was explaining to him, and he's like, oh, I called the bank, and he says, oh, the card issuers all have different variances. And I said, no, the variances are set by the card brands— Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover. You know, in general, the variance is 20%. So to make it easy math-wise, you have a $100 charge.

Yeah.

And you want to— and you're going to go back and do a tip adjustment. 20% is only $20. So if the customer wrote down $30, it's a possibility the $10 could get charged back in a chargeback, the over 20%. The guy goes, that's exactly what's happening. And he goes, what's happening is, is it's small amounts of money— $3, $4, $5, $6, $7 chargebacks. And then he didn't even realize that there's a chargeback fee. I'm like, you're gonna have to get out your statement. Gave him my email address, email the statement over later, and I'll show him.

Is he gonna— is he gonna start?

So I told them, I said, you need a different kind of credit card terminal so that the person can add the tip in. At the time of the sale. The guy's like, wow. He goes, he goes, you know, because he's getting 10, 20, 30 of these a month.

That's— I mean, it's probably annoying for him.

And yeah, it's annoying, and he's not winning them because he can't win.

Because then the employees are out of the tip too, right?

Well, he's out of it, and he didn't realize that he's getting charged a chargeback fee. He goes, there's a chargeback fee? And I go, yeah, go look on your merchant statement. He's like, oh, I got to get that out, go look at it.

So I was like, is he already a client of yours?

No, just somebody from the podcast. They listen to the podcast and they were Googling 20% tip tolerance. Tolerance. They were Googling it.

SEO buddy came across SEO. Hey, Mama.

Came on. Hey, hey, Mrs. Owens.

Yeah, I'm talking to my mama now.

Rocky says hello too. So he didn't realize like how that worked. So I was explaining it to him, and then he was like, there's a charge? And he goes, what? So now he's got to go look on his statement and see that how much he's getting charged per chargeback.

You'll be hearing back from him soon, I'm sure.

Yeah, well, I was telling the only way to do it is tip at the time of the sale.

Was he, was he excited about that?

He said, no, he's definitely gonna have to consider doing that at his business because it's a It's a major problem.

Well, I mean, if you got 30 chargebacks a month, I'm sure that's—

yeah, could be $25 a pop. That's, you know, $600 plus the little— that's what I was explaining to him. You're losing this little amount of money, $5, $10, $5, $2, $3, $7, right? But on top of that, you also lost a chargeback fee. What's the—

how much is generally a chargeback fee?

$25. Some companies are $35.

So that's a lot of money right there.

Yeah, it's a lot of money. Yeah, and chargeback— if you had 10 chargebacks and it's $25 a piece, that's $250. That could be more than the whole bill was. So you, you know, spend the money, get a tip at the time of the sale, you know. Oh, the waiters don't want to do it, they don't want to take the machine to the table. Who's the boss, you or the waiters? Either that or tell them that when people leave over a 20% tip, you're you're not going to give it to them because they're not going to get— you're not going to get it. So, you know, it's like I was explaining them, like some banks like Capital One, right? I don't have them anymore, but when I used to have them, they would send— they would— you would get a text, oh, you left over a generous tip, more than 20%. Is this good or not good? So you would say, oh, 1 for good, 2 no, I didn't do that. Yeah, so you would say 1, they let it go through, right? But if I said number 2, no, they're whacking that place with a chargeback. But maybe you wrote it on, and you know, and it's dangerous too. Someone writes it on the bill and the handwriting's not so good, and the waiter's like, oh, that says $30, right? Maybe the person wrote $13, then the waiter keyed in $30, right? And then boom, the customer sees it on their bill and goes, no, no, I didn't leave that much tip. Charge that back. $27 or $17, whatever it is. So it happens all the time. Tip at the time of the sale, you're safe. It's all authorized. Someone had a $100 dinner, they left a $35 tip, and it's authorized for $135. You don't have to worry about the 20%, that's out the window because it was authorized.

This makes so much more sense for the full amount because I— when they— it's, it's almost like a waste of time too, right? Because they got to bring the thing to the table, then they look at it, then they go back, then they bring you back, right?

And And like with these machines, right, that have the double-sided, right, you can't— if you're only listening, you have to go to the website and see the picture of me, or go to YouTube and subscribe to the podcast so you can see the video. But with this machine, let's say you have this— like, we have these in a bunch of donut shops and a sandwich shop. So on this side, the amount pops up, and then it says what— how much tip do you want to leave, and they hit it, it's all authorized at one time.

Yep. Mom, I love you, but I want you to read that question to yourself one time out loud about buy now and pay later. Do you have to pay right away before you buy?

No.

Buy now, pay later, ma. I love you. No, you don't, smarty pants. I can't wait to see you.

Okay. So another question I got was— this one actually shocked me, okay? So this customer that we're signing up, he's like, oh, you know, I have this old point of sale system in my place. And he goes, I have a problem. And I go, what's the problem? He goes, I'm getting a lot of chargebacks. So I said, really? Why are you getting a lot of chargeback? The guy's still swiping the cards. There's no EMV. So I helped them, and we called up the point-of-sale company, and he had to do an upgrade. And he's get— now he's getting the EMV readers.

He's one of your clients?

They're gonna be a— it's a new client. Oh, I'm helping them like get the proper equipment because the guy didn't understand. He wasn't really watching what was going on in his business. And lately he's getting, you know, 5, 6 chargebacks a week.

What kind of business is it? It's a bar.

Oh, and a— like a bar restaurant, but mostly like a sports bar, kind of a more bar place.

Hole in the wall, sounds like it.

Yeah, but a busy one, doing like 30, 40 grand a month, and he's getting 5, 6 chargebacks a week. And I was like, you can't win those, it says you're swiping. He's like, how did you know? I said, I can tell by reading the— he sent me a couple of the chargeback letters. I go, You got to fix that. What's your point of sale? I found out. We called the company on the phone, three-way. They said they can do it, they have the equipment, blah blah blah blah blah. So the guy's doing the upgrade and so we're getting them right. Yeah, so we got him approved for his merchant account and sent the— what we call a VAR sheet— so they can program the machine for the new EMV, and then that will stop.

Nice.

And then also they needed another machine so they can take it to the, you know, have it at, have it at the, uh, the, to take to the, the, like, they have an outside, so they want to, when people sit outside, they wanted to have a machine to take outside. All right, so we get him another machine to take outside. And we were also talking about the 20% tip because he was getting chargebacks for that too. So he was having a multitude of problems.

Well, geez.

But I was telling them, I go, you gotta, you know, and then I said, the only way to do— so you can do a workaround, right? So the workaround I told them is you print the slip out and you have them put at a tip line there, and then when you take it to the table, you have the person write in the tip, and then when the waiter goes back, they put in the amount, and then you have them set up the point of sale for the tip prompt, key in the tip. Then when you take it back to the table for the guy to sign it, it's all on there. Then that way it's no problem, right? It's all done. And the customer—

you're not— he's not gonna have to do that anymore though.

Well, no, they're gonna do that now because they still have the terminal inside and they don't have a pay at the table.

Oh, that way.

Yeah, so this way it's a workaround because they don't have to— well, no, they're going to use the little machine for outside because it's too far for the waiters to walk.

He's says.

Ah, that's like behind the restaurant. So they have built a patio back there, you know, because of the pandemic.

Got it.

So they made like a big patio outside under a big awning, you know, built the whole outside area because more— some people feel more comfortable outside. I mean, listen, that's what it is.

More comfortable outside.

I mean, listen, I go out to eat with people, some people tell me like, oh, Does the place have outside seating? I only sat— sit outside. They don't want to sit inside. Why? Because of COVID Yeah, because of Corona. Okay.

Someone sneezes outside and you're within the wind trajectory of that, now you're sick.

Listen, unless you're sitting there, unless you're wearing like a spacesuit, PP— you're not— PPC? No, you need a full-blown spacesuit like No, you need like a helmet and everything. And then, you know, you need to come like the waiter opens up like a little box and then your hands are, you know, some kind of— I don't know, forget it, I'm not going that far. So then both of these people asked me to explain to them, you know, like the anatomy of a chargeback. So I was explaining to them how it works.

What is the chargeback?

Yeah, like what is it, how does it happen? So we— I explained to them, I go you know, there's a retreat, you know, I was given the brief explanation, but basically somebody says, I don't remember going there, it was fraud, uh, I didn't get what I paid for, whatever it is, you know, they can happen, you know, internet businesses get them, card-present, you know, face-to-face businesses, retail, restaurant, bar, they can get a chargeback. You know, so people, you know, I was explaining to them, you know, a chargeback, you know, the person tells their bank they want to charge it back. The bank sends out, you know, the bank sends a letter to the, who, you know, the chargeback provider for the, you know, the merchant account. You know, the merchant receives a letter and then you have a certain amount of days to respond.

Nice.

And you have to respond. You have to read what the letter says. And you have to respond in an appropriate, you know, answering all the complaints. And I've done other— we can put a reference to the chargeback when I read all the chargebacks on that podcast one time. It was pretty funny, right? Yeah, it was good. Yeah, it was a, you know, it was, it was very— I tried to be as informative as possible as to like what all the chargeback reasons were, you know, and you have to really pay attention to what the person's claiming. They'll say, oh, It was a double charge, and maybe they had drinks at the bar and they paid for that. Then they went to the table and they had dinner, and then they go, "Oh, I got double charged." No, you didn't get double charged, but you know, now the merchant has to go through the exercise of sending in both receipts and showing, oh, this $25 was for 4 beers at the bar, and this $100 was this dinner at the table. And this person was not double charged. And the sad part is, you know, I don't— I think that personally, I think the banks should not send these chargebacks out if they see that there was an EMV chip read, right? I think there should be like, besides a retrieval request and a chargeback, they should have like some kind of other letter and they should not charge the merchant for it. They should charge the cardholder, and they should send a letter to the merchant saying, oh, please send the receipt for this before it turns into a chargeback. You know, this customer says ABCDEFG, right, whatever it is, and give that, you know, because when they see, they know that that card was there. There's no, there's no You know, just they see it, they can see it. Oh, this was card present, the person used the chip, they did the tap and pay, they did the Apple Wallet. They know how the person paid. I think that they should stop sending those chargebacks out. That's the most— it's actually these EMV card present chargebacks are the most annoying of all the chargebacks.

So I would— yeah, man, I mean, come on.

No, it's annoying. We have some merchants that have restaurants and bars and in nightclubs, and it's a constant flow— 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 of them a month for each place, you know. And it's not right. And I think that the business shouldn't get charged for those. They should say to the customer, okay, if you want to charge it back, we're charging you $20, right? Because we see that the chip was read, and unless the card wasn't in your possession, you know, you should have canceled it. Sorry, but we'll send it out, but you have to pay $20. Yeah, I think they should change the policy. I don't think they should allow it. I mean, who am I? Listen, Dick Durbin, John Rose, the Maxine Waters, right? You guys are always talking about Visa and MasterCard. How about talking about the friendly fraud that consumers try to pull on businesses? Because the other thing I was explaining to both of these merchants was, let's say you get a letter and it says retrieval request. Okay, well, if you don't fill the request by the expected date, it turns into a chargeback, and then you can't fight it. It's done. You lost it automatically.

That's terrible.

Yeah, and it's terrible. And I see people all the time, like, they're just— I don't know what it is. Maybe they feel like, I shouldn't have to pay for my meal. And, uh, listen, there's probably like chain restaurants, you know, like, I don't want to name a chain off, right? But any kind of like chain, right? They probably get chargebacks in. They probably don't even fight them. They probably just go, okay, cost of doing business, you know, we lose, we'll, we'll lose the charge.

It's funny, since I started working here, like when I see a, a place swiping, I look at them like, I should just charge this back.

Well, no, your bank might charge it back. You should check your whole thing.

Hey, Allen, I followed you for a while and wanted to chime in regarding our customer onboarding platform. Do you think a client-facing implementation software could benefit companies in your space? Oh, you're selling on the live, bro. Get out of here.

Okay, man, gotta relax. If you want to, like, show me something, send me a message. You LinkedIn. I don't know if we're connected.

I'm gonna delete your post because what you're doing is super—

try not to like click on another product.

That was not cool. Like, Matthew Mahoney, you, you're doing it all wrong, bro.

That's all.

No, it's not okay, man. You gotta— this is, this is another thing with our culture. We got to call stuff out about this.

Like, yeah, don't ever come on our live podcast, dude.

Come on, bro.

Yeah, relax. Yeah, don't come on the podcast and try to promote a product. Listen, we have automated onboarding right now.

Yeah, so what are you doing?

You can answer 10 questions on our website and in 5 minutes or less you can have a merchant account. So yeah, automated onboarding is definitely the future of, of getting any kind of a merchant account or getting any kind of loans or anything like that. I was telling you, we're at the Financial Brand Conference, so all they were talking about is how to automate, digitize. You know, we've talked about how to digitize your business, how to digitize your marketing, how to digitize your bank, right? This is like the new thing. Everybody wants a frictionless, seamless, fast way how to do everything. Yeah, just like, you know, we're getting ready soon, we're about to implement a new product where it's a consumer loan product. So let's say Justin has Justin's Auto Repair and Matthew comes in to get his car fixed and he doesn't have the money, he doesn't have $1,000. So he says, oh, I can give you $200. And Justin goes, okay, fine, I'll take the $200, scan this QR code and you can get a loan for $800. So Matthew goes over— sorry, Matthew— he scans the loan scans the QR code, opens up the application, he fills everything out on his phone. They send him a text, he confirms it. You know, the usual stuff people do with the two-factor authentication, right? He says, oh, I need a loan for $800, right? Or maybe he says, I'll get a loan for the full $1,000, right? Gets a loan, gets approved. They say, oh, you could do it, you know, a 12-month loan, a 90-day loan. You know, 24-month loan. So Matthew chooses, let's say, the 6-month loan. Okay, right. Says I'll pay it off in 6 months, right? Where he says, oh, well, now I changed my mind, I'll do a year, right? So he picks it for 12 months. They, they give him an approval, then they text him a virtual credit card. He just shows it to Justin. Justin key enters it in his credit card terminal, and Matthew can leave with it. I like it. So it's instant financing. Now when you do that, you know, they have that like, you know, like Rooms To Go and stuff like that. Like you go in and you can apply for that synchronicity, right? It's not really instant financing because they're not letting you leave with the couch, you know, because they got to deliver it, right? But this is instant financing. So this is very instant. So it's important that, you know, everybody— people look at all these ways that you can use technology. We have a big saying: technology is the great equalizer in business, you know. So you can use technology to, to make your business look bigger, make your website— you make your business look bigger because you have a cool website, right? Make your business look awesome because you have cool Facebook posts.

Just like I remember I was telling you about the guy calling me. This guy called me wanted to work for me. Yeah, because my Digital 138 website— I said, bro, I'm a one-man band over here, buddy. You know, the website does make it seem like we're this giant huge agency, but nope, sorry, I'm handling everything dolo, right? Yeah, yeah.

So people— yeah, but it can make your business look bigger, and then you can bring in more business for sure. You can hire more employees. You know, then another question I got this week was, you know, I had a couple of people, they wanted me— they never did, they weren't, they're not doing cash discount in their business now, but they want to do cash discount. They said, you know, so they wanted me to explain to them exactly how it works. So I was explaining to them, I go, somebody comes in, you know, your average sale is $50, let's just use a round number, you're going to pass a 4% fee, they're going to get charged $52., and they can add on their tip, and it's all done smooth. Boom, boom, boom. And the business owner thought about it for a couple days, called me back today, says, okay, let's switch over to that. I want to do cash discount. Nice. He says other businesses in it— he didn't want to be the first one in his area to do it. We saw other businesses in his same type of business doing it, so now he's got to do it, right? Why not? If other places are doing it, you should be doing it. Well, yeah, I don't think it works in every single business.

No, because I've been thinking of trying to think of like logical things for it would work.

No, like auto repair, it works well because people constantly—

stuff for cars makes sense, right?

Auto repair, it makes, it makes sense. Even like when you're paying, like I have some like attorney, you know, like legal services and things like that, and they don't, they don't pass like the whole fee.

They pass 2% or 1.5% because like it does Does like FP&L do that too?

No, but a lot of government services, they do, will charge you a surcharge. But like, let's say FP&L, let's say you have to go into a store to pay your FP&L bill, they'll whack you like 7, 8— they used to whack like 7 or 8 bucks. Or let's say you have to call on the phone and do a, what they call an IVR, you know, you call up on the phone and punch in your credit card, you know, over the phone. To pay a bill. Some of those will charge $5, $10 for that. Oh yeah, so that's way more expensive than—

that's why they're always telling you to go to our website, right?

More convenient, right? Otherwise they whack you with all kinds of fees.

I never paid attention to that. I was always the guy that—

and like colleges and stuff, colleges, they were the first ones in education to pass the fee. Like you go pay a traffic ticket, right? They charge you a fee to pay pay your credit card. Uh, there's a company that does the credit card processing for the IRS. It's like a third-party processing. I forget the name of it, but if you— let's say you want to pay your IRS bill. Yeah, you go to that website, you put in all your info, you say, oh, pay with credit card, because some people will do that. Maybe they owe $10,000, $15,000, $20,000, and they say, oh, I'm just going to get the miles, right? And they don't care that they get charge like 3 or 4%. They just do it because they want those miles. 20,000 miles, you know, charge off my debt. No, I'm just saying people do that.

Sorry, ladies and gentlemen, I started working out on Monday and my body feels like I've been beaten with baseball bats.

So that's, you know, one of the things. So people have to understand, like, will cash discount work in my business? Is the competition using it? Um, can I use it? You know, you know, you, you know, you also have to make sure your employees are aware of how it works because you don't want to have, uh, the employees say something like, oh, the business owner is cheap, so they charging you the fee. Want to make sure people are trained properly. No, listen, you know, kidding. Yeah, you have to— you know, a lot of wholesalers will pass the fee to people because, you know, it's a wholesale operation. And, you know, they tell you like, oh, send us a wire, and the person wants to put it on a credit card, okay, well, we're going to charge you a fee to do that.

I mean, I'm all for it. It makes sense to me.

Yeah, I mean, if it— it doesn't work in every single business. I mean, if you're a dry cleaner and there's 20— and there's dry cleaners all around you, right, depending kind of, you know, the competition, right? Okay, it might not be a good idea, right, to do it because the people could go to your competitor. But if you're in an area where maybe you don't have a comp— like, I have a guy does boat rental, right? It's in the middle of nowhere. They do it, nobody says a word. Because what are you going to do? You're on vacation, your wife says, oh, let's rent a couple of jet skis, and you go, and then you see like, oh, it's $300 and they added 4%. There's an extra $12. You're on vacation, you're not going to cause a scene in front of your wife, girlfriend, and kids.

But why would you— what do you mean cause a scene though?

No, I'm just saying like complain to the merchant.

Oh, that—

you're just gonna pay and just move on. Oh, I'm on vacation, whatever, it's $12.

That is— you are an old— that's an old school way of saying like, yo man, I'm asking a question, making a scene. Now I remember it. My grandma would say that. You're making a scene, Justin. You're making a scene. You can't yell at the guy. Oh, I'm gonna make some scenes, Grandma. Yeah, I'm gonna make plenty scenes.

Yeah, Rocky starts barking at the guy. Sorry, I'll give it back to you, Rocky.

Yeah, exactly.

No, but I'm just saying, like, you know, you have to look at it in certain businesses. The people aren't going to really— they're not going to care, you know? And they know, like, hey, look, some businesses are struggling and they need to do it. I mean That's it. Just need to do it. Here's another question I got asked by somebody, and I was telling them, I go, you know, you got to really think about your business. I'm telling you, tons and tons and tons of businesses today are all trying to figure out the subscription business model. You know, we did a podcast quite a while ago called The Subscription Economy.

Yes.

You know, and we talked about like all the different types of businesses doing subscriptions.

I mean, our lives are a subscription at this point, right?

But I mean, the days are over where the pool guy like came to your house and then left the bill and expect you to write him a check and put it in the mail. You got to have everybody on like automated billing. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. You got to have it all, like pest control. Uh, termite guys, air con— even like air conditioning companies, right? They put it on automated billing. They say, oh, you want to get your air conditioner cleaned twice a year? We'll come out twice a year, and instead of paying like $150 or $200 every time we show up, oh, you can pay X amount a month, making it more affordable for, you know, for you to get it done. So lots of businesses start to think about— I mean, I've even seen doctors' offices where like, um, they take— they give people a discount, you know, because maybe you don't have insurance and then you pay the doctor's office $25 a month, or a dentist, and then you get some member—

you're a member. Let me know.

No, no, you got member pricing.

Let me know, I need one.

What, a dentist with member? Yeah, but they're giving you—

I don't have insurance, sir.

I get it, I get— understand.

I want to go to— I want to go to the dentist, but I want to— I want to be able to—

no, no. Well, dentists, they all have CareCredit and all that to get consumer loans.

Oh really?

Yeah.

I don't know, I haven't been.

Oh, I'm just saying, a lot of them do. They offer like CareCredit.

Do you have a dentist you can share with me this.

Yes, I'll share you a dentist.

There you go.

Okay, no problem. You ask, I, I refer. So, so, you know, a lot of businesses are trying to think about how to get into the subscription business and create subscriptions. You know, like there's one, you know, we talked about social media and another, you know, in Reels, you know, as a way to promote your business. So it's funny, there's one that I watch all the time on Instagram. It's this husband and wife Those guys are nuts. And the husband is a police officer and the wife is a tiny little thing and they hide from each other and they've got these popper things, which I wanted to buy one once and Justin's like, if you pop that thing on me, walking off the podcast.

Hey, the funny thing is though, my dad— I showed my dad this.

Yeah.

And he said, don't you think as a, as a, a woman of a police officer wouldn't you be a little scared of like creeping up on him, getting out of his car fully uniformed, got his firearm, and then he's pow?

Yeah, with it, with powder, that pink powder or blue powder.

I didn't think of that when he said— I was like, you know what, Pops, you are right, because they're trained.

But I don't think he— if you look at the video, I'm not sure that guy strapped up his gun.

I'm saying the time— there is one that he gets out of his car, like, when he's got a gun and he's coming home. Yeah, he's in full uniform. I've seen, like, in the house. Yeah, he's not walking around with his firearm.

No, but they drop balloons full of shaving cream on each other. I want to know— they showed a video one day of who's cleaning up their house, right? That cleaning, you know, they are. Yeah, they're like sweeping up all the stuff. And I was like— and I was laughing. And they took it all and they And the lady like put it all in the bathroom, and then he went to go to the bathroom. The bathroom was all full of the confetti. It was really funny.

That's hilarious.

But you know, I saw like that, a link on their— in their videos, and they have like some gag box you could sign up for, and it's a subscription. Yeah, so everybody's getting into— that's why I was talking about it. Everybody's getting into this real quick, man.

I I— this isn't off the top topic, but have you seen any of the NFT clothes that's came out yet?

The NFT clothing? Yeah. What do you mean?

So Nike just finally released their, their interactive clothing wear. So it's got a QR code on the back, and if you, if you point your phone at it, like, it literally— this, this one hoodie has wings. Like, it pops mechanical wings out of it. In, you know, obviously it's not real.

You can't buy that, have wings come out here.

Not in real life, but—

oh, for your avatar online?

No, like you're walking around in real life and you're wearing this hoodie. It has a QR code on the back of the Nike. Yeah, I'll show it to you.

Okay.

And then when you, you know, someone has their phone and they're about to take a picture, because, you know, the new phones automatically recognize QR codes, right? It's going to open up.

So like augmented reality, it's very—

yes, it's AR.

Yeah, that's—

that is super cool.

Yeah, I want to—

and so this is, this is just kind of leads us into a different topic of how businesses can still utilize NFTs. Like, NFTs aren't dead, crypto isn't dead. You know, there's a whole conversation for a whole another podcast.

Well, one thing, one thing for sure is I, I think the government needs to somehow put some regulation, not just on crypto, any company providing financial services, right? I think these people need to obey the same rules that the banks obey, period. The banks have to do the, you know, the truth in lending.

I mean, that's the whole point. I mean, the whole point of decentralized finance is to get away from government, right?

No, I get that. I mean, they already passed it.

It's a really— it's where it's a like a really fine line of what— I don't think it's not even fine.

And I'm not talking about regulating, like, okay, they already taxed the hell out of crypto. That ruined the crypto market. Okay, I don't agree with that, the tax.

They did it on purpose.

No, I know, because the banks want to destroy it. Yeah, but I don't agree with that tax on crypto the way it's structured. Yeah, if you sell your crypto Yes, you took a profit, right? And you can't— you can't— yes, you pay taxes on it. Yeah, that's it.

You can't— you can't tax me on how much I gained and then tax me when I—

right, they've got way too much taxes on that.

That's not okay. That all needs to get cleaned up and fixed because that's how it goes, right? Like, you're gonna tax me?

No, they want to tax you on trading it too. Like, you sold it.

No, I'm saying your gains, right?

Right, they're taxing you on your gains. So You bought it at $10 grand, now it's worth $20. They want you to pay tax on the extra $10 grand. There's no reason to pay tax on that. You didn't cash it out. Do it just like you do.

And then you're going to pay taxes at the end of the year for your gains, for your gains in general.

Yeah, but you didn't gain because you didn't cash it out.

It just doesn't make—

I don't agree with the way it is. Oh yeah, right.

That's what I meant. Like, if you're just keeping it in there, right? And then not because I have whatever—

I got taxed on my gains. I was pissed. Now I lost money. Are they going to give me my money back? I lost that shaboo boo boo boo. No, no, no, that's not right. They're not, my friend. That's the problem. That's what I'm saying.

Well, before we go into anything else, please follow the podcast on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube. Please subscribe to the channel, like, turn on post notifications so you know every time we're going live.

This sends a little ding Follow us on your favorite podcast app, whatever one you're listening to. We're on there.

Yes, you can subscribe.

We're not on there, send us a message. We'll get on.

Go to B2BVault.info. Check out the website, just past episodes for you to listen there. Links to get you to wherever you need to be. An Apply Now button right there if you're looking for a merchant account, sends you to Nationwide Payment Systems, our beautiful partner. Here's the owner. Yeah, and there's also two forms on B2B Vault for you to fill out if you want to talk to Allen or myself about anything. If you have any questions about web design, digital marketing, payment processing, fintech, small business, high-risk, CBD, blah, blah, blah. Keep going.

So here's the last question I got asked about. Oh, So a merchant contacted me and they go, the credit card processor I'm with is deducting— I don't know what it was, 20 or 30% out of their batches every day. And I was like, you got clipped with that— your federal tax ID number doesn't match. And they probably sent you a bunch of letters telling you it didn't match and they wanted you to get an SS 4-letter. And you know, if your business has been open for years— we had it happen to one of our clients. They were like, it doesn't match, it doesn't match. So finally I said to the guy, I said, dude, give me your tax return that you just last filed, the last one you filed. So he sends it to me. The corporate name was wrong, the federal tax ID number was completely different from what he gave us, right? And it still had— it matched his bank account that he had.. And I was like, man, this— how did this guy not know that his accountant changed everything around? So we fixed it. We closed that merchant account, you know, opened up a new merchant account with the correct information.

What happens to the 20-30%?

So what happens is, so this merchant was telling me that they were taking all this money. The guy didn't realize it for 2 months. So they do about $40,000 a month, says $16,000, right? Where did it all go? All went to the IRS. There's no calling the IRS going, hey bro, I want my $16,000 back. The only way to get that money back is now at the end. First of all, I told them how to fix it because at the end of the year he's got to claim that on his taxes, right? No, no. So I'm going to explain to you what happened. So first of all, I told them, call the IRS, get them to fax you over SS-4 letter. You know, help this guy out for free.

He's not a—

he's not a client. He probably will be because his company's not helping him explaining what's going on. Send it to that company, boom, your $16,000, that's goodbye, it's done. You're not getting it back. There's no calling somebody up, there's no telling the credit card processor to send it to you back. No, no, no.

Do—

we've talked about this on the podcast about when we talk about high risk. Do not ignore what things you get in the mail, the email.

If you're ignoring something from the IRS— no, no, credit card—

no, no, from the credit card company. No, the IRS doesn't know what's going on. They just know the stuff's a mismatch. And so when it's a mismatch in the system, how can they just take that much money? No, the IRS has an automatic 28% withholding if that— if the federal tax ID doesn't match. So now what happens is your 28%, the IRS has it. Now what do you do? Comes December 3rd, January 1st, Get with your accountant right away, or your H&R Block. File your taxes. Get all that paperwork that shows you gave them $16,000. Get your tax, your personal, your, you know, business and your personal tax return. Get all that filed, and you tell them that they got $16,000 of your money. Maybe you owe some tax, maybe you don't owe tax. Now, if you don't owe any tax The IRS is going to send you your money back. If you owed tax, you already gave them $16,000. Let's say you owe $10,000, right? They're going to send you back $6,000. But there's no getting the money back now. That's it. It's not happening. You're not getting the money back. They call it a 1099-B. You get that thing, you get a letter from your credit card processor, an email, mismatch federal tax ID. Boom. Call them up. Call the IRS. There's a phone number. Call first thing in the morning when they open at like 7:30, 8:00. You'll get right through. You tell them, oh, the name. They'll ask you a bunch of questions because I can't call for a customer, right? You got to call yourself because they ask you a whole bunch of personal information that we're not going to know.

I don't know.

Right. No, they're going to ask you a bunch of stuff.

So nor should we know.

Right. And we shouldn't know. We shouldn't be able to to you, to, to, to identity theft you, right? I mean, they ask, they ask a whole slew of questions. We should not— I like—

we shouldn't be able— we shouldn't be able to identify.

No, no, they just say to you like, oh, you lived in Atlanta, uh, they read off 3 addresses. Which one of these addresses did you live at? Well, I wouldn't know that, you know what I'm saying?

Oh yeah, yeah, they ask you. I love those questions because it really makes you think sometimes.

No, they identify, they figure out, because one time they asked me a question when I was on the phone with the IRS. I didn't live at any of those addresses. They said, that's correct, right? Then they ask another, because some of them are fake, because they're trying to see if you're, you're not the person, right? And I said, oh, I need the federal tax— I needed the federal, I needed the federal tax ID for some company we were doing business with. And they're like, we must have this SS-4 letter. I'm like, you You think I had that thing from 2001?

I have it now.

It's in my folder in my— on my computer in case anybody else asked for it. But they needed it because, I mean, I can check it out. I have like a software program for $1. I just put in the federal tax ID and it tells me whether it matches the name or the social matches. You know, we use it for the employees, right? And when we do the 1099s and everything. So the thing is, is that you got— you have to, you have to make sure you take care of that. So I was explaining it to the guy. The guy was really angry. I said, listen, get it straightened out, get them to stop debiting your account, and then whatever. You're not— once, once you do that, you know, and then the guy messed up. The federal tax ID gave him was completely wrong. He had the name that wasn't correct, so he gave him a whole messed up number. And whatever. So now he's gonna wait, hopefully, to get his money. Yeah, he'll get it. He'll file his taxes as fast as he can. I told him, I said, dude, that's the only way to do it. File as fast as you can. That way you'll get the money back, or at least you won't have to pay taxes. And then, la-di-da, lesson learned. And then if you're not happy with that credit card processor, leave them. I mean, you're set.

This—

I mean, we get notified Like, once we had this company, and the name of the company was— when they first started this federal tax ID matching thing, the name of this company was The Professional Golf Course Management Incorporated, right? Well, now it's limited to like 30 characters or some crazy thing, so we only use the initials for the billing. So we gave them the whole name, they're like, oh, that's doesn't fit. So we had to— we had to get the guy— the company was in existence for like 25 years, so we had to get the guy to call the IRS, get the letter, send it over to the bank so they could see like that was the guy's legal name. We're like, they can't change the legal name of the business, right? Can't— no can do. So they should— we showed it to the bank and the bank was like, uh, we don't know, but that's the legal name. And they filed it, they sent the letter to the IRS and They got it all worked out. Yeah, but they usually give you like a 30-day notice before they're going to take— start taking the 28%, right? So you got time to fix it. This guy just ignored all the letters, all the phone calls he got. His agent even called him and said, hey, you got to get this shit straightened out. He said, I'm too busy for this, blah blah blah. Don't be— you get letters in the mail from the credit card processor, it could be your statement look at it. You're, you know, like the guy I was talking to, he didn't know he's getting charged chargeback fees for each chargeback. Get out your statement, get a letter. It's a chargeback, it's a retrieval request, deal with it. You get a letter saying, hey, your federal tax ID is a mismatch, fix it. You know, that's what you got to do. You know, you got to take care, you got to take care of business. So we had a good time, answered listener questions, got to yell at somebody. Who did we— oh yeah, we yelled at Matthew. You know that guy? I don't know who Matthew is. I don't even know if I'm connected to him. It's okay. I never even heard of his company. We're not going to read it out. We're going to delete it as soon as we get off the air. Never heard of your company, bro. So we don't know anything about— we don't know anything about Matthew. Um, so that's the day— today's podcast.

You got anything going for the weekend?

Me? My brother's coming in town Sunday. Trouble. So visit my mom on a Sunday.

Why would he come in on a Sunday?

That's my brother. He wants to go to the beach. I don't even know what the weather is going to look like this weekend.

People who come down to South Florida in December who want to go to the beach, it's too cold. You guys are nuts.

Yeah, I'm not gonna go in the water. It's gonna be freezing.

I'm not even going to the beach.

It's like, no, no, I'm saying it's like 70 degrees outside. Yeah, you think I'm getting in that water? I was laughing when he told me he wanted to go.

What, you wanna go swimming in a pool? I got a swimming pool, it's heated, right?

Maybe a heated pool, but I'm not getting—

I'm not going right now.

I'm not going in the ocean. It's gonna be chilly. It's gonna be chilly willy.

No way, Papa.

And then my brother's telling me like he wants to go out to eat because my brother's kosher, right? She's like, oh, there's no kosher restaurant restaurants in Atlanta, or there— I ate at one in Atlanta, it was okay. And then, you know, and anyone you want, you know, there's a lot here, a lot of kosher places. And then he also has a place in, um, Destin, Florida, you know, like near up in the Pensacola area, and there's no kosher places probably to eat there. Oh, so he's like, oh yeah, I want to go for kosher food. I don't— my mom is not going to go out that. She's gonna be like, nope, I am not eating.

She's all organic and stuff, right?

Yeah, she's all organic, natural.

If it ain't organic, I'm gonna panic, right?

She's not eating, right?

Right.

Rocky, Rocky likes organic. He likes organic.

He cosigned my if it ain't organic, we're gonna panic.

And, uh, and, and, you know, so I told my brother, I go, I said, Mom's not eating any of that. I, I'm just dreading like talking to my mom about the whole food situation. I remember the last time you were going out for dinner with your mom.

Yeah, my mom very stressed.

My mom sat in a restaurant with— there was one— there was 7 people, 6 people all together including my mom. Everybody's eating a steak, right? And my mom sat there and ate a salad. She goes, I ate before I got here.

That's me.

And then I had to get in the car with my mom to take my mom home, and then I got an earful about eating red meat. Everybody eating, eating a steak. Now listen, if I'm at a kosher restaurant and they have nice kosher steak and my brother's paying for it, you're gonna get that. I'm gonna get a night— I didn't get like the big— he got like a massive steak, tomahawk steak. Yeah, my brother got like a massive ribeye, right? I did not get that. I got a small steak because I didn't want to hear.

It's funny, your brother's in town. I got, you know, I don't have any, you know, blood brothers, but I got a lot of brothers. And another brother of mine, he's in town and he got here last night. He sent me a text, I'm here till Saturday night, let's get together. And I looked at the text, I started laughing because I was like, well, Friday night, nah, not gonna happen. And then I said Saturday morning, maybe. So I don't know, maybe I'll head down to Miami Saturday morning. I doubt it, uh, but yeah, there's a lot going— I don't know, it's the Miami Design Week.

Oh, is there Art Basel?

That's next month. That's next month. This is, this is Miami's like pre-party, pre-party for the Art Basel.

Yeah, yeah, there's some NFT thing going on. I think NFTs, I mean, as a utility, as using them, we're just seeing what the capabilities are. I think I think there's companies that are going to figure—

I mean, once— what— because I mean, I have a lot of ideas like how you could use it, you know, like for we, you know, that's— listen to the other podcast. Yeah, the logo itself is an NFT, right? You know, you could say, don't purchase the logo as an NFT, make it look cool. You could sell posters, swag, put it on a shirt. I mean, there's just endless opportunities for it.

I think it'd be cooler, like you said, if you had your logo and you turned it into some augmented reality, that's pretty cool.

You can do that now. That's what—

I wonder how expensive it is to get.

I mean, well, you gotta hire a good graphic designer, I guess.

Yeah, I don't know if she knows how to do augmented reality.

Samantha's very talented.

Okay, maybe she can do it.

She's doing motion graphics.

She should not tell Dave because we're not telling Dave.

She doesn't know how to do it. She doesn't know. Uh, no, I was just— I was just— it was only for the sake of the podcast. I was only joking, man. I'm sorry. We're out.

All right, we can say have a great weekend. Thank you for listening to FinTech Friday. Rocky says thank you. Shine the camera on Rocky. Let everybody see Rocky at the end. There's Rocky. Rocky!

Yep, what's up, Rocky?

He's here. He's our podcast mascot. The podcast mascot, Rocky. He's our official mascot during the podcast. He doesn't like a comment, he growls sometimes, and then he barks at me, and he barks at the— when someone comes to the door, we know when we're getting a delivery. Peace out, have a great weekend, see you soon. Peace. Peace.