FinTech Friday | Digitizing Your Bank, Credit Union, or Community Bank | B2B Vault: The Payment Technology Podcast

Oh, we got to get rid of that book thing. Get that off of there. The thing don't work no more.

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 fintech, payment processing, small business, and the technology businesses are using in the world today. And in today's podcast, it is Fintech Friday. Yeah, shout out to everybody who made it through the work week. I myself was dead at home. Uh, I had the yoops, yoops, upper respiratory tract infection. It was terrible. I sound like crap.

You sounded horrible.

I still sound like crap. Shout out to Modern Day Medicine, Benadryl, you are a great company. It does make me a little loopy. So this podcast shall be kind of interesting. Hope everyone had a wonderful New Year's and everyone stayed safe. No one, uh, did anything ridiculously, uh, stupid. Uh, shout out to all the FinTech followers out there. Uh, we, we miss you. I know we can— uh, you guys miss us. Uh, we've got a few questions. How come the podcast hasn't been posted? We decided to take a couple weeks off of posting the podcast except for FinTech Friday. Uh, we wanted to get caught up with stuff around the office. Obviously everyone's got their own stuff going on with the holidays. People town, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. So yeah, that's why you haven't heard it.

Yeah. Interesting new topics, new topics, new ways to promote the podcast.

Nationwide Payment Systems recently hired a graphic design, social media marketer by the name of Camille. Shout out to her. She's doing a wonderful job promoting the podcast, getting Allen's name out there. Samantha with all the dope graphics. Again, thank you. Of course. Hope you guys had a wonderful New Year's.

Rocky.

Oh, and Rocky the mascot, shout out to you, you grumpy old dog. Hope your master was nice to you with all the fireworks.

He was. He got his little calming liquid and he got a little steak for dinner.

Ooh, filet mignon. Yes, of course.

Filet mignon.

My father would say, spare no expense.

Listen, I trimmed up the—

trimmed the fat for him and everything.

Trimmed the fat up and cooked it up for him.

That's what I'm talking about.

So he let— you know, he thoroughly enjoyed himself. He had his calming liquid. He did get a little scared when I took him out for a walk. Yeah, because, man, people were blasting off fireworks even in the daytime.

No doubt.

Yeah, I mean, I was not—

we cooked, uh, homemade Chinese dumplings. Hagao! Me and my dad love to make scream loud obscenities while we're cooking in the kitchen making shrimp. And I made vegetarian dumplings with Beyond Meat sausages.

Oh, nice.

The texture was— I need something else to add into the— to bind it all together.

Maybe mushroom.

I was just gonna say a shiitake mushroom, but then it's a little bit too watery.

Well, you got to use probably portobello, something. I don't know, I needed something else because, because with portobello or the white mushroom, you can put it in like a food processor and grind it up.

Right, exactly. And almost like a breadcrumb.

And you know what, but you could also use a little matzo meal.

I— that's what I was gonna—

I, I definitely should have made it more like a meat, not breadcrumbs, but matzo meal. It's lighter.

Yeah, I got you, I got you. But it tastes really—

they—

all the kids who don't or aren't vegan or vegetarian, they enjoyed it. I made also Rasta pasta, which is just coconut milk and cheese and Jamaican jerk sauce.

Yeah, I made like some— made a bunch of— I was, you know, when I'm home I cook a lot.

Yeah, I was a cooking fool this weekend. Sick.

But yep, I was cooking all kinds of stuff. Spaghetti squash, eggplant.

Spaghetti squash is delicious.

Yeah. Made some, uh, you're making me hungry. I made like a—

I have no appetite.

I made like a ratatouille, which was really good.

Yeah, I make that. Yeah.

So let's get into anyway the subject matter of the day, and then we'll get into a couple of questions at the end about people that ask us questions. So I want to give a shout out to this, you know, I've been reading this book called Banking on Digital Growth: The Strategic Marketing Manifesto to Transform Your Financial Brand by James Robert Lay. Actually showed this. So shout out to James Robert Lay.

We connected on LinkedIn. You'll be reaching out.

I'd love to have you as a guest on the show.

Yes.

And then I had my friend Dale, who writes for The Green Sheet. She, she liked— I told her about this book. She liked it so much that she read it and she wrote a book review. Which is just in the last, um, green issue of the Green Sheet.

Is she okay? I know that she said that she was—

was her husband, he's not feeling good. So this was really good, and we'll get to some of the sections in this, in this book because I think it's like really important to discuss like what they're talking about. So what he was talking about in the book, some of it— can't do a whole book review, but you know, digitizing, you know, attended the Financial Brand Conference a couple months ago in Las Vegas, and that ended up being one of the most popular, um, podcasts of all time because over 400 views, 400 listens and downloads, and then there were hundreds of people that watched the videos. So that was really cool that a lot— that many people, you know, consumed the one podcast. And, um, there's a big opportunity that exists for financial institutions right now because there's a big vacuum. Because you have all these— we've seen in the last couple of years all these like neo banks and these apps pop up that do some portion of banking, right? So you can get a bank account, you can receive your paycheck there. Some of them will even know that because you get paid every week they'll even give you like a little loan, like $100, $200, some of those like Chime. Yep.

And you're in a pinch, you needed $20 for gas.

There's more and more of these neo banks, but now there's neo banks started to come under a little bit of, uh, attacks from the government.

Before you hop in all that, what is you saying digitizing your bank? What does that mean?

So digitizing the bank means that banks are losing their customers to the digital people, platforms, the platforms, which would be what, digital banks that are only online, neobanks, fintech companies who offer financial services online. So, you know, fintech is a broad term, financial technology, and a lot of it has to do with loaning money like you talked about before. You bought a car, got a car loan. Insurance, everything all through an app. Yep. You know, through a website. And, you know, so people are, especially the younger generation, you know, I'm 62, you're in your 40s. People who work here, Samantha is in her 30s or almost 30, early, late 20s, late 20s. And Camille is very young and they're really used to this financial technology. For them, it's the normal, right? For us, it's new. And so now you see like a big shift that more and more people are shifting over to this, just like we talked about. Probably about 100 million businesses have used financial technology companies to get a merchant account or have some sort of payment processing for their business through financial technology companies and not the traditional way.

So what is that?

So banks need to— the big banks They're so big that they're not going to make these moves to partner with fintech companies. They're going to go out and try to develop their own fintech, which could take years.

They've always been trying to—

no, but I'm just saying it could take them years because they move like a slow— like a snail, right?

Oh yeah.

Now if you're a community bank or a small credit union, you have only a few branches or even maybe 100, and it's not a public company, there's no board, you know, depending on your setup, you can move a lot faster in the decision-making process to say, hey, let's partner with this loan— like I was looking at the other day, LoanSoftware, right? So this company had LoanSoftware where the bank can partner with the loan company, this, this LoanSoftware company, install that on their website Their software is intuitive, so once it's installed at the bank, it starts to go through everybody's bank account and it'll establish like who needs money, who's looking to maybe make some investments, open a CD, who hasn't bought a car in a while, maybe who's might be looking for a, uh, a home loan, maybe a person's looking for to get a home equity loan, right? It starts— that software starts to identify the opportu— those opportunities, right? And then it can generate— they can generate emails or phone calls to those people, and then they can make it easy for them to apply for a loan. So instead of the whole clunky part— I remember buying my house 10 years ago, I had to go down to the bank, I had to go get out all this paperwork, I had to fill it all out by hand, then the guy typed it all up, and then I had to go pick— go there and go sign it all. And, you know, it was a whole manual process. Today they already got inside your bank account, right? And even for like business loans, there's companies now, right, where they can, you know, the, the mer— the business owner can go to the website, log in, create an account, get their, you know, connect their bank account, connect their QuickBooks or whatever other, you know, accounting software they're using, right? And then the loan company can analyze everything because they can see what's going on in their QuickBooks, what's going on in their bank account. They can say, oh, Justin, your company's eligible for $10,000. Uh, Billy Bob, you're eligible for $50,000. And then, and then, and then they have like little, um, you know, like you can change the— like then, then you could change like how fast you want to pay it back, right, right, and adjust the interest and all that. Then you figure out which way you want it, maybe, or come back to it later, and then make your own, you know, pick the terms that you want, right? This is all financial technology, and banks need to embrace these companies and, and get and partner with these companies. Like I said, the smaller banks have this big opportunity because the big banks are not going to do it so fast, right? They're not going to do it. It's going to take them years. So the small banks can do it now. The community bank, the credit union, get involved with fintech company. You know, your merchants are running off to the, you know, PayPal, Square, Stripe, QuickBooks, etc., etc. There's, there's probably 40, 50 companies that have, you know, software where people can just apply for a merchant account on a website and get set up. No fuss, no muss, nobody to talk to. Right? So the whole thing is, is that bank— this is the opportunity for the small financial institutions, right? The small financial institutions to get rid of that, to get, to get rid of that, and to, to get to partner with those companies, right? Partner with the, with fintech companies., right? And then be ahead of the game on the, uh, be ahead, be ahead of the game on the, uh, on the big financial institutions, right? Right. So they can get ahead, they can get ahead of the game and get rid and, and not be lagging behind. They can jump ahead, leapfrog ahead, because what's going to happen is all these younger people are going to the You know, that's what they want.

They want a quick, fast—

yeah, quick, fast, and easy. Quick, fast, and easy. That's what everybody wants, right? So it's a big opportunity now for the financial institutions to partner with fintechs, and that's why they need to do it, because so that they can get more customers into their bank, keep them happier, give them the services that they want. Let Justin go to, you know, if he banks at your bank, he can go online, apply for home equity loan, a car loan, whatever. There's no phone calls and asking what the rates are and then what are the terms, and it makes it really, really easy. And that's the—

I mean, I, I don't— I'm not using your service if you don't have it like that, right?

And the— and, and it brings value to the bank. So the bank becomes their vet, you know, the bank's already trusted, right? And people will trust the bank more than they'll trust some lendo company, right, .com, like lending blah blah blah dot com, right? They'd rather go to your bank. So you, you know, you can just make it easier for your customers to interact with you digitally. And that—

and, and there's just organized things. I mean, there's so many positives, right?

But there's, you know, you can get— analyze people's bank accounts, help businesses, and especially like community banks and credit unions It's a great time to start working with small businesses. Maybe you don't work with small businesses today, or you work with a small number of small businesses today and medium-sized businesses, but those businesses, they're not getting the attention from the big banks, right? They're not getting the attention. And when they need money, they go talk to their banker, and the banker just, you know, they don't have time. There's nobody working the desks. They got to call up on the phone. They're not getting what they want. This is the time when— and they don't have any fintech at these banks. So this, this gives it to where you can bring that fintech to them, to your customers, and bring it into your bank and start promoting that so that you can bring in new clientele, new, um, you know, new people at the bank personally. And remember, like If you bank at the, um, if you bank at the, at a bank, you know, like if you bank at a bank, if I'm a business owner and I bank at a certain bank and then my employees need bank accounts, they're going to go to the same bank most of the time, right? You know, many times you'll pick up maybe 20, 30, 40, 50% of that employer's staff if you offer them something good, you know. And, you know, so it's important for banks to add to their technology, whatever you want to call it, their technology stack, and partner with fintech companies. Like, we partner with them to bring them non-interest revenue generators, merchant services, so they can compete against the companies who are doing a lot taken away the business because people don't want to go the traditional route anymore. The same thing, partner with a fintech for loans. They don't supply the loan, they just supply you with the software, right, to do the loans so that you don't have to force your customers into the manual process, right? And there's many, many— like, I was at that convention, there were all types of companies, you know, analyzing your data. Offering software that linked up that could tell you who's looking for a loan and so on and so forth. And the next thing that I don't really see small— you know, another thing is, is like a lot of smaller banks also, maybe they want to take on some businesses that are in like higher risk type categories, you know what I mean? So maybe they want to have CBD hemp businesses or cannabis-related businesses, or, you know, they all want that, they just don't know what to do, right? But they could partner with the right company for merchant services that could help them service those clientele. And they need to look away from like the big, the old big clunky providers and look at where you can go, where you can get somebody to bring in the you know, bring in, bring in the ability to help you bring in new clients.

I mean, it— this seems like a great opportunity for community banks, you know, small underserved, uh, communities with, you know, the play— you know, you go to a town and there's literally one bank, right? Right. You know what I mean? They— and there's in that one town, there's now there's 50 CBD shops, all kinds of new stuff popping up. They don't know what to do. So, you know, They're just losing out. I could just imagine how this can help, uh, those types of banks.

Yeah, like even where my daughter lives in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, it's all community banks and credit unions.

That's what I was missing, the credit unions, for sure.

And they need to take advantage of the situation right now and, you know, have a hybrid, like they make themselves a hybrid bank where they're digital and they're brick and mortar, right? And the other thing that these banks can do is they don't take advantage of working with a company who can provide them with like branded ATMs in the community.

Do you— on that note, I was thinking about this— do you think ever like Cash App will open a bank, like a brick and mortar?

They might.

They have—

so I mean, I mean, look at Walmart, they've tried to open a bank. Yeah, that didn't work out. No, but they keep trying. One way or another, like partnering with people. Yeah, I bring banking service.

I think we're gonna see that this year. I think we're gonna see like PayPal have like an institution, like a place where you can walk in.

I mean, look at Capital One, right?

There's—

it's a— they did that. They have a coffee shop and you can go in there and you can get help. Yep, in the coffee shop you can ask questions, have a person in there.

It actually looks really state-of-the-art and it looks cool. I wanted to go down in there and do some work.

Yeah, there's one in Delray. I don't have a Capital One card anymore, but I could get one.

Anyone can get one.

No, I'm just saying, then we can go to their cafe. I don't know if there's one around here in Fort Lauderdale. I don't know, I've never seen it, but I know in Delray they have one.

So far away is it?

30, 40 minutes.

I would drive 40 minutes to check that out.

Yeah, so, so, you know, bank— a lot of the small banks, they might have an ATM like at their branch, right? But then they don't put ATMs out in the community. Right, we have the ability to help a small bank put some ATMs out in the community, brand them to their bank, right? Now maybe people can just take money out unless you want to spend big bucks on ATMs that can take deposits, but maybe they want to do that in a certain area, right? But where people can take money out and then just like at the bank, we can make it where it's surcharge-free. Right, to your customers, right? And then a lot of the small banks, they'll tell me, well, we don't have armored car. Well, we also, we work with a nationwide armored car providers, and we have private armored car providers, and then they can go service the cash needs at those machines, load the cash and all that, and give the bank a footprint in the community. Because a lot of times, I'll give you an example, Like, we work with one bank and they finance the mall, right? Right. So at the mall, they want to have 2 ATMs. So we hooked them up directly with the, with the company who we work with, and the— they bought 2 ATMs and they put them in the mall. And then armored car goes there and loads the ATMs for them, services the ATMs and all that.

And then the mall was happy because they don't have to mess with it, right?

They don't have to mess with it. And they put the bank, and the people that live in the town, most of them bank at that bank, they get surcharge-free. There you go, you know, like, winner winner. Like, we just added on our platform where if the ATM qualifies, we can have USAA surcharge-free, uh, withdrawals on, on any ATM that qualifies in our fleet. Not all of them qualify, but only ones that are in like, public locations, not like in a bar or a nightclub, but in any kind of like convenience store, gas station, liquor stores. Those qualify to get that. But they can get— they can make it so that they can do all these, you know, have partnerships to, to, to take advantage of, take advantage of the situation that's going on now before all these neo banks and digital banks, you know, gain more traction.

Yeah, I mean, especially with the youth, they don't care about going into your bank, right? They're not gonna— I mean, if there's an option there, they wouldn't go into the bank, right? Yeah. I mean, and so I— moving forward, like, if you're thinking about your customer, right, the customer itself if that's how they— but you're not thinking about the business, how they want to get paid, or how they want to get their money, right? Then, I mean, you're going to lose out on so much opportunity coming up in the next couple of years, because the fintech industry is booming. And investors are spilling billions of dollars into startups, trying to create better ways for us to get paid and to buy stuff in the bank in general, and even payroll companies.

Like, I don't know, like these payroll app companies where businesses can pay you by the day, dude.

That is amazing.

Yeah, the only thing I didn't like about the pay by the day— I talked to a couple of companies who have those apps and they don't really have a solution for the taxes.

That's terrible.

Yeah, so that's not good. But I did see some other companies where It's an app, and then if the, if the business has the payroll through that company, then that all the employees get the app, and then they're all— money goes into the app, and then they can send it to their bank account or get like a virtual credit card in there. And it's pretty cool way, you know, like they can get a— put it on their Apple, you know, like on— they could load it into their Apple Pay, right? They can do a lot of different stuff, pay their bills out of some of these apps.

Yeah, I mean, you can do everything nowadays. You don't need— but the thing is, you don't need a bank. Like, you do, right? Like, if you want to be a grown-up, right? You want to go and buy yourself a house, or, uh, you want a loan to start a business or something, right? Yeah. But you don't— you don't necessarily need that anymore.

Like, for small stuff, you don't really— you don't need that. But it's also I think that's why I said it's a good time for the community banks and the credit unions to take advantage of this current— there's a vacuum, right? So there's a big opportunity, right? There's a huge opportunity to step up, step up the game, and then have a, you know, bring the digital into your bank and then also tell stories. You know, the bank could then pump it up on their social media by telling stories about how they're helping the local business community, how they're helping the people in the local community, how they're helping the, you know, an employer. Maybe, maybe you go to an employer that has 100, 200 employees, right?

And then within, with Opera offering these, you know, services, it just brings so many other opportunities, you know, that open the door to so much other things for you in the bank, right? Yeah.

Well, you open your door, you open up yourself where somebody's not gonna— and especially like, I look in areas like where my daughter lives, okay? So you travel outside of Cedar Rapids. I don't know if there's a bank in these like little small towns, usually not. But if you were able to put an ATM over there where they could get money from your bank, or maybe you're able to send somebody there and you set up like a virtual office there once a week or something in that town, and you start to, you know, maybe you have a small storefront, you put an ATM inside there.

They all got a strip mall, something, right?

So yeah, but I'm just saying, like, I think people need to think outside of the box of how they can help businesses. Like, we talked to a couple companies about, hey, you could put a kiosk in your bank and someone can walk up to the kiosk and apply for a merchant account, um, and all different things like that. And it's— that's where everything is going because this kiosk thing is completely out of control. We talked about it on another podcast about all the self-checkout, right?

Yeah, the kiosk thing is— that's a great idea.

Yeah, so you can have a kiosk in your bank, you know, or let's say you can set up like even an unmanned— like, I remember years ago going to the grocery store And Bank of— I don't want to say the name. Okay, Bank of America had a—

what's up, Christian? Peace. Happy FinTech Friday to you, sir.

Yes, happy. Hey, Christian. And then they had a kiosk like in the, uh, in Publix, a small section. They cut it out like a little service desk, right?

Right.

So it's not manned on the weekend, right? But they had an ATM there from the bank.

I've seen— I remember that. I've never seen something like that.

A computer over there, they had brochures with information, right? And you could— and then they even sometimes had somebody manning it. One day I had like a problem and that person was able to—

and that's how you get business, right?

That's how you get business. And I think that banks need to look at like how that they can put themselves out in the community, because maybe you don't want to open up more branches right? It's expensive, right? It's expensive, especially right now. You got to put a safe in there, you know, one of those big massive, uh, vaults and everything, right? But maybe opening up these like storefronts— I think somebody's got to— some bank's going to think outside of the box.

I mean, they're seeing that down here in Florida, dude. You drive around in one of these little like, uh, what are they called again? The spring— the little malls.

Yeah, strip mall, strip malls.

I think the I Think Bank, like over here, that's— I mean, this is an office building, right?

Yeah, but they have a banker there.

But it, but it in my— it's not a standalone, right? Like it's not like a bank.

No, that is a bank.

No, I'm saying like in traditional, like you see a bank, it's like it's standing— oh no, it's in the shop, it's in an office building, or it's standing alone, right?

Right. You know what I mean?

Like, and but down here in South Florida, like over right the Space Coast, whatever they call it, the credit union, right, is inside of another strip mall. It's just like, I love Florida, man, the way that everyone gets money down here. It's like, if it's open, let's go move in there. If it doesn't work, we'll try something else. But to get to your point, yes, people need to utilize the space that we have.

No, I'm talking about like establishing like a small space. That's what I'm saying. Inside of, you know, wherever it is, inside of another business, inside of the local grocery store, or just in a strip mall. Get a small 500, 600, 1,000 square feet of space, have an ATM, put some kiosks in there, and be in the community.

Yeah, no, that's a great—

that's, you know, sure, man, because I think it's very— it's— it— a lot of that is lacking. The other thing that's lacking is the lack of financial education You know, and, and, and I think, you know, look, you know, I, I think that banks need to provide, you know, financial education and go out into the community. I mean, I haven't talked to people— this podcast talks about, you know, I think that we give good education about financial literacy on what you need.

I think we should do it better. I think we should focus on that this year a little bit better. Yeah, and be very more like just precise, short, just factual stuff that, you know what I mean?

Yeah, we try to tell—

digest.

Yeah, we try to tell story about how I opened the business, what did I have to go through, what are the steps. And those steps don't change whether you're in the digital age or the paper age, right? You know, you still have to go through, you know, you need your corporation and all that. But one of the, one of the pain points I heard from banks that I talked to at the convention was opening a personal account is easy for them to do, right? Digitally opening a business account is a little more challenging.

On a, on a digital bank.

Yeah. Even the digital banks don't do a good job of because we get a lot of applications in of people applying for a merchant account., and then they, they bank at some whatever, a neo bank, right? And then those— some of those, I don't want to say that they're fraudulent, but I would say that it's a gray area. It's, it's, uh, like one of them recently, the guy— everything looked legit until we couldn't find the guy. The guy's address was not a legit address, it was a UPS store. And then the person that owned the company didn't even live in the United States. And then they had a federal tax ID number, so they opened up the bank account, but then it wasn't like a legitimate US-based business.

Scammers are scamming.

So it's, you know, we see a lot of identity theft going on right now too. People applying for merchant accounts, and then it's a big identity theft.

You got to be careful out here, man, the whole thing. And if, if someone from Nationwide Payment Systems calls you and says, hey, you should check your, you know, your stuff because your personal credit report, because, you know, someone applied for a merchant account, don't jump down Anna's throat for trying to warn you guys, please. Just, you know, whatever.

Word of advice, right?

Might want to listen to someone if they're telling you that, you know, there's some shady things going on. I would—

I don't know exactly. Yeah, you gotta pay attention to what's going on with all that.

Yes, you do.

And, uh, that's, you know, that, that's the whole, whole thing going on, is that there's just a lot of, you know, with— and banking, it's important, you know, for— it's important. There's a big opportunity, like we said, there's a big opportunity. This whole fintech thing. Like, what is fintech? Financial technology. And people want everything quick, fast.

What's the difference between payment technology and fintech technology?

It's the same. The only thing is fintech is more broad term, and fintech encompasses lending and payroll and anything financial. Even— listen, look at it. Look at taxes, right, is another one. How many people just go online to like TurboTax, right? Or whatever those other tax websites are, file for their taxes. Even what did H&R Block— they started losing money, so H&R Block has it online now too. Oh yeah, I think they have a website you can go file.

That's where I filed my taxes last year. It's free, they do it fast, right?

I mean, so that's what I mean. See, there's an example of a brick-and-mortar business that saw losing traction. What did they do? Went to the— went over to the—

they got with the times.

They got with the times. And that's, and that's what banks need to do. I mean, there's also opportunities coming up where we're talking to the armored car company about being able to offer people these special cash safes where you can put all your cash into a special safe, and then at a certain time during the day, whatever's in there They electronically deposit it to your bank account.

That is really baller.

And I think that we're going to see banks want to partner with companies like Nationwide Payment Systems who can bring that to the bank and enable—

because banks aren't thinking about doing that, right?

Um, they don't, they don't have the capability of offering it themselves, right? Well, they would have to have their own armored car right, then they would have to get the equipment, they'd have to learn how to program.

Sounds like a lot of—

they'd have to go set it all up.

Sounds like a whole team.

So here's where— that's another fintech product that we're working on that's available to banks. I mean, I think we're also going to see, like, you know, we have a guest, one of the people who's watching the podcast right now, Chris, he works for crypto company, right? So, you know, we're going through this whole rigmarole with crypto right now, and I think that the US needs to, you know, enact similar laws to what they have in Japan.

We mentioned that last week.

Yeah, right. So that the, the, the crypto is not— these exchanges don't have the crypto. I mean, look what we just found out. The Celsius company now is in— actually owns everybody's house that bought a house using Celsius. So I'm sure there's going to be a massive class action lawsuit about— on the billions and billions of dollars, because that was a whole little— I don't know, that was a giant, like a giant, a giant scam.

For those of you don't know, people were being able to buy houses with crypto, right?

Well, they would stake— they would take their crypto. Let's say you had 10 Bitcoins worth $50 grand, so that was $500 grand. You could take your crypto, give it to Celsius. Yep. They would loan you, let's say, 60 to 70%. So let's say they give you $300 grand, you take the $300 grand cash. Yep. And you go buy a house. Well, now those same crypto coins that were worth $50— remember, they went up to $70, but then they're down to the $20s now, right? So now the Celsius company's upside down, and people are upside down in these loans. And it's a whole mess. So it's a big mess. It's a big—

crypto is just in a giant mess.

Yeah, it's a big giant mess. And it might be— that also might be an opportunity for banks too, to be the custodian, because that's what I was reading in Japan, that the custodians over those places where the crypto is held are banks. Yeah. And there's another—

it's a private— they have like, not a private, but like a, you know, a team, a branch of the bank. Of the bank.

Yeah, part of the bank.

That's the one just with that.

Yeah, they're the ones watching the crypto, right?

Like hawks, right?

They're watching the crypto.

I like it when you— the way that it— when I read how they do it, like you buy the crypto, you put the money in the wallet, you buy the crypto, it all gets removed immediately, right? That it just makes sense.

Yeah, it makes total sense. The exchange, then you take the money off of the exchange and it's held at this bank-type situation.

Yeah.

And it's overlooked by an actual bank.

Yeah.

Who are used to—

overlooked by the actual government.

Right. But I'm saying it's— they're used to handling transactions and money and everything.

It just makes— yeah, man, I, I think America needs to step up that.

Yeah. And then a whole nother thing came out about the whole FTX thing, that there might have been some criminal activity of who was actually using the— you purchasing crypto through there or laundering money through FTX.

I said it a long time ago, you do you not think that every cartel is not— was not laundering billions of dollars over the past couple years?

Yes, somebody was.

Every cartel known to man was dumping money into the crypto, right? Whatever.

But I digress.

Um, what were we talking about?

The, uh, no, so we're just talking about like digitizing the bank. It's a big opportunity.

It's a huge opportunity.

This is a big— we're gonna see, this is a big shift. I know that the author of the book, that he's writing another book all about it, but it's a— the whole convention that we went, that I went to, was all about digitizing, digitizing, digitizing. Every single booth digitizing kiosks, software, software that could help you loan money, you know, also link the bank to outside sources for loans. Like, if they didn't want to loan the person money but they still wanted to help the person, they could go to outside sources through those companies and get that person a loan, maybe from another bank. There's all sorts of stuff that's out there for, for the banks to like get out and establish a bigger digital footprint, you know. Yep. And also like their websites, you know, step the game up on your, you know, on your website and provide more, uh, I know it's, you know, videos.

So with the website thing and banks, I know it's a little difficult because they're probably most of the time they're like trapped in this like ridiculous contract with some company, company that only builds websites for banks. But ladies and gentlemen, don't get, you know, okey-doked. It's not 1990. It's not, it's not 2000. It's not 2010. It's 2023. There's a lot of ways to upgrade your website. Effectively, affordably, and quickly.

Yeah. And also, you know, like, and we also talk about, like, I just think that financial education, offering security, offering, like, even, like, every bank now gives you access to, like, your— some way to look at your credit report.

Community banks and credit unions. Yeah, I would say if there's some sort of funding that you guys could get to to put a financial literacy class for your constituents. I think that would be a—

yeah, the other thing is look, be active in the, you know, also, you know, be active in the community. That's something that we're looking to do this year is to be active in the community and, and, and find out if we can go out and do some financial educational information, like the people starting businesses, right, and things like that. We've talked to a few of those like startup places about.

I would not mind sitting on panels and talking.

Yeah, and educate people, like let them ask questions, tell a story about how we— how you started a business, what you need to do to get your business started, from people who actually started multiple businesses. Yeah, you know, and that way people understand, because now we're going through another, another surge, right? Because Everybody's looking at like, okay, do I need a side hustle, right? Yeah.

Oh yeah.

And that's another opportunity for bank price eggs for— that's another— yeah, well, the price of everything. That's another opportunity for the, for the banks to take advantage of things like that and, and partner with like the local, um, the local like startup club or offer you know, offer, you know, the co-working space that you got at, right, library or whatever, right? Offer to go there and provide educational information to people, or offer— go get a business owner that works with your bank and have them go with you out to a place and talk to people.

Yeah, because for sure, because the younger generation, you know, we learn all the time when we ask questions in the office, you know, they don't have a clue the difference, right? Like, they don't even know the difference between a bank, a neo bank, or a, you know, right?

They don't know. They just see it on their phone. They see a commercial on TV, Chime, let me download that. Boom, boom.

Oh, I can add my direct deposit to that? I don't have to do anything, right? Like, come on, man.

So it's, you know, people, but all— but, you know, I think like we, you know, like we stay involved in the community. We did our community giving project. And now we're looking to see how we can go out and, and go provide some like financial education in the local community here in Broward County, South Florida. And we're going to contact, reach out, contact some organizations and we'll put it out there to them. And then if they want us to come in, then we'll come in and talk to them about financial education for opening a business, because people need to understand when they open a business, they need to have really good strong grip on financial literacy.

Absolutely.

And this is where community banks can, you know, can tap in. And if some community bank was partnered with us, they could tap into us to say, hey, we want you to do a podcast for us that we could use with our, you know, or a webinar for our, for our bank so we could send it out to our constituents, right, and provide some educational information about starting a business or whatever it is that they want, you know, we can help them with, you know.

And there's tons of ways that you— that we can help the banks.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, there's a lot, you know. Listen, we started a podcast. We didn't know anything about podcasting.

We came because technology is overwhelming, right, to someone who is not, you know, up to speed, right?

But people want to have it quick, fast, and easy. They want to be able to open their bank account, apply for— apply for a loan, excuse me, get information, contact the banker. I mean, I saw all sorts of stuff at that convention— chatbots, all kinds of different things that people had on their— on their, uh, website— on their website to put on websites for banks. There was tons of people there. People providing digital marketing services, kiosks, computer screens, all kinds of things. You know, now it's just up to the banks to figure out like, okay, what are we going to budget for? How are we going to do that? How are we going to provide financial information? And, and all of those different things.

Do you think that— I think that— do you think community banks underlook, like, they overlook that, that whole I don't think they thought about it.

I think they—

I— yeah, maybe, but I think, you know, I definitely— they're overlooking it. And I, you know, one thing I do— just missing out on a huge group of people.

One thing I—

if— look, just real quick, like, if I don't— if, if I was— if it was— it was very difficult for me to go into my bank to get a, a business checking account, right? And then even more so difficult of getting a merchant account, right? Right.

Yeah.

So then what did I do?

Went to PayPal. Exactly right.

As I was walking up, I didn't even— I told him, I said, I'm not even gonna do this, I'll just use PayPal. And the person was like, yeah, we hear that all the time and you guys just accept it. So I think that's something that I don't know, that that's— that starts from up top, right?

But it's— there's an opportunity out there to stop that and get people to use— yes, a service that your bank can offer. Offer that, that the people want so they can get set up quick, fast, and easy. And let me tell you, technology is coming to the point where pretty soon you're not going to need to have an actual credit card machine. There's these new phones, okay, all the new phones, the latest iPhone, the latest Android phones, all are equipped with this NFC. And the software is now being approved by Apple and Google And I think that we're going to see that software come out in the next— by the end of the first quarter, beginning of the second quarter, we're going to see that software released. And then you'll be able to get a merchant account, get an app on your phone, and start taking payments right away. I saw another one where a guy had an app that you should get. You could get this app. I could like get somebody to make it. They would make me they would make an app for me, right? And then the app could put a QR code— it would have a QR code on there so I could be in front of Justin, say, oh, Justin, that's $49.28. Hit, hit a button, a QR code pops up, Justin can scan the QR code and then make me a payment. If he's got Apple Pay or Google Pay, boom, the payment's made. Nice. So there's all kinds of technology like that that's coming out. But the other thing is the app's gonna— the app we're talking about is going to actually have the ability— someone could do a tap and pay, someone could just take their Apple Pay and put it next to the phone.

How close are we with the little—

the very close. We're within the— within the— by the first quarter, all of this new mobile stuff is going to be released. You're not even going to want that little box, you're just going to have it on your phone. Unless you have an old phone, then you're going to need the little box. Yeah, but if you have the new phone, you're not going to need a credit card machine. You're just going to use the phone. I mean, it's crazy. I think that's going to be a big game changer for sure, and banks need to be offering that to their customers because people want to level up their technology. Level up, level up, level up. I mean, if I didn't have to have a— if you didn't— let's say you're a business owner You're going out, you just made a bunch of shirts like this, now you're going over to deliver them, right? Or you made a bunch of hats, now you're going to deliver it, right? You show up, you don't have to carry around a credit card machine, you don't have to carry around a dongle, you have to do any of that. Open up your app. Justin, you owe me $350.87.

Boom.

Justin takes his card, does a tap and pay, takes his phone, does an Apple Pay, a Google Pay, or scans the QR code, key enters his card, boom, done. Email receipt, text receipt, you're out of there. No extra thing to carry around, worry about that it's charged up or anything. It could be at an art show, a flea market, a fair, on the road. You know, look at expenses. Let's say you're an air conditioning company, right? Okay, now you got to go buy a bunch of mobile machines for your for all your drivers. You got 20 guys on the road. Oh no way. Just everybody has it on their phone. Give them all a night— give them— get them all a new iPhone. Boom, you're done.

Stop gassing it up until we got it. But I can't wait till we— I've been wanting to sell it so bad.

Yeah, a lot of—

I know a lot of people in the service industry, like, uh, right, you know, like carpenters, drywallers, masons, blah blah blah. And they don't want to have to deal with sending an invoice anymore for materials and stuff like that. Another new thing we have coming out too is they shouldn't have to wait to get paid if they bought materials, right? You know what I mean? They— it just, it just makes everything more efficient.

Yeah, and we all— and we offer next day funding. The other thing that's cool too is we're coming out with a really new product. Let's say you're a business and someone needs to finance something. So instead of them going and, oh, they got to go get a home equity loan, or maybe they got to go fill out a bunch of paperwork, right? They got to go to a website, wait 2 or 3 days, and now where they get approved, then they got to wait for the money to come, then they got to bring a check back to the business. Now we're going to have a new thing where the business can just have a QR code, tell the person to scan it, right? So let's show up at Justin's house. Oh, it's going to be $500 to replace your hot water heater. I don't have the money. Oh, we have this finance product here. Scan this QR code. Justin opens the web page, puts in all his information, apply, you know, connects to his bank, right? Then they tell him, oh, Justin, that's to borrow $500. Justin picks it out. Oh, I want a 90-day same as cash, right? Because he's, you know, just a little short right now. Yeah, but he knows he's going to have the money. Boop boop, approved. He gets a digital credit card on his phone. The phone shows it to the guy, the guy key enters it on his phone, voilà, paid right there on the spot. So that's going to be— I think there's, there's some amazing tools that we've been working on that are all coming out within the next 2 to 3 months, and these are all going to make businesses happy, business owners happy. And these are the kind of things that banks need to go show, offer to their customers, say, hey, here's the next generation of payments.

Absolutely right.

And the amount of home-based businesses, small businesses, mobile business, and this new term I like, solopreneurs, right?

I was a solopreneur, right?

A solopreneur, right?

So still in—

well, a solopreneur, you don't have any employees. Yeah, so it's a one-person business. These products are perfect for those businesses. Perfect.

So anything in the news, fintech, you want to talk about?

Uh, fintech in the news, just a lot of stuff going on with crypto.

You see, SBF requested to get access to his Robinhood account so he could pay for his lawyers.

That's crazy. They should just—

they're going to give it to him.

They're going to give it to him. Why?

Why not?

I don't know, it's all stolen money. I don't think so, man.

I don't know.

I mean, there's just a lot of stuff going on with crypto in the news.

It's not his shares from Robinhood.

Oh, his shares. Okay, well, who know— how did he buy it? With what? Ill-gotten gains, you know. But there's armed robbery, there's a lot of stuff going around about taxes. And do not file your business taxes so fast because it's not real. There's—

yeah, I would definitely be waiting.

There's a bunch of stuff going on with the, with the tax code right now, and the IRS has come out and said, oh well, we're not doing this and we're not going to enforce that, we're not enforcing this. So you don't want to file because you might end up paying too much tax. But there's a lot of stuff going on with that, like the $600 thing. They're not sure what to do. But I think that that kind of cleaned itself up with some self-regulation, right? Because it kind of forced those companies to to say, oh, you're processing, you know, 10 transactions a week, you have a business. That's not your friends just giving you money. Yeah. And they— I think that cleaned up, I don't know, maybe 50%.

Uh, that's a high number. I'll say 40%.

Okay, so it cleaned up a portion of that. Yeah. And, you know, and then there's some other tax stuff that's going on. I think people don't read the news, read what's going on enough, but you need to look at what's going on with taxes. There was another thing where I saw where people might actually get more money on their paychecks, but I don't know if that's where in Florida or everywhere, everywhere with some kind of reduction thing. But you got to watch out for that because I think it's, it, it sound, it sounds a little fake because you're going to get a reduction, but then you're going to end up having to pay it at the end of the year. So I don't agree with those kinds of—

and that, my ladies and gentlemen, was the sound of the end of the podcast because Rocky just let one go.

Uh-oh. No thank you, Rocky. All right, well, it's Friday, FinTech Friday. Everybody have a great weekend. Peace out, and we'll talk to everybody soon. You want to stay positive. Want to find out more information about our banking program? Visit Nationwide paymentssystems.com. Go to the partner page and you can get more information, and we can set up a meeting and talk to you about partnering with your financial institution— community bank, bank, credit union, neobank, or whatever financial type business that you're in. And we'll talk to everybody soon. Peace out.

Peace.

I don't think that, that text-to-book thing works anymore.

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.