FinTech Friday | Financial Technology Trends | Crypto | Small Business News | B2B Vault: The Payment Technology Podcast

Hey, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the payment technology podcast— excuse me— hosted by Allen Kopelman and sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems. And today it's FinTech Friday. So hello everybody, it's Friday. Yeah, good thing. Um, yeah man, so it's been a while since we talked about crypto. We haven't been really talking about crypto lately, you know, it's been just a lot of stuff going on. Um, a lot of ups, downs, left, rights, BA, select starts. Don't know, really know what to do with crypto. Um, honestly, I haven't been paying attention. Um, I don't know why. I've been busy, I guess, thinking about other things. But yeah, so yeah, we wanted to touch base on that. There's a lot of other stuff going on in the news with regarding financial technology. So, you know, that's what Fridays are for. So let's hop right into it.

So the big excitement this week, I don't know if it's directly, it's fintech related, but you know, they're related to the internet. Elon Musk officially is the owner of Twitter, $44 billion. So that's pretty cool. And then he put out a tweet and immediately crypto prices went up about 13%. Oh yeah, I'm not sure why, but most of that was Dogecoin. Yeah, he's, he's very— he's bullish on, on the Dogecoin. So he did an announcement and, um, he moved the needle on the Dogecoin.

Nice.

Now I looked at my crypto portfolio, which is pretty diverse, you know, because I took some Bitcoin that I had and liquidated it and then bought a bunch of different cryptos just to have them to monitor.

Nice.

The market. But my portfolio over the last 12 months, it's been reduced by more than 50%.

Oh yeah, of its value.

So overall, you know, we're having like a crypto winter or whatever you want to— or crypto recession for sure. A lot of that probably has to do with the tax laws that went into effect and the traders pulling out of the market because every trade was being taxed. Um, Europe is still very strong with crypto. As far as trading. People in Europe, yeah, and other countries around the world and using it to transact for business, especially cross-border, you know, country to country. So a lot of that is still going on. In my opinion, the Congress needs to rethink these tax laws, but who knows, you know. But the, you know, definitely, you know, other stuff going on in the news crypto-related. FTX is move investing. That's a one of the crypto exchanges that Sam Blackman— Black something, I forget his last name— he, you know, he bailed out like a few companies, you know, crypto companies, and they're moving their headquarters to Miami.

Oh, cool.

And then a lot of other stuff has been in the news with, um, crypto. So there was big news, there was a couple of articles about PayPal and Western Union who both filed trademarks for crypto services. So that was pretty interesting.

And they, uh, the one for PayPal, um, I guess this is the second time around for PayPal. They got sued in 2018. Oh, for— they were, uh they're in the process of buying a crypto exchange. Uh-huh. And I don't know, something went sour or whatever, and then that company sued PayPal. So I guess over the past couple years they've been trying to get it together, and finally they were able to submit their, you know, file their whatever, whatever they're doing, right? Their patent. Is that what it is?

No, it's trademark. Yeah, trademark. So what's interesting is, is they filed trademark applications for NFT, metaverse, and the metaverse. Yeah. And then also I read where they're enabling on some people's— I guess on some companies, they're allowing them to transact in crypto, but I'm not exactly sure how that works.

To me it sounds like PayPal and Meta, or better known as Facebook, partnered, partnered, and that's going to be like, that's going to be the introduction for you to buy stuff. You're going to be able to use PayPal inside of the metaverse, so then that way people aren't signing up for a Meta wallet and all the other wallets.

Yeah, well, that's definitely— we're going to see that. I mean, we're already getting inquiries about people to set up a merchant account to buy, you know, to use you know, so people can pay with a credit card in the metaverse. That's already happening. So, and then Western Union filed some trademarks, and theirs were interesting. Theirs involved Web3, the metaverse, and crypto. Now, I would imagine that for Western Union, they're looking at somebody in the U.S. has some crypto and then wants to send that crypto to somebody in another country, and somehow they're going to enable that on their platform.

Why can't you do that now?

Well, I guess you could do it, but I guess they're, you know, not everybody in some of these countries maybe has— maybe, or maybe let's say you have some crypto, so you can just—

and it turns it into cash, right?

Maybe you have some crypto.

That's what Western Union is doing.

They turn it into cash because they don't care about crypto, right? That's— that must be what they're—

that has to be the— or they're converting it. That's the only thing that they want to do.

Or they're setting up like a metaverse and you'll be able to go in the metaverse and somehow do it in there too.

I mean, where can you— the only places you can go and get like are those, those ATMs where you can go withdraw money from crypto, right?

Some ATMs allow you— like there's one company, there's a couple companies that allow you to go to the ATM, you could buy crypto, or you can go to those Bitcoin ATMs where you put cash in and buy crypto.

I'm talking about getting money, right?

But there's one company we saw at the ATM show called Bitcoin for You.

No, I'm saying right now.

Yeah, you can go to an ATM that has Bitcoin for You.

So you could put your card in and then you could just withdraw $200?

No, you don't even need to put a card. You could do a— you do a— go to the cashless transaction button, all right, scan a QR code, and then—

well, that's what I'm saying. Like, as far as what Western Union— what, what else could they be trying to do?

It doesn't, doesn't really explain in the article.

Yeah, it's very vague, but I for it to make sense would, yeah, be a way for someone who has a bunch of crypto, like, hey, I want to get cash for my crypto, right? Where you can't go to your bank, you can't go anywhere else. So, you know, if Western Union is creating a way for you to, you know, cash out, like almost like a casino when you cash out your chips, right? That's smart.

Yeah. And then send the money to the recipient at the other end, or that Or they sent getting it themselves in cash.

That's what I mean. That's what I mean.

Yeah, it's pretty interesting. Yeah, maybe they'll put out some kind of kiosk too.

They should.

That's the big, you know, that's the big rage we saw at the show, right? All these kiosks that basically can do multiple types of financial services. So it would only make sense that they would expand into an area like that. And then You know, MasterCard made a big announcement, okay? And their announcement was that they have a new product called CryptoSecure that helps banks assess the risk of crime associated with crypto networks, crypto merchants on its network. So the service is powered by Ciphertrace, a blockchain security startup that MasterCard acquired this earlier, uh, last year. Yeah, last year they acquired that company. Yeah, so what they're doing is with that is they're basically like, if somebody has crypto assets, they're analyzing like where did those crypto assets originate. And you know, because of the blockchain, that could be followed. So that could just make sure that nobody is getting crypto from like some illicit country that's on the blacklist for the United States that you should, you know, somebody's participating in some kind of terrorist organization or something like that. And also there's been a couple articles about American Express, and they've, you know, filed some patents before and trademarks involving cryptocurrency, and they're, you know, also like looking at it like, oh, what can we do with it? And all that. And then also Visa and MasterCard both have kind of started to partner with most of the larger exchanges, okay, where they have credit cards. And the credit cards are like, do, do a twofold thing. So in one fold, like, I could get this credit card, let's say, from Coinbase, okay, and I can charge on it and then I can— they get— in some cases you can get a limit, in some cases it's limited to what you have on their platform. And then when it's due, you can either pay for it or they're going to cash out your crypto to pay the bill. Nice. But that would trigger, I think, a taxable transaction if you didn't have the crypto for over a year. So that's not a smart move. But then they have other credit cards that's attached to an exchange, and then instead, like, instead of you know, miles and points and, and, uh, rewards and cash back, you're getting crypto rewards. So that's something that's out there. I saw there's a couple of companies facilitating that, and, um, I know Coinbase has a card and other ones are having cards too. Very cool. So that's, you know, pretty interesting on the crypto front as far as like merchants wanting to accept crypto. It's, it's out there. People are not really getting excited and talking about it, you know, but some people are still getting paid with crypto. Yeah, people are still getting paid with crypto.

And there are still crypto millionaires and billionaires. So don't, don't let it— don't be fooled by what's in the news. Everything is just It's going like this as usual.

Yeah, what goes down will go up, what was up goes down, back and forth. No, so there was another article that I was reading earlier too, it's about millennials that said, you know, the millennials, 1 in 5, which was—

I'm a millennial, right?

I don't know, I don't think you're a millennial.

I was born in 1980.

Is that part of the millennials?

I don't know what Generation X.

Yeah, well, the younger generation, let's say everybody under 40. So it said that everybody under 40, 1 to 2, like 1 to 2 people out of 5 have, uh, are holding crypto, have some, have cryptos as part of their, you know, part of their investment or their whole—

seems low to me.

Seems low? Yeah, I'm just saying.

So then what, like all of us, of everyone 40 up, owns all the crypto?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. They're saying that out of 5 people, like 1.5 people under 40 have crypto. Seems low, but yeah, yeah, 1 to 2, could be 2 out of 5. It was just a— it was a cert, you know, they surveyed a group of people and, you know, who knows where they were at, right? So, but there's, you know, people— there's a— well, we already know there's a significant amount of people we saw when we did the last check on the website, you know, how many millions of people in the United States were holding crypto assets.

Yeah, there's millions.

Yeah, there's millions.

So that didn't— that number hasn't changed much, right?

People are holding it. They're not selling it. They're not transacting it like they were before. There's a lot of holding on to it. I mean, I read another story where this NFL player was taking Bitcoin and he's not too happy about it right now because he got Bitcoin.

Oh, he got paid in Bitcoin? Yeah, he's not—

took his money in Bitcoin and now he's lost a lot of money. I mean, I'll say it's down 50%, but it's probably went down farther than that. If you were getting paid when it was $70 grand a coin, right now it's $20 grand. You lost a lot of money. Yeah, so that's kind of crazy from that standpoint.

But well, he wouldn't— I know you're not— all of his salary, he took half his salary or something like that.

Yeah, Bitcoin. I wonder how the mayor of Miami feels now too, because he was taking his salary, and many employees in the city of Miami were taking salary in Bitcoin and that Miami coin. And I don't think that's worth anything right now because there was, you know, a lot of speculative—

no thank you, bucko—

a lot of speculative coins out there, you know.

Yeah.

So, you know, that's the, you know, one thing. Now let's talk a little bit about small business. So we are coming up—

before you get into that, thank you to everybody who's listening. Please check out the podcast on iHeartRadio, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Pandora, Amazon Music, wherever you digest your content or listening to your podcasts, we're on there for sure. Check us out on social media. We're on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, uh, Instagram, and TikTok. You can check us out at @B2BVault. And please head over to the website b2bvault.info where you can click the link where you apply now. If you're looking for a merchant account, you listen to this podcast, you know, you're like, hey, I need to get paid, I got— I need to send these invoices, I got a new store I just opened. We can help you out. Click the link, apply now, sends you to Nationwide Payment Systems. That's our sponsor. They'll take care of you.

Yeah, the new system, get a merchant account in under 5 minutes.

Really simple.

Very simple. 10 questions and you're basically approved.

And please go to YouTube and subscribe and turn on the notifications so that you can find, uh, all the pleasantries that we, uh, share with the world. All right, small business, what's up?

Small business. So we're coming into holiday season, and, um, you know, go back and look at our, um, podcast that we did about fraud, fraud on, you know, e-commerce fraud. It's very important.

That Frog's Fraud, right?

It's very important you review, you know, listen to that information because You know, we deal with merchants all the time and we talk to them about, you know, they're getting chargebacks and they're getting fake transactions. I mean, recently there must have been a big influx of credit card numbers to the secret— whatever this dark web is, because we saw a big uptick in e-commerce fraud.

Really?

Yeah. And the transactions all went through. They got AVS positive. Oh, yeah. You're telling me about the CVV2 was positive. That's really crazy because they got the security digits, right? They usually don't get that, and the zip code. So they got full matched up, but the person shipped to a different address. And so, you know, merchants started to see a pattern that there was like too many of those and recognized that there was a lot of fraud. We had a couple places— we had one place that had like 100 of those.

It's terrible.

We just told them like, listen, you got to go in, like, void them out, refund the money. One, you know, they started voiding the transactions out, then they found a couple from the day before, ran refunds before they got chargebacks. But a couple people got hit with, you know, one place got hit with about 8 chargebacks. Boom. Because somebody's gonna see they didn't order from that spot, right? But thank goodness they had not shipped the product out. So that saved them, because if they had shipped the product out, then you have a loss of money and product.

Terrible.

This way they didn't really lose. But now they found the better— they got the employees on top of it, and employees are double-checking the ones that don't match. You know, they set up a filtering system. I like what they did. They said if you ordered before, they didn't really look at you. If you— if the address went to the product, went to the shipping address, and everything matched up, those were good. And they're only checking the ones where it's shipped to a different address.

So, like, but it's logical, right?

So they figured out a system and they're checking it out, and they call the person up on the phone, verify the transaction. If the person doesn't answer or call them back in a couple hours, that basically they just avoid the transaction. They don't wait till the next—

policy sounds like a good policy.

Yeah, so they're trying, you know, they're— so far it's working. So they haven't got any more chargebacks. Very good. So that's been good. The other thing that really flipped me out was I get every day from the, uh, South Florida Business Journal and also articles from other, you know, like the— from their net, they have like net, you know, local articles that's targeted to South Florida, and there's national articles. So one of the articles that was in there was all about PPP and about the employee retention credit. And I know we kind of touched on this before, you know, but this article was it really shocked me about some of the fraud that was— that some businesses are experiencing. And then there's a big lawsuit which I got because I was— I get— did get PPP, one round of it, in the very beginning because we were, you know, we were, you know, we had a big setback there for a little while. Wasn't that bad because in Florida we were able to open back up and, you know, make readjustment to the business, you know. But we did get one round of PPP, and we dealt with this company Cabbage. Cabbage was recently acquired by American Express, okay? But Cabbage is in a whole lawsuit now, multiple ones, for— let's see— PPP, like, uh, people didn't get their loan forgiveness filed, or they went to the website and filed it but it didn't go through, or it wasn't transmitted over to the SBA. So if you did get a lot— a PPP loan and you did forgiveness, and you don't— and now all of a sudden you're getting a phone call from the SBA going, hey, you owe us money, and you're like, why do I owe money? Well, you didn't do your forgiveness. Well, you need to make sure, like, you have to go say to them, well, I was doing it through— you have to file it. So you got to make sure like that went through. I actually got crazy. So I got whacked for that for $10.83 for some— I don't even know. They said, oh, you owe $10.83. I had to go through a whole process, register this, that, and then go send the SBA $10.83, which didn't make any sense because Apparently when they also sent out that EDIL money, emergency disaster relief. So we got, I think, $4,000 or something like that. And then I didn't file. I guess I filed the paperwork too late. Mm-hmm. So $10.83 of interest. That's weird. They forgave it. We didn't have to pay the money back.

Oh, that's nice.

But had to pay $10.83.

$10 for $4 grand. I mean, $10 for $4 grand, right? Bad.

No, it's not bad, but it was a, you know, so Cabbage is being sued because some people didn't get their loans forgiven and now their SBA is coming after them for the money. And so that's very, very important. If you didn't do that, you better figure it out. And also some people are getting asked or getting paperwork from the SBA saying, oh, you got money, but they never got funded.

Whoa.

And that happened not just from Cabbage but from a couple of other sources, and that's being looked into. This was an article in the South Florida Business Journal. I mean, we're not going to put the link because it's hidden behind a paywall. I mean, I pay for that, but you know, most people don't pay for that, so we'll be able to see the article. But that's what they were discussing in there, and people didn't receive funding, and then they're getting charged for the PPP.

There was so much scams going on with—

yeah, PPP, and there was people down here, there was a couple of businesses where they filed for PPP that didn't have any employees, got like $200,000, $300,000, $400,000, $500,000, and now those people, you know, had to give the money back, probably might have to go visit the jail. You know, and like that, who knows what's going to happen to them. One of them was related— I think one of the people was related to the mayor of Fort Lauderdale. And one— what? Yeah, it was pretty crazy. But there were these companies. The other thing was, is there was companies that say, oh, we'll help you file for the PPP, or we'll help you file for this employee retention right? And then, you know, like I discussed it with my accountant, should I get this employee retention thing? So they said it's, you know, very gray, right? You could apply, you know, and then they'll send you the money, but then they could come back and review your paperwork and say you don't really qualify for that and then want the money back. So he's like Do you need the money? Yes or no? Did you, you know, because it's all, it's, you know, I hear these commercials on the radio, oh, even if you didn't have a business loss, but I read it, it said you had to post a loss, right? Right. So some of these companies are getting very aggressive in how they're filing the applications, right? And then people are getting caught with their pants down because they get the money they spend it, obviously, right? And then the next thing you know, the government's like, well, you didn't qualify, Justin. We gave you $50,000. Now we want our $50,000 back. They want half of it back. Then the bad part is, is that company's taking a 5-10% cut, right? And they're disappearing and not giving the money back to the, to the client, you know, giving the money back. Yeah, there was a, there's a guy that was a client of ours and he got PPP money through some one of those companies and they got him $500,000.

Wow.

And they took a big chunk. They took like an $80,000 commission out of this $500,000. And then when it was time to file for forgiveness, the guy was flipping out. The guy, the person was nowhere to be found. They sent in their bank statements and their payroll records and all that.. And then the government said, oh, you didn't qualify for $500 grand, you got to give some of the money back. Yeah, and the guy was out of his— yeah, because these people, they, they told business owners, oh yeah, you qualify, blah blah blah, and they fudged up the numbers, you know, and then they took chunks of change. In some cases, some of the people didn't even know how much money those people were collecting. Yeah, because the money was going into their bank account instead of the business's bank account.

Yeah, no thanks.

And I blame some of that on the SBA, that they're not— they weren't monitoring that to see that.

I blame all of it on an SBA. Yeah, you shouldn't be. Come on, man, how much do they make you go— how many hoops do they make us jump through to even acquire a business? But then now it's just like a snap of the finger, you're gonna approve everybody and anything for all of this money and millions. And now what? You're, you know, you got your head stuck between your legs because you didn't do what you were— you weren't diligent during this process, and now you're taking it out on like all these other businesses. Come on, man. I don't know.

Yeah, it's not right. The business owners got scammed by some of these companies, right? Because they— for sure they got scammed.

And, uh, a friend of mine, he did the same thing. He got approved for almost $100,000.

Right?

And then you got a letter in the mail, I gotta give the money back or go to jail.

Okay.

You know, like, like, as soon as he said he got that approved for that much, I thought to myself, I said, you don't even make that much in a year, bro. Why would this— why would the small business— you know what I mean? But here you got people just taking the money because, well, you know, everyone needs money, right? It's not like you're gonna turn it down, right? Yeah, you know, I mean, even if you don't, if you're, if you're getting—

they sent money to my bank account. We didn't even want the money, right? So we sent it back to them.

That's what I'm saying. I just—

we're like, oh, we don't want the money.

I filled it out and then I was glad that I got denied because I just— all I— they asked— they even called me. They wanted to give me the—

oh yeah, it's crazy.

They wanted to—

they got mad.

They said, they said, no, no, no, you know, you're approved. It's just that you're missing one of the, you know, the document that whatever they were asking me for, I don't remember. Yeah. And I was like, yeah, yeah. And, you know, and it was, I don't know, $50,000, something like that.

That's crazy.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah.

Like, and I'm like, do I really want this money? And I said no. And so I just never, I never sent them the document there.

Yeah. Well, what happened was we got sent the money, and then when I saw what they wanted us to sign— exactly— I was like, oh, we're not doing that. So I called them up. And then I had to do all this stuff. I had to register on this website and do all this stuff to go and hook up my bank account so I can send them back the money. And then I sent them back the money because I was like, oh, we're not signing that.

Yeah, my wife was trying to, you know, we were trying to figure it out to see like which, you know, in my business got approved. And I'm like, I don't want to be responsible for this, you know, like what if something else happens or You know, like, I don't know.

I—

and I'm glad we didn't take the money.

So it was— that's pretty, you know, it's just so— it's just very, very confusing because some people really did need the money. You know, if you were in a state where your business was shut down for 5, 6 months, well, you still had rent to pay.

I feel bad for all the nonprofits that got shut down. A lot of nonprofits got shut down because they didn't qualify for the Yeah, well, a lot of them, they didn't have employees, right?

So they couldn't get PPP in the first round, and then they started to give some of the money. But the really messed up part is, is that a lot of the money that was earmarked for the EDIL loans, the PPP loans, and all that, they still have the money. The government, it didn't go anywhere, and the money didn't go anywhere. And who knows what they're going to do with that money. And money's just flying out of the government on all these of like pet project things that we don't need. Like, I saw a thing on the news, right, that this— from the one of these, you know, bills that was passed, some town— and the town is kind of like decimated, like, right, they need other stuff done— and they got like some, like, uh, $10 million. No, no, they got like $10 million or some crazy amount of money, $20 million, to put in to install heated sidewalks. And they were like, we don't want heated sidewalks. It's somewhere like in New Hampshire, and they're like— the residents are like, we don't want these heated sidewalks. They put a heated sidewalk out in front of another build— in front of a building. They said it doesn't work. So I said, why are we going to spend the money? We need other stuff. They were talking about they have a homeless problem. They have dilapidated buildings, they had like a bridge that was messed up, they had like all these other things.

That is the bunch of like, uh, real estate property owners coming together so that they don't have to pay property management, so they don't have—

I don't know what they know or something. Yeah, they were just gonna— no, but they were just gonna put it like down the main street. Then they're showing the picture of the main street And it's just all these buildings boarded up because all these buildings, these businesses went out of business during COVID because that, you know, they were shut down in New England.

What they thought, the heated sidewalks are going to attract new business owners?

I don't know. Get out of here. The town is like, I'm not going to move my business into your town.

And because now my, my taxes and my rent is going to go through the roof because I got heated sidewalks. Get out of here, man.

Yeah, it's very the, you know, the— it's very, very wasteful. It's like there's a movie, I, I love this, this one movie, it's old, it's called Dave, and I forget that Bill Paxton is in it, and, uh, it's an old movie, but he— the president dies, but the president dies, and then they find this guy to be the body double for the president because he looks He's the doppelgänger. Oh, of the president. And he's— and the president was married to Sigourney Weaver. So that was kind of good. She was from Alien.

Okay.

Yeah, it's funny, like you watch a movie and then you could make fun of the movie and associate it. Oh, Bill Paxton, he was in, uh, Independence Day. The aliens attack us, he was the president. Oh, right. So you can make fun of the movie And then whatever his name—

that movie is named Dave.

Yeah, it's called Dave. So in the movie, you know, he's discussing with the, with the people on the cab, with the guy who's the, the assistant to the president. He's like, oh, we need to get this homeless project done, right? Because they're, you know, he's acting like he's the president. He's going around, they're like, well, you can't have the homeless project, it costs this much money. He says, well, if you could figure out how to trim that out of the budget right? You could do the homeless project. So he calls his friend who's a CPA and he says, oh yeah, come to the White House. And his friend comes there and he's like, oh my God, you're pretending to be the president, right? And there he's like, well, you know, I want to do this homeless project, but the guy told me I have to figure out how to trim the, you know, whatever it is, $20 million out of the budget, right? Or some crazy number. Right? Some, some insane amount of money. So they sit down and they get out the budget for the United States, right? And they start looking at it. And then they're sitting around this table, you know, with all the heads of all the departments, the cabinet meeting, right? And they're going, okay. So he gets his list out, right? The guy is getting mad now, the assistant to the president, because that guy like thinks he's running the show, right?

Right.

He's like, well, I gotta, you know, trim off whatever this $50 million from the budget. So he's like, okay, uh, Secretary of Commerce, he goes, you're spending $10 million on commercials to be on TV to make people feel good about a car that they already bought. He goes, that doesn't sound good. Boop, that's out. We got $10 million, writes it down. And he's going down the whole list. He's like, why are we paying, uh, Lockheed Martin for, uh, airplanes and they didn't deliver them yet. Why are we paying them in advance, right? Because no, we shouldn't be paying them in advance. He goes, oh, we could take that money, put it in a savings account, accrued the interest. Oh, we saved another couple hundred grand, right? He's going down the list, he's just whacking out like all these crazy projects, right? He's like, oh, now I got my $20 million, whatever.

Sounds about like it's pretty real.

Yeah, but I'm just saying, like, that's the problem. Like, I don't, like, agree. Like, anytime I think, like, they, they want to appropriate funds, like Congress wants to appropriate funds for whatever, I think whatever— what each thing needs to be, it's— they need to vote on each item, not throw all this stuff in there and go, oh, here's this $2 trillion package, right, of 2,000 pages of spending right? And you can't— you don't even know what it's for, you know? We don't even know what it's for. Like, like today also, I go look, I'm looking at the new— I'm watching the news and reading an article about people can't even get the—

the—

like, they're over there in Fort Myers on the west coast of Florida, right? And I feel horrible, right?

Well, I can't get— what?

They can't get the FEMA money. Like, some people don't have a bank account, and then they can't get— they're supposed to get $700 per person. So let's say you have a household of 4 people, supposed to get $2,800, and they don't have a way. They're like, oh, we went go to the FEMA office and all this, and people came and they did paperwork. And, you know, where are they going to go? You know, people's car was ruined. They're trying to get money from their car insurance company. You know, their car went underwater. I mean, it's just, it's just crazy.

Very tragic.

And then, you know, and then what can you do? The state can't do anything. You know, the state can only do so much— bring in food, bring in that, you know, bring— make sure people are getting fed and all of that, which they're doing. But, you know, this money is supposed to come from the federal government. And the same thing happened in every storm that we've had. Katrina, when, when Katrina hit New Orleans, the same thing. When They had the storm that hit in Houston, Texas, right? The same thing. I just don't understand that they just can't get this whole FEMA situation, you know, straightened out. FEMA again.

I mean, you would think with this government stuff, man.

I know it's government, but you know, if you have a small business, you need to be very careful. I would be checking on your— that your PPP was forgiven. You can always call the SBA and check. You don't want to get a surprise bill in the mail. And I would be very careful about this employee retention credit. Some people do qualify for it. They had— they lost a lot of money and then they took their savings and put it into their business, right, to keep it afloat, you know. And yeah, that's a legitimate, you know, legitimate reason to get the money. But you know, if you didn't lose money, shouldn't be taking the money. And that's, you know, the whole thing. So, you know, so on a positive note, let's talk about things that small businesses can do before the end of the— like, for the end of the year. You know, we talked about in another— we talk about all the time, like, you know, make sure you're, you know, keeping your Google page up, you know, so that people can find your business.

Got the hours, name, address, phone number. Make sure the NAP is correct. You're, you know, like he said, the— your hours of operation are correct, updated to say that you got, you know, if it's wheelchair accessible, do you have a bathroom, take a new picture of the outside. Maybe you painted the front, maybe you got a new sign, take a picture, put it— post it to your Google, uh, you know, your Google My Business, whatever they call it now.

Yeah, they keep changing.

Google Local, whatever. You can It's really cool because you can do it right through Google. So if you Google your business's name and then it pops up in the little— on the side where you could click website, directions, call, all that, you can scroll a little bit and now you can edit that information if you're the owner. Um, and if you're not, you could suggest edits to whoever's, uh, managing the profile and they'll get the, the email for that too.

Yeah, it's important like that people can find your business and What services do you offer? Do you have a website? Maybe you don't have a website and you can't afford one. You could— you have a Facebook page, put the address to that, you know, the information, the URL to the Facebook page.

You don't have a website, the bare minimum would be, yes, set up a Facebook business page, set up a Twitter, set up a LinkedIn, set up a Yelp page. I mean, all these things are free. So that would be a great way to, you know, market your business. But I mean, you could build a website for free now too on WordPress. It won't be the— or even, I mean, whatever. I'm not going to tell you because— but yeah, I mean, there's a lot of cool ways to get your, you know, your businesses.

Right. But simple ways, make a quick Facebook page.

Yeah, take you 10 minutes, have a picture of your business, your logo. Information, make a post, you're done.

Yeah, and that way you can have a, you know, have a better presence on the internet, you know, and let people know what do you offer, you know, and things like that. So it's important that you, you know, you take steps. We're in this really rough economy right now. It's a— I would call it a very— I don't know, it's very up and down.

It's whooping my ass.

Yeah, I can— I tell— I talk to people every day, business owners, and, you know, they don't know what to do because the prices of goods keeps going up and up and up, and there's not a lot of relief in sight for that. Nope. And, you know, one— that's one thing I've always found: when prices go up, it takes a very long time for prices to go down. Because the supply, you know, the, the, the whole thing has whatever— more things have to happen than just like, you know, whatever. If the price of gas goes down 50 cents, right, that doesn't necessarily affect all the stuff that you've been— that you, you know, that's been in production before that, you know what I mean? So it's very difficult for, for that to happen. So, you know, check out our new website, nationwidepaymentsystems.com. You could go to b2bvault.info, hit apply. It'll take you over to the solution finder. Check out what we have going on over there. Basically, it's almost an instant merchant account. Usually within about 5 minutes you're approved if everything checks out. If you have any questions, you can also text the word book to 954-827-9818 or go to b2bvault.info, apply, fill out a form, get in touch with us. Everybody have a great Friday, have a great weekend. Peace out. Carpe diem.

Peace.