FinTech Friday | Payment Trends & FinTech News | B2B Vault: The Payment Technology Podcast

Hey, what's up everybody? Excuse me, it's Justin live from B2B Vault, the payment technology podcast sponsored by GoDaddy, Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by this guy, Allen Kopelman, and we'll be providing you educational information about small business, fintech, payment processing, and the technology businesses are using in the world today. And in today's podcast, we're going to be going over, uh, the, uh, Financial Brand Forum that Allen just got back from, entrepreneurship, uh, Trends and what's in the news. What's in the news? Oh yes, there's a lot of stuff in the news. Um, so yeah, man, it's been an interesting week. Last week, uh, you know, it's a little quiet for us on the, on the podcast front. This week, uh, we only had one show for the, uh, for this week, but, uh, Thursday was a little bit of a, you know, he was out of town, had some, uh, technical difficulties. Uh, so we were not able to, uh, record something for this Thursday, but you know, we're here today. Thank you. You know, um, shout out to everybody who's, uh, listening, and, uh, all to the fans, thank you for subscribing, tuning in, liking, sharing, you know, promoting the podcast for us. We appreciate you. Uh, shout out to all the entrepreneurs. It's still Entrepreneurship Month, man. Got a lot of, uh cool stuff in store, I'm sure, for everybody out there, uh, getting gearing up for the holidays. Uh, get your, uh, you know, your marketing materials together now. Hopefully you're not, you know, super behind, you know, you got time, but you should, uh, already be ready to start pushing out there and making sure that everybody knows what you got and what you got to offer. So, uh, yeah, man.

Yeah, so today we had lunch from It's all about Greek, right?

It's everything's Greek.

Everything's Greek to me.

I don't know.

Yeah, everything's Greek to me. And Pompano down the street from the office. So we had yummy lunch today at the office.

And thank you, Allen, for lunch.

And we had, and we, you know, sit around and we chop it up. Right? Yes. So that's always, that's always fun on a Friday. And then, you know, this week I was gone. Justin was talking about— I was at this conference called the Financial Brand Conference with our partner GoDaddy, and we had a kiosk set up there, and we were talking to people in the banking business and the banking industry, and had a lot of really great speakers. And we're gonna try to do an in-depth, you know, show about the conference, talk about it. You know, found out a lot of stuff about Um, the banking industry, credit unions. I heard this, this is one of the things I heard at the conference: credit unions is the, the best-kept secret in the United States.

I believe it.

And I didn't even understand that, but apparently I have to get a little bit more educated on credit unions. And I love you, man, but you gotta scoot over just a little bit.

Okay, the chair was rubbing up against the thing, so making this like—

okay, so no, but credit unions is where everybody, you know, not all of them are geared up for business banking, you know, and they're trying to. And, uh, Rocky, what do you want in there? There's nothing in there. Just these things. You're not gonna eat that, it's plastic. And, uh, they don't all deal with business, you know, with businesses, and they're trying to get, um more bit, you know, more commercial business into their credit unions, right? You know, and some of them might not be, you know, aren't specifically geared up for that. But it was a very interesting, you know, they were all different size bank institutions there, financial institutions. There were some fintech companies there. There was definitely a lot going on with digitizing your bank with, um, kiosks Um, there was a number of companies there that had kiosk-type products. So when people come in the bank, there was also a lot of talk about, um, how banks and credit unions should be providing, um, financial literacy. Yes. And I was showing you that one website, what it was called, See You Creator or something. Yeah, this lady that was there. She hasn't made a movie about it, I think, really, Amazon. Yeah, and it's a movie to educate people about, um, educate people on financial literacy. Interesting. Yes, I have to look up the— I have the information about it. And so that was— so that was pretty— that was pretty— it was pretty— it was a pretty interesting conference from finding out all these different things. And there was a lot of really good speakers there. Magic Johnson, Damon John. We had the comedian Frank Coliendo. He's from Milwaukee, but Justin does— he's from Milwaukee, doesn't know Frank Coliendo, but he was really funny. There was another—

like I said, just because you're from Milwaukee, you say you're from Milwaukee, that doesn't make you from Milwaukee. Okay, you could be from Waukesha, Brookfield.

Okay, from the area, he's from Wisconsin.

There you go.

So then there was another guy, Michael Jr., who's a comedian. He was really funny.

Yeah.

They had other speakers, was a woman who was the former vice president of Southwest Airlines talking about company culture. There was quite— there was an array of speakers over 3 days. Nice. So it was a pretty— it was a very interesting conference. But this week was— there was a lot going on in my email from the FTC. So I was like, man, what is going on? It was really quiet from the FTC, you know, a few things here and there. But this week they came out and they're talking about all kinds of scams, and they're finding people, going after people. So one was scams having to do with business opportunities. So people out, you know, selling for— trying to get money from people and saying, oh, do you want to start up— do you want to like buy a franchise?

I like the one that you sent me with the, uh, the Amazon store. Oh yeah, there was one with the Amazon, guys, where they said that they'll set you up with a turnkey, uh, Amazon store and you'll be on your way to financial freedom. $10,000.

Yeah, there was a hook. Yeah, yeah, it was crazy.

They put that all on their website, and so they got sued by a lot of people.

And there's— and some of these have settlement. There's going to be some settlement.

No, they had to settle. Yeah, they settled for like, uh, $27 million or something.

Some crazy settlements going on too with— and all the— so there was a whole—

that company is done, right?

And then there was a whole thing talking about business opportunities and how they want to change the rules about, uh, business opportunities and franchises, because apparently there was another company that's being investigated where they were offering like, oh, Justin, you want to get a franchise? And And then they would get money from Justin, and then they would just, you know, not do anything. They say, oh, you don't qualify for any franchises. Then they don't give you your money back. And then there was a whole thing going on about savings. So saving— people calling up on the phone, oh, we could save you on your energy bill, we could save you on your phone bill, we could save you on your gas bill, we can save you on your internet bill, and all this, and collecting money from people.

So these—

this company's some— there's a company being sued. And then this was a big one which came out right away because, you know, the whole biggest thing in the news this week is this whole FTX crypto meltdown, right? Which we'll talk about in a second. But one of the big things the FTC sent a notice out about is do not pay anyone who says they can get your crypto money back, right? Do not pay anyone that says they're going to do that. Because that's a bit— that's not going to happen. I mean, this FTX guy went bankrupt. There's like some 30-page bankruptcy thing. He's down in the Bahamas chilling, and then he's saying he's trying to raise money to give everybody their money back. It's not really clear how much money disappeared, but it's not in the millions, it's in the billions. Lots of money, money, because this guy had multiple companies, and then he was taking people's money that was invested on the platform, you know, where they were buying, um, crypto, and then he was taking their money and investing it in other investments, some hedge fund that he owned.

Yeah, no, they were doing a bunch of shady stuff.

Yeah, you sent me the picture of that woman.

That's Alameda Research. Alameda. Alameda Research, however you pronounce it.

I don't know. Yeah, so There's a whole— I don't know what. And also, you know, stuff came out from, um, Maxine Waters and the Financial Committee from the House about that they have to make stricter rules about crypto companies and fintech companies. And, you know, what, what are fintech companies doing with banks? And, you know, what, what exactly is going on with, you know, movement of, of funds, right?

Yeah.

So there was like a whole big thing about that, you know, and that's, you know, like a little— I mean, I don't know, I don't know what's going to happen, you know. They're saying the owner of FTX, the whatever, Bankman-Fried guy, gave money to all kinds of political power people. Yeah, doesn't matter who it was, Democrats and Republicans.

He donated tons.

Yeah, something about $30 to $40 million that was donated, and And then also they're talking about something involving him and the Ukraine and money laundering, possibly.

Yeah, I mean, that one was kind of weird to me. They put Joe Biden's name in there too.

Yeah, well, nobody knows what, what happened with that. That's to investigate.

It's just name dropping.

Yeah, I know, but they were just saying that there was some deal where— there was some deal going on. Yeah, but he was the one powering the Donate crypto. Huh?

It's just, it's all speculation.

No, no, but he was the one that I get allowing— I'm just able to give crypto to Ukraine, right? What went on there? Yeah, one of them, right? But apparently he was processed— he processed several million dollars, double-digit millions, right?

Well, Ukraine was— this is a whole different podcast.

No, no, we're not Ukraine.

Real quick, Ukraine, their whole—

yeah, their financial system was crushed.

No, because they were trying to go to a decentralized, uh, currency. They wanted to get away from Russia's ruble, right? Ruby, whatever the hell it is. So that happened. Russia came in, bomb, no more Ukraine, right? That's it. Like, that's the whole thing. So the whole crypto thing with just— it's just like good timing to me, right? Like, so Ukraine— Ukraine war is still going on. You got this guy who's, you know, made some shady dealings, and then you can put Joe Biden. It's just like a—

it's like nobody knows what happens.

Like a— like a—

it's a hot mess.

It's chef— it's like a chef salad, you know what I mean? It's like, let's put it all in there, mix it around, boom, click on it.

Who knows? Nobody knows what happened. This This whole thing's got to get investigated because there's people out, including Tom Brady and his wife. Oh yeah, there's something like— I, I read where there was investors that invested with FTX over $2 billion. Yeah, and, and they're all got mud on them now.

Canadian, uh, teachers.

Yeah, pension fund. There was a lot of stuff.

Excuse me, the spokesperson from her said, yeah, no, we'll be fine.

What was like 7% of their money?

$25 million.

Yeah, well, they said it was 7% of their money. It's all gone now.

She said there's nothing. They'll be— they don't expect any huge problems from that.

But okay, it's still—

I mean, if I'd have lost $26 million in a week, I'd be—

I don't know. And then there was a big announcement from Justin, that was my favorite organization, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. So they came out with a whole report on legal on legal violations, and they're like going after now— because besides the crypto guy, they're going after— because they're investigating it. I mean, they got to figure out like who's going to investigate what, but they're— now they want to investigate consumer reporting companies and data furnishers continuing to violate the Fair Credit Reporting Act. So they're, they're going after— well, this is—

I mean Like they're, they're talking about like Experian, blah blah blah.

Well, no, they're just talking about, yeah, Experian and any other companies who are reporting.

Yeah.

And then they're talking about—

they're not updating your address and your information quickly, right? That's why. Because I mean, a lot of times that's why your credit is so bad, because, you know, you got people misspelling your name, blah, blah, blah, all kinds of stuff.

I had that happen to me. Yeah, they misspelled my name and I caught it and I said, hey, you guys misspelled my name. But apparently, even though they corrected it, it was already submitted.

Yeah, I mean, this is— that's one of those hidden jewels though, right? You want to help— shout out, you know, increase your credit score. Yeah, go check your address and send out those corrections to the, to the different bureaus.

Yeah, definitely. You have to— I tell everybody, you need to get Credit Karma or something like that. And also Experian and TransUnion, they have to give you one time a year a free credit report.

I mean, your bank has Most banks that I see have some sort of credit monitoring thing somewhere.

No, but I'm saying you can go directly to them, and that once a year they have to give you a free credit report, and you can correct your address and stuff like that.

TransUnion, Experian, there's one more, Equifax.

Yeah, Equifax. So it's important that you do that because this address thing is causing people a big problem. Oh yeah. And then there's they're going after mortgages, mortgage companies, saying that they charge fees when some weird thing with fees. And then there's a—

because there's— I actually know what this one is talking about. Okay, so there's— they're saying like, so say you, you pay your mortgage on a third-party app, right? Right, like through your bank, right? Your bank doesn't have a way for them to pay online, right, right. So they set up another way for you to do it. Well, those people, the servicers, right, we're charging crazy like fees. So, you know, some— I mean, you got some mortgages are what, a million dollars and shit?

Well, it could be a mortgage, let's say, for a house, and you're paying 2, 3 grand a month, but then they're charging you like a 10% fee on top of that, right? And they shouldn't be doing it.

No, right.

And then there was a whole thing about— there was actually the FTC went after an auto company and they were giving false, um, they were, they were ripping people off on car loans. And then this is the same thing along these lines where they're talking about auto servicers engaging in unfair and deceptive acts and, you know, trying to do adding on stuff, modifying loans, double billing. People, and also like, uh, auto companies who were putting electronic devices that on your car to interfere with your driving so that they could, uh, collect on the car. Like, they could— they got kill switches on cars. So like, and there's been complaints about that. I've heard like, you know, I've seen YouTube videos and stuff where someone says, oh, I have a Tesla, and then they complain about that they can't get it fixed, or the battery costs $20 grand and they only had the car for 2 years, and battery's not covered in the warranty.

Because I've seen this one really interesting—

and then Tesla lock the guy out of his car.

If you— if, if you like— if they consider it being tampered with, right, your warranty is gone, right? So like there's this thing in the back seat, if you lock your— if like you can manually unlock, right? There's no way to manually unlock your car in a Tesla. It's all electrical, right? But there's a— there's like this hidden compartment, right, where you can go and you pull a little lever and now voilà, you can open your doors again, right? If you do that though, yeah, your warranty is gone.

That's crazy. I don't think that should be allowed.

That can't be like that, man.

And I was reading where the— that car companies are actually discussing putting that in your on cars so that if somebody doesn't make a car payment, they can just shut the car down.

I mean, this is another little side thing with FTX though. I've been reading that when Tesla—

yeah, when—

because, you know, they're being investigated as well, right?

Everybody's under investigation if that was involved with this guy. Yeah.

So Tesla, they're saying that when, when the crap hits the fan with Tesla— yeah, this FTX thing is going to look like spilled milk.

Yeah, who knows what's going to go on.

Tesla's scary, that whole—

well, you know, the other thing was at the Financial Brand Conference, they were talking about the company in China, Alipay, right? And actually, I have a picture of it. They showed this chart of all the things Alipay does, right? The company that controls Alipay, there's actually like a whole bunch of divisions, and that's basically referred to as a super app.

Really?

In China? Yeah, I never—

if you—

when I show you the picture later, you're gonna lose your mind.

Did you see all those companies that was in a part of FTX? Yeah, it's 130. That guy started 130.

Well, he bought them. He bought— well, we're right, he created them. Well, no, like, he also bought Voyager, who went bankrupt because they were loaning out money to the, to the miners, right? And then people were putting staking staking money up, right? And they couldn't get their money back because all the— a lot of companies in Africa.

Yeah, he owned a lot of companies. Yeah.

And then, well, who knows what— that was probably money laundering. And then he bought that company Celsius, who was loaning people, letting people put up crypto, and then getting money, and then buying houses and condos and mansions and all kinds of stuff. Who knows what's going to happen to all those properties now? That, that whole Celsius thing has been in link in limbo now for like over almost a year, right? It's been going on for a long time, at least 6 months.

And then I would say 6 to 8 months for sure. Yeah.

And then he bailed them out, right?

Yeah.

And now that's all in a mess too. So who owns those houses now, right?

The government, I would assume.

Well, I don't know. That's going to be a big problem.

Well, and then, uh, depending on where they're at.

And then the other thing was they were talking about financial institution policies and procedures that may have resulted in consumers losing COVID-19 pandemic, pandemic relief benefits due to garnishments or set-off practices. And what they're talking about was the— and I've heard, and I've heard this before, that let's say you owed money to the IRS or something like that, or maybe you owed money to your bank, and then you got those COVID relief funds went into your bank account then the bank just took it to collect their whatever you owed them. I'm not sure that that's a bad thing. It wasn't, you know, I mean, like what, like an overdraft fee? No, let's say you didn't pay your mortgage. Well, yeah, so they took—

right.

So some people are complaining about that. No, I don't think it's valid.

You can't complain about you not paying them.

Be—

I, I never want to hear any— like, I have kids and they— one of my kids has a really hard time with a checking account, okay, whatever reason, right? The one— her financial literacy is—

financial literacy is a problem. There was also a booth at the show, uh, one of a guy that was selling like financial literacy programs to banks.

Yeah, I mean, to help banks, but she never keeps—

she could—

she's always, ah, they did this and did— oh, it's Sienna. And you have to be on track of it.

It needs to be taught in schools, financial literacy. I remember there was this teacher that I did not like. Okay, I didn't like his personality and some other stuff, but the class was a really good class. It was this Economics 101 class. So they sat everybody down in the class and they said, okay, you know, to make it easy, then go, who wants to be a CEO? Who wants to be a chef? Who wants to be a garbage man? Who wants to repair cars? And didn't matter. You picked like a job, but everybody got the same amount of money, and then you had to budget your money.

So you had— I definitely had to do this one.

So you had to go to the— you got to go into the newspaper and you had to go find an apartment, then you had to talk to people in your class. Oh, you want to be my roommate, right?

You know what, I think I— it wasn't economics for us, it was just home economics then.

So you had a— you had to make a budget.

So yeah, we had to do a budget.

So he would give you a paycheck every week. Yeah, I remember that. He has this paycheck and you put it in your check register, and you had to keep track of what you spent. Like, oh, what I spent on gas, how much did you spend at the grocery store? You had to write it all down. Like, what did you— kind of like, what did you spend? And then you had to have some savings account, right? And then after you had your savings account, you had— after you saved up like a certain— and you were required to save up like $1,000, then you had to go buy stocks. And then you had to get out this graph paper and graph your stocks and figure out You know, you're investing in the early '90s. I stopped doing that probably in the late '80s. Yeah, yeah, they cut everything back in schools. They took away— we've talked about this because I'm an '80s baby, so I definitely had that.

I, I know maybe everything you just described. Yeah, I, I remember that.

Yeah, but I'm just even— they didn't have that.

We had the funny money, like the fake money. We would have to— right, we would have our little tray that we would come and get every class. And then, you know, like you said, you'd have your fake family, right? Or your, you know, whatever, whatever.

You were paying your bills. They were teaching you about paying your bills. You had to get a roommate.

That teacher, she— I'm saying she because she taught us how to do dishes, she taught us how to do laundry. Yeah, she taught us how to afford stuff.

Life. This is life experience.

Full clothes, uh, tie ties. Well, she didn't. She had a guy come in there and tie ties for us. These are all things like, like literally everything, like sewing, basic sewing. Yeah, ironing.

I remember when my daughter went to college, right? She didn't know how to— she didn't know how to do anything, like with the checking account. I'm like, they didn't teach that in school. No. She's like, nope. And I had to teach her, you know. I took her to the bank and we opened up a checking account. No, but I explained to her how it worked. Right? And then even with myself, I'm laughing because I could not even imagine.

There's— I have 6 daughters, and there's one, like I just said, there's one who has had the worst. She just can't grasp it, bro. Like, she just can't get out.

Some people, they just can't. They don't want to.

That's what it is. She doesn't want to. She just thinks she's a billionaire and she could just keep spending money.

Kim Kardashian. Yes, Kardashian.

You're not an influencer yet. I love you very much.

No, you got to get your stuff. Kids need to learn these basic skills. Like, my daughter was calling me, oh, how do I do laundry? And I was like, what do you mean, how do you do laundry? Like, okay, let's slow down.

No, I hear you. I—

now she's a good— she's good with, you know, now stuff. Yeah, she's good with stuff now. But, you know, she used to call me up with like basic stuff, and I was like, I was, I was like shocked. Like, oh, they didn't teach that in school. But I think like they got to bring these things back into the schools. Like, find—

my pop gets so mad.

No, no, but I'm just saying, call him for little things. Yeah, no, no, but I'm just saying like financial literacy, that needs to come back into schools. Basic skills that you need to do in your home, right? Like you said, how to cook, how to clean, how to go grocery shopping.

And I'm not saying like cook like a turkey dinner. No, make a burger out of boiled water. You know, be safe with the water, you know, little—

make a hard-boiled egg. Yeah, some stuff to eat, like make a hamburger.

Yes, they definitely made it.

You don't need to become a chef.

No, but you're right. Uh, all of that, dude. And the trades, right?

And the trades. All of that stuff needs to come back into the high schools.

Yeah.

And not next year, not 5 years from now. Right now.

Yeah.

People on the school board, like we were talking earlier, we were talking about that that, that people that are involved in government need to be on a shorter leash with like term limits, you know. And that way, because, you know, they cut out all these programs, they cut out music programs, they cut out art programs, all the arts, all of this stuff's got to get back into the schools. I don't know what they're doing with all the money, like Scott does the weird shit, right? They put the shit in back—

oops. With what he said. But, you know, it's crazy because it's not like— so they've taken all these, you know, these, these programs out, right? But they're not replacing them with things that are more relevant, like, like, say, a technology class, right?

That's what I'm saying. They also need to put that in. People need to know either pick Microsoft or Google Suite, teach that to the kids, something, one of those. You got to pick one and do it. And, and they have to learn, like, they need that. That's a basic skill. How to build a website.

You know, at least, I mean, at least they should be able to, you know, be able to type, right?

They got to type. And also don't get away from handwriting. Like, you got to learn how to do handwriting too, because kids—

shout out to Montessori schools that are all across the world that are still teaching kids how to write in cursive.

Yes, it's important. My writing is cursive.

I don't want to—

we got a photo, we got a bomb.

YouTube is spamming central lately.

Whatever.

Thank you. I don't want to do any of the stuff that she said at all. That's funny.

It's a business podcast, keep it clean. Yeah, man, we have to erase those.

I'm turning off comments on YouTube now. Yeah, my mom's gonna be sad.

That's correct. Well, we'll just delete it. That's true. Yeah, these people are just wackies. And here's something that, like, this story came out today. And I'm like, I'm not happy with this. So this guy's the chairman of the National Coalition of Associations of 7-Eleven Franchises. Now I'm going to tell you why I have a problem with this person, okay, before we get into what he's complaining about, okay? So when the Durbin Amendment first came out, so you know, that was 2010, okay? So that's 12 years ago. 7-Eleven was one of the companies who promised, oh, if we get Durbin Amendment, we're going to lower prices, we're going to lower our prices. Guess what? They never lowered their prices. So now the guy's coming back to Congress again, and the guy's going to complain, oh, you know, the, the, the card fees are, are wreaking havoc on swipe fees. Let me tell you something, and, and all this stuff about Visa and MasterCard and blah blah blah, okay? You know, when I was at the conference, I was talking to banks, I was talking to them, and I was like, you know, there's 100 million merchants that are signed up with PayPal, Square, Stripe, Shopify, and many other companies, right? They're not complaining about swipe fees. They're using technology. And I don't understand why 7-Eleven, you know, and this guy owns 8— what does he own? 8— he also owns and operates 8 7-Eleven stores. Okay, they're making tons of profit.

7-Eleven, 7-Eleven is mad because the government just told them they can't sell CBD in their, in their stores.

Really? Yes.

Oh, you didn't know about that?

No, I didn't know that.

Yeah, so the 7-Eleven put out a really big press release talking about, you're going to be able— we're going to be the first Uh, they're gonna literally have a basically a dispensary for CBD, for CBD, right, inside of every 7-Eleven, right? And the government said no.

Oh, the government said no. So now they're gonna come make it, I guess.

That's—

I guess MasterCard. That's crazy.

It probably has got to be something to do with it though. I mean, that's nuts.

Well, I don't know why. What was the reasoning the government put forth that they couldn't sell CBD? I mean, You go into gas stations, they're already selling CBD, so I don't—

I, I guess this the way that—

well, when you're saying dispensary, that means marijuana.

Well, no, I mean it was going to be a separate like section.

Oh, a sec, they're going to put in like a little—

almost like— yeah, no, like how, you know, how like those gas stations have a Subway?

Yeah, that's gonna be a kiosk.

It's gonna be the same thing, like a kiosk.

Yeah, yeah, right. Okay, well, man, I don't know.

They said no though.

The government said they can't do it.

They can't do it.

Maybe they can't do it because they're a franchise. Maybe there's rules about what they can sell or not sell.

Maybe, you know, I don't see the big deal.

Do some research.

I mean, what— I mean, I don't see the big deal if you— they're already— you can go to 7-Eleven in my neighborhood and buy CBD right now.

Yeah, well, you walk into gas stations, they sell everything. CBD, kratom, Delta. Oh yeah, and every gas station. That's why I don't understand why the credit card processors give such a hard time to the merchants. They should just say whatever, as long as it's, you know, not 100% CBD business. They should just let people— oh yeah, yeah, CBD, kratom, whatever.

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So what, you know, there's— I just think that— I just think like when they're selling that, that there should be some controls on it, like cigarettes, right? When you go put cigarettes, the guys should check your ID, so on and so forth. And they should just make a rule, if you're going to sell CBD Right, right. You have to have, uh, uh, whatever, an alcohol or tobacco license. Make people get that license.

Not a big deal.

Not a big deal. And they have to check everybody's ID, just like they already are doing, right? But they should make it a rule, and then that way, you know, everybody will feel safer.

I was just thinking about something though. What? I don't know if I've ever— I've been into a couple of smoke shops.

Yeah, my day. Right.

I don't know if I've ever seen anyone get carted in one though.

You—

well, you're not—

you, I wouldn't get carted. You and I wouldn't get carted.

I mean, I got great beard.

No, but I'm just saying that, you know, they just need to come up with, you know, nationwide rules. That's why I don't like the way Congress does everything. They kick the can down the road on everything. Like, they also have some marijuana bill, right?

That's good. They just got signed. It's a Republican and a Democrat, right?

Because one of the— that's for marijuana research. Making it easier for marijuana research.

But that's—

so that's a step in the right direction. If—

but, but there's a— the way that it's written, yeah, he's got to declassify it, right? So once that happens— no, but right, because of that, they shouldn't have worded it that way, right?

Because for any of this to happen, first we gotta have the Safe Banking Act.

No, not even that.

And first, it has to—

declassification has to happen first. Yes, because before the— the feds control everything. So right now, if that doesn't happen, right, then the feds have control, right? So that's why the states aren't legalizing it. That's why the states are so afraid of everything. That's why they're not letting people go, because the feds still control it, because it's still as bad as—

yeah, classified as a Schedule 1.

It's addictive and causes harm, which is not true.

No, but I'm just saying, they just need, you know, and also they were talking about the Safe Banking Act again and all this.

I don't really understand it. I don't, I don't understand the Safe Banking Act because the Safe Banking— there's already— there's too many things inside of it.

It's not just about banking. I know, but the Safe Banking Act basically says— it doesn't say you can't bank somebody with a marijuana business. That's not what it says. And that's what everybody's led to believe. The Safe Banking Act says, oh, you can bank somebody who's selling marijuana, you just have to have compliance behind it. Because there are banks banking marijuana merchants, but the compliance behind it is—

well, explain what does that mean?

Okay, so compliance means that they're making sure the business is compliant. So they're supposed to be tracking seed to sale.

So the bank is going to track No, the bank has to make sure that the business is tracking compliance records so that the business is tracking from seed to time it was manufactured to sale.

To sale. That— no, like what they receive. Like here, oh, you received, you know, 10,000 seeds.

You sell—

no, you receive 10, 10 pounds of marijuana in your store, you— and then you sold it, and it's all tracked.

Oh, meaning like, oh, per whatever, eighth gram.

Yeah, whatever it is, that it's all tracked so that there's no missing inventory, and that whether you took cash or you took some other form of payment, right, or you took crypto or whatever they took for it, that's all 100% accounted for. Nice. So that's what compliance means. Compliance that they're not monitoring like, oh, where you bought— like, obviously, like, they can only buy from a legal company right? But they're— but compliance mean like, oh, all the products you're selling in your store have been tested, right? So on and so forth. And then you— it's all accounted for. It's the same thing, like if you sell cigarettes, right? Let's say you sell cigarettes, it all has to be accounted for. You know, you have to have an inventory program. Oh, I bought 1,000 packs of cigarettes. And then how many did you sell and how many is in inventory? And if there was some theft you know, that needs to be accounted for, right? So just basically keeping basic bookkeeping. But then the bank has to be able to receive that file, let's say on a monthly or quarterly basis, from the dispensary. And as long as they're getting that file and then somebody goes and audits it, right, and they have— they charge the customer. Most, most people use like a third-party company, so they say, oh, hire Justin's compliance company right, pay them $10,000, and then they're going to certify your financial report, you know, once a month or once a quarter or whatever the bank requires. Then they can take that customer and bank them because everything is— because everything is compliant, right? Now, so, you know, I'm not going to say businesses aren't compliant, but maybe some people are not that good with their record keeping. So they need to be— they need to keep very tight records. But they do have—

I mean, they're talking to the guy. No, but they do Twitter, right? He's saying even from Twitter— not Twitter, from, uh, FTX— they're saying like there's so many, they don't even know who was hired. There's no records of people. There's no payroll.

Yeah, the guy is like, his record keeping is horrible.

It's just trash. It's just like, yeah, he's there and he's there, and then there's like a note.

Yeah, it's really messed up. I mean, that guy, I don't know if he'll ever— if he'll go to jail or what, but I'm just saying, who knows.

He should go to jail because if Allen or myself was to try to pull even something remotely similar to what he did at the much smaller scale, we would both be facing serious prison.

So that's what's going on with all of that. So let's talk. So, you know, the— you know, the— but the whole thing is, is you know, this is like a whole big problem. And, you know, the guy from 7-Eleven is like going, oh, Congress needs to be held responsible and bring transparency and competition. So there's competition already, Mr.— I can't even— San— San— who? Sakuki Sandhu? I don't know. Chairman of the National Coalition. Okay, if he wants to come on the podcast Okay, we'll tag them.

I'm gonna reach out to Sakai.

We'll, we'll tag you like on Twitter. You can come on the podcast and we'll discuss credit card fees. Because just going before Congress and complaining— I gotta— I want to know from you, how come you didn't come through on your promise in 2010 and lower your prices? You didn't lower your prices. There used to be a website. I wish it was still up. It was like 'I didn't get my debit card discount.' Oh yeah, the site's gone to whoever had that site up. And they listed all the companies who made promises and said, 'Hey, you know, all these people need to be called out because they didn't do anything.' And all the big companies pocketed on that deal. And I've talked about this, you know, this Dick Durbin 2.0 thing. This thing is bad for the consumers. It's bad for businesses. It's bad for everybody because Senator Durbin and the people on his committee, they need— we talked about financial literacy. They need Credit Card Processing 101 class from Allen Kopelman or somebody else. I'll give it to you.

You should do that. A credit card—

just gave me an idea for what we should teach, a Credit Card 101 class. If you—

Dick Durbin, every Wednesday would be credit card. It'd be like a lecture.

Credit card processing. Yeah, I don't know if we need to do it every Wednesday. You have to think about that some more.

That's good content, right? But, but before you keep going, yes, check us out on Spotify, iHeartRadio, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts, Stitcher, Pandora, Pandora, Amazon Radio, Amazon whatever.

Amazon Music.

Amazon Music. There it is. We're on there. Check out the podcast, B2B Vault. Check us out on social media: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn @B2BVault. Most importantly, please like and subscribe to the YouTube channel @B2BVault. Search it, put B2B Vault in the search bar, click enter. Click subscribe, please, sir. And if you need a merchant account, head over to b2bvault.info. There's a button up top says Apply Now. Click there, it'll send you over to Nationwide Payment Systems, and you can answer 10 questions, and you should be on your way and processing in about 5-10 minutes. Um, yeah, that's it. Thank you to everybody else who's been listening, and keep going, striving for best.

So yeah, but that's, you know, this whole thing with Dick Durbin. Let's invite— we can have Dick Durbin and the guy from 7-Eleven on at the same time.

I would love to have the guy from 7-Eleven on.

He's probably funny, the guy from 7-Eleven. I would love to hear— I, I know, I don't even understand, like, their average ticket is so low, right? And I guarantee you that if we looked at their credit card statement, they're probably paying like a few basis points and a few pennies a transaction. So this guy's— that's just killing me. He's nitpicking. It's not nitpicking. I mean, I'm sure that they have an excellent—

like, what's the end game though? Like, so like, just—

no, this is just another guy Dick Durbin's dragging out in front of Congress. No, no, this is his game. I get it.

What I'm saying, so like, when you complain, right, and you're talking about the credit card fees, right, right, and the processing fees, so they don't want that, right? Like, they want that gone, right? So what, so what What is the replacement?

There is no replacement. They're saying, oh, they're gonna— there's gonna be some third party. Where do you know this didn't work in Europe, right? In Europe they said, oh, Visa and MasterCard, you're too much, so we're gonna say, oh, there can be a third-party network. Okay, that was like 10 years ago in Europe. Guess what? They don't— is there a third-party network in here? I don't know. There isn't one.

It died, right?

So you have other stuff that they could come out and they could say, Oh, everybody can do pay by bank at the terminal. At the pay by bank, that's gonna cost something. Pay by bank, it's gonna— it's not gonna be free, right? It's gonna be less—

it's gonna charge you most likely.

Somebody's gonna make money off of it. Pay by bank, where— what are you gonna do? You're gonna sit there and log into your bank account?

I'm not doing that.

No, no. And then send, uh, and then send $20 for your gas or $50 for your gas and all that? It's not going to be an easy kind of transaction. It's going to take too long. The whole thing about credit card processing, it's fast, it takes a few seconds.

And then the other thing that I think that people are— there's a lot of people are like really relying on, on people having smartphones and stuff like that. Like, not everybody wants to pay with their phone, bro.

Well, no, I can tell you that the contactless payment is definitely up.

Pay by—

well, yeah, contactless to the phone, the contactless card. Yeah, all of that is, is— the numbers are up.

I'm just saying, like, to get away— like, when you're doing the ACH thing, I mean, from bank to— from my bank.

Yeah, but I'm just saying, like, people aren't going to do that. People like me, I want my cash back, I want my rewards, I want my points, I want— I mean, there's a guy called— there's a guy on Facebook, he's the Points Guy, right? All the guy does is talk about all the credit cards, you— the different credit cards you can get to get points. You know, that works for a lot of people. Like, let's say you try— like, I travel, right, sometimes for work. I haven't been traveling the last couple years, and now I start traveling again. So I make sure, like, whatever airline I'm on, I'm signed up for their points because, right, you know, eventually, you know, you can get— collect enough points. Even like, I went to Vegas. It was like going to Vegas, this was the craziest thing. So I get an email from the hotel, oh, download the MGM app. So I'm like, okay, download the app. Oh, confirm the credit card you use for your reservation. So I confirmed the credit card with my email address. No, they didn't. They already had my credit card.

I know, but it's just attaching it to something else.

No, no, but they wanted to match it up, the one I gave them for the reservation, because I did it online. Okay, right. So they're matching it up, that, that credit card and me, that we're the same person. Right? So they give you that. Then they're like, oh, what time are you going to arrive at the airport? Put in the approximate time. They literally checked me in my room. They sent me my room number in the app, and I didn't even need to go to the front desk. I just walked in. I said, oh, I'm already checked in, showed them the app. I said, what elevator do I take up to my room? They pointed to elevator, and you had to get in the elevator, hit the button put your phone up to the— use the Bluetooth, put your phone up to the sensor, and then you could hit the floor and it took you up to your floor. Then to get to the room, open the app up, unlock the door, unlocks the door. Yeah, I mean, it was awesome because I can't tell you how many times I've been to a convention. No, and then you're not carrying your wallet around, right? You lock your wallet in the safe, right? And then you got your room key and then you lose the room key, then you gotta go to the front desk and go deal with that. So I thought it was pretty awesome.

That's smart.

Then when I left the hotel, I just hit checkout, it checked me out.

That's cool.

So I thought it was a pretty cool thing. But that's what we talk about as technology being the great equalizer here and there. And I was— and I heard from people in Vegas that it's very hard to hire people there. There's, uh, there's more jobs than there are people. Like, their unemployment rate must be really low.

Everywhere, you know, this— I mean, that's a whole other podcast, but I'm like, they say that the economy is doing so well, then where are all these— where's everybody working?

No, there's the problem. People are doing job— have doing their own side hustle because they were out of work for so long. Like in cities, in like Vegas, hotels were closed for months, right? So then—

and those same people moved, right?

So a lot of those people moved out of Vegas.

Oh yeah.

And then some of them developed their own business. Right, or went back to school and learned something else, and then they're not in that kind of job anymore, right? So the guy who was, let's say, a cook, right, maybe he learned web design, started making websites. Or maybe the guy who—

boot camp, the boot— they're like the digital marketing web design boot camps. They said they went through the roof. They made so much money during the pandemic.

Yeah, like, yeah, yeah, like, or they went to school for some kind of like medical thing or a trade. No, there's like these medical jobs. You need like 6 weeks of school or 8 weeks of school, and then you can get one of these jobs, and it pays way more than working at a hotel, and you don't even have to leave your house, right? Or they went to school to become a dealer, and the, you know, instead of being a cook, I'm like, a dealer? Because you have to deal cards. It pays more money than being a cook.

Your neighborhood drug dealer class.

No, not that kind of dealer. I'm talking about a card dealer.

Dealers. I know.

Yeah, or they—

you got to go get a certification to be a car dealer, right?

That's what I'm saying. So a lot of people like went and did that. They upped their certification. Smart. Maybe they were just— maybe they've been a car dealer for a while, now they wanted to be a pit boss, and they went and took those classes, right? So they could move up the— move up the ranks. So a lot of that went on, and now they don't have people to fill lots and lots of jobs. And then people— a lot of people also move from Vegas It was like they were driving a cab or Uber and there was no business, so they went to other places— California, Texas, Florida— or they go to California, they went other— they went to other states where there was more activity, you know, in that— in whatever industry they were. Or they went back to school, you know. So that's, you know, it's a little crazy. But Vegas was— I saw a lot of— they also had like you could order food on your phone and then go to the restaurant and pick it up and take it to your room. Or like, it was because also there, which I noticed, which was really weird, like, so they have like a, like a bar, right? So it's like a big bar area, you know, with tables and chairs, right? They're serving drinks, right, in there, but they didn't have food. So if you wanted food, you ordered it from one of those places, you walked over and got it, and then brought it over to the bar.

I've seen a couple places like that.

Like, because like in the sports, like I went to the sports area, I said, oh, I want to go in there. So they said, oh, there's no food service in here. So I said, well, how do you get food? And they said, oh, you could order it on your phone, then walk over there and pick it up. They give it to you in a to-go thing. But instead I just went in the restaurant. I don't know why.

Why not?

I went in the restaurant and ate. Then I walked into the— then I took my— I paid and I took my food into the this sports thing because it was cool. There was like 100 TVs.

Oh yeah, that sounds cool.

No, watching the football game and stuff, so that was kind of neat. So that's the podcast for today. We're gonna—

before you end the podcast, yes, I turned to Grandpa again today.

Oh, congratulations! Mazel tov! Congratulations!

Shout out to Jasmine and Christopher, um, welcoming Eli. Eli. Dominic Duran to the family. Can't wait to meet you, young sir. Uh, the young bull, as they call them out in Philly. That's what they call kids, young bulls, young bulls, whatever. So yeah, I had a grandson today, another great— another boy added to the family, which is always great.

Thank you. A lot of girls, 6 girls.

Yeah, and 1 granddaughter, Eliana. Eliana, you will never be replaced. I know this is a big time for you. You're going to be a great big sister. Your mommy loves you. Christopher loves you. It's gonna be fine, you know. You're gonna do great. I love you. Papa loves you very, very much. Make sure— I'm gonna make sure your mama shows you this. But yeah, man, that's the podcast.

We'll have Samantha cut that part out.

I definitely will cut it out and cut it out.

Post it up, post it on, uh, put it in a— oh yeah, post it on social media.

Yes.

Yes, give a shout out.

Shout out to Jazz and Chris.

All right. Yes, big mazel tov.

And it's also the weekend, uh, anything real quick for entrepreneurship?

So for entrepreneurs— oh yeah, so let's, before we end, let's talk about entrepreneurs. A couple of things that they talk about for this week that's a trend for this holiday season. One, they expect 30 to 40% of shoppers to use Buy Now Pay Later or some type of consumer financing product. So if that's not something you offer at your business, Buy Now Pay Later or consumer financing, that's something we can possibly help you with. We're not a big fan of, of Buy Now Pay Later.

Real quick though, I've seen something that I think we got to talk about. Yeah, I've seen an option where you pay instead of using— so this is, you can sign up for buy now pay later, right? But on the next, the box next to it was like pay in full now, get $25 of in-store credit.

That's crazy. At some businesses, yeah.

So there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a company, yeah, that it's like Klarna or whatever. Yeah, it's like use this option, pay now, but you get this. In return for paying the whole full price right now.

That's crazy.

It's pretty interesting.

Yeah, I have to see what that is. I haven't seen it yet.

Yeah, I'll show you.

But I'm sure that there's going to be a lot of things. But like we said before on the show, if you're going to use a buy now pay later or some kind of financing option, make sure that you understand the terms and conditions. What are you getting charged for? Just because it says it's free doesn't mean it's free. It's not free because the FTC is also and the CFPB, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are on top of these companies because they say that it's free, but it's not free. So you got to make sure what you're doing with, you know, what you're— be smart, be smart, be vigilant. And also businesses need to watch out for fraud. Oh my God, not just fraud, scams, not just fraud, but scams also. But not just— and we did a podcast on fraud and scams. And we should like repost it, repost that podcast as a, uh, you know, like on our social media, just to like maybe write a new— yeah, so people can stay up to date on the latest, what's going on with that. But there's a lot of fraud on e-commerce, and that's because there's an excessive amount of stuff out on the dark web right now. I don't know who got breached but some kind of big company got breached because there's a lot of credit card— a lot of bad credit cards out there.

Really?

We've seen people trying to take fraudulent cards and use them at the ATM. They get declined, but they tried because we saw somebody go into a, into a business and try to access— use that card multiple times. And, uh, yeah, we alerted the business. We don't— we were like, we don't know who this person is, but if they're trying to pay with this card, or they— because we know it was the same, we sort of think it was the same person because it was— the transactions were too close to each other, right? And they were trying to use the machine multiple times with multiple cards. So yeah, you got to watch out. Even if the chip doesn't work, do not key enter the card. Just tell them they need to give you another card.

Swipe doesn't work.

Tell them we don't swipe, only the chip. The chip doesn't work, we don't swipe. The same thing we've talked about before— watch your, uh, e-commerce transactions, you know, for transactions that are larger than usual.

When you told me about that though, man, yeah, like I still can't get over that. Like, monitor your websites. Yes, monitor your websites. I'll say it one last time, monitor your websites. And that means update them, make sure you don't have outdated plugins, make sure your theme is up to date if you're running WordPress. And it's pretty much the same on Drupal, Joomla, blah, blah, blah. But yes, monitor your website, man. And when you talk— if you're letting 1,000 transactions go through your website and you're like, yeah, it's all good, come on, come on. If you've never had 1,000 transactions go to your website in one weekend, You just— what, you just—

you became popular?

Yeah, yeah, like you just got, you know, I don't know, the, the— what does that call it— slot machine. You won the—

no, you just gotta—

I don't get it.

You gotta make sure, like, you know, you can whitelist people who bought from you before, people who haven't bought from you before. You know, you have to see like, oh, how quick were those transactions done, you know?

And there's ways to set that stuff up, you know, to prevent that from happening.

Right, but I'm saying you still gotta monitor. Yeah, to make sure, like, oh, is that shipping address going to a UPS store or some kind of freight forwarder? Or somebody comes in and orders $1,000 worth of stuff and your average sale's $70.

Right, you don't want to be like— you got to flag that you're selling a bunch of out-of-stock products because you haven't, you know, looked at your site.

You don't—

you know, I, I don't know, there's just a lot of things that I've been hearing about that is is really frustrating.

But you just got to monitor if something's, like I said, out of the normal— yeah, your normal purchase pattern. Like, let's say 70s— let's say you sell pants and each pants is $100, right? And most people buy 2 or 3 pairs of pants. Some guy goes on there and tries to buy like 40 pairs of pants, you got a problem. Okay, no, you got to check that. Who's buying 40 pairs of pants? Why are they buying?

It looks like a blessing. It looks like, oh my God, it's gonna be a great weekend. But right when that guy charges that back—

yeah, so you want to make sure, like, check the— you know, you got to set up a system. Oh, we're gonna check that address. Yeah, we had a cigar place and somebody the other day ordered like 5 humidors, like $500 apiece. Nobody's buying 5 humidors. So they called the guy on the phone, and guess what? It was legitimate. So they told the guy, send us a copy of your credit card, send us a copy of your driver's license. The guy did. They said, oh, we can only ship to your billing address. The guy said fine, and they shipped it to his billing address instead of the address that he gave, which was like his—

was he buying 5 humidors?

He's giving them as presents. The guy, they checked them out. The guy was like, oh God, that's cool though. But I'm just saying, they found it was real. They didn't just void it out. It was a real transaction. But then they found other one where some guy bought $1,000 worth of cigars and they're going to a UPS store. Well, that's probably not real. They tried to call the guy on the phone, no answer. The guy didn't call back, so they voided it out. Good. And that's what you should do— void it, not return it. Void it, keep it in the same batch, move it. You know, you can move it like out of your batch into your, you know, authorization queue.

You're speaking, uh, too technical. Yeah.

That's a whole nother podcast, whole nother pocket, but it's— we covered it in the fraud pod.

We definitely did.

So if you're listening to this, you want to learn more about not getting defrauded, not getting scammed this holiday season, listen to that podcast. All right, peace out everybody. Have a great weekend. Next week is Thanksgiving and everybody enjoy. So there won't be a FinTech Friday next Friday because we'll be at home chilling, watching football.

Slow motion on the, on the podcast front next week, but we'll have some content for you.

Yeah, we'll have two podcasts, Monday and Wednesday. All right, all right, everybody, peace out. Yeah, we should do, uh, live on Wednesday.