FinTech Friday | The Future of Payment Processing 2023 | FinTech | Small Business | Payment Processing | B2B Vault: The Payment Technology Podcast

Yo, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the payment technology podcast hosted by this guy, Allen Kopelman, and we'll be providing you educational information about fintech, small business payment processing and the technology businesses are using in the world today. And in today's podcast is FinTech Friday.

Yay!

End of the week and end of the end of the year. End of the year.

So the last podcast of 2022. 2022.

I almost said 2023.

I was going into the future.

Yeah. So, uh, today, FinTech Friday, we're gonna go over uh, Allen's past predictions. We just talked about, right, okay, what was going on in 2022 and what we thought would be good or, you know, was bad or whatever. And then, uh, we're gonna talk about what he thinks what will be, you know, moving forward in 2023.

Yeah, we're gonna see what new technologies and new ideas are out there that the technology companies and the fintechs are talking about, you know, and what, what moves are being made. So for 2022, we talked about how the QR code made a huge comeback.

Yeah, right, everything has a QR code on it, everything has a QR code.

The next thing probably after that, which we should just mention now, it's like we saw companies now with this AR code, augmented reality code. Yeah, so that, that's something new, but pretty much it's not for payments, but no, new for marketing. Yes, I think we're gonna see alternative payments.

It's definitely getting more popular in the marketing. Augmented reality is finally catching on. People are starting to use it, understand how it can be used, where it should be used, where, you know, the uses of it is just starting to get popular.

Yeah, it's interesting.

Yeah, I was, uh, I was—

and it was priced like out of everybody's reach, but now it seems to be—

oh yeah, because maybe with it, it's getting within reach now. Because when I was trying to get— my idea was to have like, say, an artist, um, like a visual artist, he wanted to sell his paintings. So my idea was to set up an augmented reality similar plugin on his website, similar to how IKEA is when you can—

you make a room full of furniture.

Yeah, put the room, you know, you just put your phone up and then it, you know, you put the piece of furniture in there. And my idea was, well, you put the—

you have—

you show the blank wall and then you put the paint picture on the wall and you choose which one you like. Um, and it was really expensive at that time, right? So of course artists are pretty broke, right? You know what I mean? So they're not— not all artists are broke, don't get me wrong. Shout out to all the guys who are out there flourishing, doing well. But you know, most of us— it's a tough industry, it's very tough. And so it never really turned into nothing. But if there's any artists out there that are interested in getting that, let me know. I'd be really cool if— I, I just wanted to do it on someone's website to say that I did it.

Yeah, the technology now is kind of cool how they're, how they're doing benefits. So not that I wouldn't say like it's, it's like spot on, right? It's getting there, but it's definitely getting to be a usable thing. Alternative payments, now that kind of took like a big—

what's an alternative?

So alternative payments, like businesses started using during the pandemic more stuff that was meant for P2P, and they were using it in the B2B, you know, business to consumer to business was like, you know, PayPal, Zelle, Cash App, Venmo. And then, you know, Biden and the whatever Democrats with the whatever one of the bills they passed was this $600 thing, which they now— the IRS said, oh, we don't know how to deal with that right now, right? So they're not, they're not going to deal with it. But them making that announcement kind of forced all of those companies to re— to start looking at their clients and going, hey, you're a business, you're not a person, and you need to have a business account.

As a business owner, do you just think that's, that's giving them like more ammunition to— for when the time comes that they're just going to really railroad us?

Yes, I think that.

I think that too.

I think that, um, them not doing it for a year, the company's already started sending out the 1099s. Last year, right? So they're going to send them out again this year. They're just saying they're not ready to enforce it. But that's just going to put more pressure on those companies that are doing P2P payments to, you know, make— for people to type— for them to tighten up. Because guess what? If the person doesn't pay the taxes, those companies are going to pay the taxes.

Exactly.

They're not going to want to pay the taxes. No, they're not., you know, ABC business owner, they're not going to want to do that. So that's gonna— that kind of— it's got to clean itself. I think they want those companies to clean themselves up, right? And a bunch of them are under fire. Uh, the government wants them audited. They need to pass a bunch of audits, right? Read that whole bill, and they're going after all these companies saying they gotta produce these financial audits to be compliant under FinCEN. So we'll see what happens with that. Now we'll get back to alternative payments on the 2023 list. Payment portals, that definitely worked out and that continues to grow even today.

What's an example of a payment portal?

So let's say you have a business and you send somebody an invoice and then they click a link and they go to a portal where they create a username and password and make a payment. And kind of, you know, through a payment portal, right? And that's been growing, um, immensely, and more and more companies need to catch up to that. We have a podcast coming out in a couple of weeks where we're talking about how don't mail checks anymore because of all the increased amount of check fraud. And that's gonna, that's gonna spur on more companies to have payment portals. Um, you know, one of the trends 2022 and 2021 was CBD, hemp, and kratom. I think those industries are going through some— the wringer, huh? Going through the wringer. They're going through the wringer because the banks are getting tougher on those companies about their policies, their return policies, their So marketing, right?

So I know it's like a trickle-down thing, right?

Yeah.

So like the feds, they're the ones that are really holding it all back, right?

But like, well, they're not holding it back. What it is is there's rules. Like, you have— yeah, right, you have to have that COA on your website.

Yeah.

Well, I get people sending me websites and the COAs from like 2018, 2019, that's expired. So they only last a year.

So like when the banks send out those letters, do the banks get a letter first?

A lot of times the bank's getting a letter from the FDA or the FTC that the merchant is not complying.

Really? So they have— those alphabet crews, yeah, have their own division of sitting there behind it on the internet.

What happens is, is like someone will complain, someone will complain, or there'll be a bunch of complaints about advertising practice of a company, or maybe that they're not accepting— they're getting too many chargebacks or whatever, and then somebody starts investigating.

And Mary Jane found Little Tommy's—

yeah, but the problem is, is CBD pen. Here's the problem, right? The problem is, is that you have more alphabet companies looking at those three businesses than any other business.

We've talked about that, right?

So we talked about the FDA, the FTC, the FBI, the DEA, CIA. They got all kinds of— everybody's got eyes on this industry, and we didn't even lump cannabis in there. But everybody's worried that all these companies might secretly be selling cannabis. Yeah, so that's the problem with that.

What do you think? Do you think What's the majority of those secretly selling?

Well, I think what— I don't want to even guess. It could be a higher number than I ever—

I think it's a— I think it's really low, bro. Like, I think that it's very low. Like, because, you know, like the boogeyman, right?

No, no, I think so.

They— people think that like, oh, you know, you got this, you're selling CBD but you're really trying to sell THC. Of course they want to sell THC. But the people who have these— I know a lot of business owners who have, but I want CBD companies, but they don't want to— they're not going to jeopardize their licenses to sell illegal stuff after they've put in the legwork to get legal, right?

But some of the product that they're talking about, the Delta 8, the 9, the 10—

no, that stuff is—

I'm just saying, like, you know, then you have states that enact laws, and then the banks get nervous that process the credit cards, and they go, whatever, we don't want to take this business anymore. More. Makes sense. I mean, I get it because we don't want to deal with these products, and they don't feel that the merchant is sophisticated enough to control that. If you're not supposed to ship Delta 8 to Alabama, that they're not doing it.

Risk versus reward, right?

So they just look at it that way. Safe Banking Act, we had— I didn't have any hope that was going to pass in 2020. Yeah, you didn't.

I thought I did. I thought it was going to pass, honestly, but it did not. It failed miserably.

It crashed and burned. It crashed and burned about a dozen times with— in the House, the Senate, the this, the that. Like, they made every excuse.

But before we move on, like, it's because they try to sneak it into the—

right, they tried to sneak it into the infrastructure bill, this bill, that bill. And I don't know, you gotta make it standalone. All these bills, all these bills need to stand alone. Period. They need to stop lumping, like, whatever. They just passed some bill, 4,000-something pages. There's all kinds of who knows what in there that I read. They want to make a trail in honor of Michelle Obama. Again, that's great, but do we need that now with everything that's going on? Is that a high priority with— I mean, we need—

we need environmental protection of the trail. So I mean, if that's going to protect the environment then I'm for it. I don't care whose name is on it.

No, no, I understand that.

I don't care whose name's on it.

What I'm trying to say is, is that we have a lot of other, a lot of other pressing issues that we're not dealing with, and we're dealing with a lot of esoteric stuff. Well, now here's a, here's a subject I don't like, because I don't like self— it's like self-service kiosk and self-checkout. I mean, let me tell you, you go into Costco, you go Publix, in all the new Publixes, they ripping out registers and have self-checkout. It's really sad. And again, this is a problem that's—

what are all like the high school kids gonna do? No, and even the special needs people, you know.

No, but look at it. But I'm just saying, like, like fast food restaurants do, where a lot of kids and teenagers and young adults get it. Did you get a job?

The first fully automated McDonald's. Yeah, did you see that?

I sent that to you.

Oh, I didn't see it from you. I'm sorry.

Oh, okay. Yeah, I saw that. The first fully automated McDonald's. Cool, right? Yeah, that's crazy.

I didn't—

yeah, I think there's a couple of people working in the kitchen and that's it. Yeah, but there's nobody—

no, there's no, no human contact.

Yeah, there's no human contact. It's just people in the kitchen. It's crazy. Nuts. I mean, I saw a thing where they had— I saw this video. My friend's on a cruise and they were telling me that in the bar, you could order a pizza. Yeah. And a robot comes and brings the pizza to you. Shout out to technology. So, you know, it's a little crazy, but the self-service thing, I mean, I don't want to talk about what caused that, but what caused that— like, here, I'll give you another example of how whack that is, right? So I traveled, you know, a couple months ago to Vegas, right? Right. So going to Vegas, I go to the airport in Fort Lauderdale. You go up to the counter, you do your self— you know, you scan your QR code thing on the thing, self-check-in. You check in, which I already checked in online, but you check in there. They say, oh, does your bag weigh 50 pounds? You go, no. You take the bag over to the counter, then I wait in a line, right? I already had the tag for the bag. Put it on there, and then have somebody weigh it. What, what for? Why you got to weigh the bag?

To see if you're lying?

No, but I'm just saying, like, put it on the thing and then let it then go down to the end. If it weighs too much, then they call you over or something. I don't know. That's not—

that whole process is ridiculous.

Then I went to— then on the way back from Vegas, flying with bags is ridiculous. What do you mean? Well, I had to take a bag because I had a giant winter coat.

I get it, dude.

I needed the bag.

I mean, checking the bag, that's what I meant. Like, checking a bag, yeah, is ridiculous. Almost airflow. Like, Southwest is the only one that gives you bags.

Yeah, I think they should just give people bags.

I don't understand the whole— I don't understand what's going on with the—

they want to save on gas for the airplane. No, they want to save on gas. Airline industry right now is just one of the biggest problems with the airline industry is something most people people don't know about. I'll reveal it right now. So they made some crazy law during COVID when they gave out all the PPP money, and they told all the airlines, all the pilots over 65 years old need to retire them all. So they don't have enough pilots.

Well, yeah, and we know that, right?

But I'm just saying they don't have enough pilots right now because they made all those people retire. So that's why they don't have enough pilots. Forget about— I forgot, because they have to have the people to qualify to fly the airplanes have to already have years and years of flight experience. Yeah, they don't just get— you don't go to this, right? You don't just go over here to Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport, sign up for flight school, fly a Cessna, and then you get to go fly a 747. No, no, it doesn't work like that. And where do they get most of the pilots from? They're getting most of the pilots out of like the Air Force, the Navy, and all that. Well, those guys aren't retiring because they, they don't have enough pilots, so they're not letting those guys retire, right? So those guys aren't retiring. So where are you going to get all these pilots from? And then who's— and then who's gonna— and then same thing, like, who's flying all the planes for FedEx, UPS, the post office and all that? They cut, they cut themselves off because they didn't have a plan, right?

What was their reason for cutting people off?

Oh, because they wanted to have a more diverse workforce flying the planes.

Well, I mean, I get it, it was a lot of older white gentlemen flying, right?

But okay, well then you got to put things in place.

There should have been something in place to replace, to phase them out or something, right?

If you want to phase them out and you want to get more people flying, then, you know, have flight school available.

That is vicious, bro.

Right? Okay, that, that's discriminatory.

Yeah, I was about to say the name of the organization that I received an email from this morning, but I'll digress. But I will say, to say that your group is for young professionals from the age 18 to 40 seemed a little strange.

It's just, I don't know, like, the way they're wording those wordy groups like that, Young Business People, everybody's got to be under 40 to be in the group. Okay. I've seen groups like that. But I'm just saying, as far as the 18, I don't know, 18, you're legal, but are you old enough to own a business? I have one guy signed up for credit card processing that was 18 years old. That's an interesting business. It's a gaming business.

Of course it is.

So he does pretty— he does okay. Not really very savvy with business, but I try to coach him along. And, you know, here, you know, when he has time, but he has a regular job and That's his side hustle. Yeah, it does, it does pretty well. It's an interesting, interesting— I have two very young guys that have gaming businesses. One does very, very well. He analyzes your gameplay for people who enter these like tournaments and stuff and tells them how they can be better, improve their game. And told me about this guy, pretty interesting.

How much time has he spent on video games?

Probably his whole life, him and his girlfriend. They're both— they both do it, and they have employees now because it's gotten so popular.

I don't know, I'm speechless.

But the whole thing with the pilot thing, like, and that— bring those guys back and get them in the air because these airlines need help.

Well, those guys are probably making a killing doing private—

they're probably flying private planes.

Exactly, that's what I'm saying.

And make a killing.

Yeah, probably making way more money less time.

Yes, they made a big mistake. You can't— you have to— when you put a plan in place like that, oh, we want to get— have a more diverse flight crews, okay, well, first of all, you gotta get the people in school and you got to get them the flight time before you go cut your feet. They cut their feet off and then they're blaming Southwest Airlines. And I think the reason like Southwest got the bulk of that was they probably had like a very— they They tend— they have a— I think, like, I fly a lot. Yeah. And I would say, like, their workforce is a little bit older.

Oh, for sure. Southwest was very—

yeah, yeah, they were very loyal.

My pops loved Southwest.

They're very loyal to their employees.

Southwest was one of my favorite airlines up until a couple years ago.

Yeah, when they got— well, they, like, merged or something.

I don't know what's going on, but I don't like flying at all anymore.

No, I don't like it either. It's a big pain in the butt. So self-service, right? Man, just see what Walmart said. What?

They're gonna get— Walmart said that they're gonna close their stores because they had $3 billion in theft.

Oh, I believe it.

No, no, you know what they're— what was their profit last year?

Yeah, probably billion.

$152 billion in profit. They're not closing stores for $3 billion in loss.

No, that's a lot of loss prevention.

Yeah, but still, I mean, they're gonna do what Costco does.

They have people at the door checking your basket. So crypto—

stop having my grandma over there and get a real person, right?

Crypto. So the year started off great with crypto. Boom, everybody's spending, buying crypto. Crypto's price is going up, crypto's going through the roof. Everybody's going, everybody's going crazy with crypto, spending crypto, buying stuff with crypto.. And then boom, we see that article that we talked about on the podcast before in Miami where millions of dollars was being spent on South Beach at nightclubs, yacht rentals, luxury car rentals, hotels with the crypto. And now it's completely dried up.

Crypto in a club. We bought domains, we had websites, we had—

we had a few customers use it. They did some big transactions and then it just went and fizzled out. And, uh, you know, we'll see what happens. This whole FTX thing is going to be— see what Congress does, regulation.

I can't believe that this kid was allowed to get online and withdraw almost $700,000 in Bitcoin.

Like, how? Like, I've never even heard of the platform it was from. It was weird.

It was a whole bunch of little— they call them Excuse my French, shitcoins. That's what—

that's—

oh yeah, that's what they're called. And he had $800,000 worth of that.

That's crazy. How could you? He cashed it out.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like, the feds— like, bro, he's on a—

like, he's on a $250 million bond on a house that he bought with stolen money.

Here, you're— you— makes you mad too, doesn't it?

Right? Rocky doesn't like that. That's ridiculous. Sam Bankman-Fried, fight him.

Like, dude, like, if that would have been me, for instance, I guarantee you they'd have shut down that transaction. They would be in supermax, get behind the— underneath the jail.

Yeah, get out of here with that, man. Yeah, the guy's on a $250 million bond on a house that he bought his parents with stolen money. How is that allowed?

He's able to withdraw another cool— let's just, let's just round it off— a million bucks.

Yeah, almost a million in shitcoin.

While he's sitting there in his Palo Alto mansion at his mom's house.

That's funny. Stolen, stolen money. His parents don't make enough money. They're like college professors.

No, no, but where did they get the money for the $250 million house?

They got it from him.

It's, it's pretty funny.

Okay, so here's the next one we talked about was e-commerce with curbside pickup, in-store pickup, and delivery. This is going to continue to trend up, up, up, up, up. If you're a small business, you got to get with the program on that because all the biggest companies— you're, you know, all your big companies are doing it. If they're not doing it, they're going to be doing it in 2023. Yeah, if you don't do it, your competitor is going to do it, and soon you might not have a lot of business.

If you sell a product and you do not have a way for someone to purchase that online, right? Your store will be closed in the very near future.

Yeah, I think it's gonna—

I'm sorry, seriously, I'm sorry to say that, but it's—

I mean, when I see the amount of internet clothing companies, right? Like, I see them on social media and then I like them just to see like, what do they sell? Now, some of it I won't buy because I, I'm very—

well, you see what online e-commerce has done, right? It's forced Foot Locker to close its doors, right? So like, this is just a precursor of what's going to continue to happen. Like, you know, like major brands are going to withdraw from these.

Even my son, like, he works for a major retailer, right? So one of the jobs in his stores, they have a full-time staff member that— and they're smart, listen how they do this— they get internet orders and then they ship it from the closest store.

That's very smart, right? And that—

so they have one employee all day, that's all the person does is they pull out like 5 or 10 orders at a time. They go in the stockroom, they get it, they put it in the bag. Most people buy one or two items. They put the sticker on it and they get it ready for the end of the day for UPS or whoever to come pick it up., right? And they have one employee, that's all the person does all day.

Let's hope he doesn't get in trouble for you saying that procedure.

What I would say, that there's a lot of stores that do the same thing.

Okay, good.

I would say there's a very—

it's efficient.

Yeah, he worked at another company that did this exact same thing.

Okay, all right, more people, more super efficient.

I would say that a lot of companies are doing that, that have multiple locations. And not shipping from their warehouse.

I worked at Jimmy John's when I was a kid.

Yeah, well, younger.

And if I divulge the— oh, don't divulge the secret sauce for the sandwich, the sandwich recipe, man, for the tuna sandwich. Okay, get in a lot of trouble. Get out of here, bro.

Okay, so then, uh, supply chain issues, we talked about that. That's gotten not really much better, but They—

for, for certain things, for building materials, not at all. It's really bad.

We need manufacturing back in the US.

Yeah, because we're still importing everything from China.

And then we— and then chips, that was a big problem. Now it's not as big of a problem, but it's still an issue.

So it's a pretty big problem though, because they unable to ship all those iPhones that people bought, right?

Yeah, no, I'm just saying it's, it's, it's an ongoing—

what is the So real quick, I don't understand it. I haven't done enough research on it. But the 2, 3, 6, how come it's going from a higher number to a lower?

I don't know. I have no idea.

Because they started at like 5, right? Or 6, the 7 chip or 6 chip or whatever it was.

I can't remember. Oh, the chip in the computer? No, for the, for the phone.

For the phones.

Yeah. Oh, no, like they're up to i9.

Well, that's a— but that's different.

I'm not talking about that chip. Oh, I don't know about the chip in the phone. So let's keep going. So we talked about the infrastructure bill and the $600 thing, consumerization of payments. That's what I call for people to be able to pay the way they want to pay and for them to get their goods the way they want to get their goods. And that's going to still go strong. I coined that phrase, consumerization of payments. I can take credit for it. I can confirm. Um, surcharge, cash discount, passing the fee to the customer— that's still— I would say, I'm telling you, 50% of customers are doing that right now. We talked about e-invoicing. We mentioned payment portals earlier. That's still growing and getting stronger. More and more customers ask for that. EMV at gas stations with the pay at the pump. There are still gas stations that have not upgraded to EMV, and I don't understand why, because they got to be getting a ton of chargebacks because it's on the list now of the no EMV chip. The person can dispute it and then not pay for their gas.

That's crazy.

Now here's something that we talked about also was the big move to the cashless society. That didn't happen. Bills got passed in Congress to put the kibosh on that. Some states.

But, you know, I was thinking about the cashless society, and it's not necessarily cashless in a sense, cashless in a sense, but how many civilizations had— have already tried to just have one set form of currency and have failed miserably? Every one of them, almost.

Yeah. Well, Europe— look at Europe. They did the whole euro thing, then England pulled out, and then in Europe, one of the most predominant ways to pay is crypto now. Right. Especially with business transactions and from country to country. They use a lot of crypto over there. But they do it in a different way than we were using it.

Crypto is still a big—

no, but they're doing it differently. They are— somebody buys the crypto and then uses it like almost immediately for a transaction. The person cashes it out on the other end. So there's not a lot of like investing. It's more as a business tool. Right, than it is used more in commerce as a business tool to make sales because their local dollar is— well, no crap, no, no, because transferring, even though they're in this European Union, taking money from Germany and paying a guy in another country is still messed up. It's very difficult, right? It's not easy to do. So, and then ATMs going away, not happening. We We went to the ATM convention, we saw all the stuff going on with ATMs.

I mean, you're going to be able to do so many things.

Yeah, the ATM is gonna— yeah, by the end of 2023, I think we're gonna see like ATMs doing all kinds of crazy stuff from all the innovation that we saw at the ATM show. Um, and we talked about how many ATMs there were in the United States, and the one thing I think that we saw at the show Didn't do anything last year, but I think we're going to see something with it with 2023 because I think they finally figured out what to do with those cash recyclers. I think we're going to see some action on that. Now let's talk about 2023. So it's been half the podcast already on 2022. So 2023, now this is not in any particular order. But real-time payments, this is being talked about nonstop, which includes FedNow, which is the ability to do a bank-to-bank transaction. Now, is this going to reach the SMB market? I'm not sure because they got to figure out how to send that money like in a batch and not a one-by-one deal, because until they do that, the SMB market is not going to use that. And I don't know how. It's going to take longer to do a transaction at the point of sale. Like we talked about, pay by bank, right, is part of that. Yeah. And it would take a long time. You'd just rather use your credit card to get your points in your mind.

Yeah.

But we'll see how that trend works out.

I'm not a fan of that, but I'm saying it's going to dominate. I see this, the, the utility in it, in a sense of for like these huge corporations of like instead of them waiting a week and a half to get their money for the invoice or wire for a, a truckload of product, product, right? That makes sense to me. But like me going to Allen's Tire Shop and trying to pay for you plugging my tire $20, and then it's like pay by bank, I don't see the sense.

I'm just saying, until— yeah, but I think we're gonna see it. It's going to be a. It's going to be something that's going to be in the news for sure. It's going to be in the news. It's been in the news. It's going to continue to be in the news. We're going to read a lot about it. But let's see how somebody figures out how to use that in the SMB market. Alternative payments. Now, alternative payments includes things like PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, pay by bank. Alternate— these are like— I call them alternative wallets. Now, one thing that we are seeing is We are seeing some of this stuff appear on people's websites. We're seeing companies like DoorDash, Grubhub, those companies, Uber, Uber Eats, adding those as a payment type. Okay, is that gonna continue? I don't, I don't know how popular that is. I mean, as far as I can tell you one thing, I'm going to tell you something that about one of my clients. One of our clients, right? So we have a client and they were doing PayPal and Venmo on their website and credit card, and for a while that was doing more than the credit card process. But guess what? With all the inflation going on, it flipped.

Now people are using their credit card. People are using their credit card because I was going to say, as far as web development goes, this stuff is not going anywhere.

No, no, it's not going anywhere. That's what I'm saying. But I think we're going to see some other alternatives.

Requests are even getting higher, you know. Can you pay with this? Can you pay with this? Can you pay with this?

Right, you know. But I think we're going to see— well, I think more people are going to want to pay with credit cards. But the other thing is, is the, uh, you know, and web developers, they're not taking credit cards. They're going to need to because people are going to want websites and they don't, and they're gonna, and they want to hold on to their money longer.

And guess what?

You can't take a credit card payment with PayPal, right?

So unless you have some sort of super nice business account— no, that's not even true. Oh, because I had a business account and I could not accept credit card payments. You have— there's got to be some sort of— you must have to have like a super special—

oh, I don't know. Well, let's just I think we're going to see some other stuff like Alipay and some other wallets that are from like, uh, Asian countries, um, and South American countries. I think we're going to start to see that get integrated onto payment systems in the U.S. in 2023. And whether that's going to be like a big, you know, chunk of money, uh, in 2023, probably not. But I think it's going to start to grow in the market. I'm showing it to Justin, and I think it's going to enable US businesses to sell globally. Okay, because with those wallet payments, there's no chargebacks. So selling outside the US and taking a credit card is very dangerous, but taking money outside the US and taking a wallet is much easier. And it's easier— they're using their credit card, but they're transacting with you with the wallet, because they're using their wallet, there's no chargeback, right? So it's a win-win situation. I think we're going to see businesses, um, start to look for that as a solution to be able to do business on a global scale. Um, crypto— now I have a prediction about crypto. I think that's one or more of these crypto companies are going to figure out some kind of way for people to transact with stablecoin and make money. Because the problem with stablecoin is it's a dollar, it's $1, right? And it's worth a dollar, and then you're transferring it, the guy wants to get a dollar, right? So then how can you charge? How much can you charge? But I think someone's going to figure out how to use some kind of stablecoin and get that going as an alternative payment method.

I've been, I've been dragging my brain around the stablecoin.

No, no, I'm saying someone— I think someone's going to figure it out. I don't know how they're going to do it. And then the other thing is, um, I think the government is going to have to regulate crypto. I mean, I just don't see the general public being okay with this whole FTX fiasco. There's got to be— something's got to get done. So the other thing that kind of like trended in 2022, I think it's going to be a big trend for 2023. I don't care what you call it— omnichannel, omnicommerce, complete payment solution, full commerce. I've seen all kinds of new names popping up, but you know, this is a trend and it's not going to stop, and small businesses need to figure out where they can get set up to do this. We have it over here at Nationwide Payment Systems. You get set up, you get your machine, you get a dashboard. Your dashboard enables you to do all this omnichannel, full commerce, blah blah blah, whole deal. I'm gonna tell you, enables you to do the whole kit and caboodle, right, without having separate merchant accounts and all that.

It is very, very efficient. It makes your job a lot easier.

We're going to make some videos about the dashboard. So there's some like demos of this thing coming up soon so people can see the value and like what this is. Okay, merchants using business-specific software. Now this has been around for a little while. I think we're going to see more of it, and I think we're going to see a lot of these independent software vendors get smart.

What's an example of this?

Okay, an example is let's say you make a software for salons and tattoo parlors and all this stuff where people can make appointments online, and then they come in and they pay, and then they collect all the person's information. And, you know, so it's very specific for that, like salon, spa, tattoo industry, whatever, whoever can use this, like appointment setting, okay? Massage places, right? I think we're going to see more companies come up with solutions for all different types of businesses and more people enter into this market and they need to stop running over to Stripe to integrate payments. Stripe's not going to give you any money. You need to monetize your software company and come partner with someone like Nationwide Payment Systems where we can get you the right partner. We just did two of these, one for a company doing swimming lessons. And another one that's going to be doing stuff with food trucks and small cafes and different things. So we're working on those two projects right now, and I guarantee you those, those happened over the last quarter of the 2022, and that's going to continue into 2023, and we're going to see more people get into that business and company. If you're on Stripe right now, you're not making any money call us. We'll help you. We'll show you how you can monetize your company, make it worth a lot more than it's worth now.

Before you get into that, thank you to our listeners. Shout out to you guys for tuning in when you do. We appreciate you. Don't forget to follow us on YouTube, subscribe to the channel at B2B Vault Podcast. We just got our username handled from, from YouTube.

Yeah, finally, finally.

Uh, shout out to the 10,000 views that we got.

Yeah, over 10,000. Yeah, crazy. A lot of views on YouTube.

Yeah, very good. Very good. And please check us out on B2BVault.info where you can sign up for a merchant account, contact us, or, you know, listen to past episodes of the podcast. You can find us on every streaming network that you can imagine. Type in B2B Vault, will pop up. We're there.

So that's about— that's it. All right, now let's talk about merchants passing the fee to their customers. So whatever you want to call it— cash discount, non-cash adjustment, dual pricing, where it shows the cash price and the credit price, which you see at a lot of gas stations, surcharging, which allows you to charge a fee on credit cards but then Debit cards that are debit cards don't get charged the fee. That's the difference between the most— most businesses want to do cash discount. Some, like bigger companies, only want to do surcharging because they want to be like more, you know, out of the gray, you know, they don't want to be in the gray area. And then with all that going on, I think we're going to see like other forms of payment come into the market to kind of, to kind of— that might be a lower cost than credit card processing. But until they become efficient and fast, right, you have to be as fast as processing a credit card, because I don't think people care that they pay an extra 50 cents on $40 to use their card because they're getting a big benefit with rewards and all that. But it could, it could spur some alternative forms of payment, especially if someone's using a payment portal. Yeah, it could. Businesses use a payment portal. If you're not using ACH right now for your invoicing and stuff, it's something you should consider to use that because you can process ACH and credit cards, put a fee on the credit cards, do the ACH for free or for even, you know, and figure out how to, how to balance that out to lower your overall cost. Especially if you're in a B2B type business. The Fed just raised the, the, the, um, basis points. Yeah, the basis points. 50 more basis points. I mean, this is ridiculous already. You don't need to be your customer.

What are we after the year now?

I don't even know. I forgot it. I mean, they went up 50, 75, 50, 50. I mean, it's crazy. Yeah, it's through the roof. But you don't need to become the bank for your customers. No, you need to accept more forms of payment so that they can pay you now. Let them float it to their bank. Yes, float it on their credit card. Let them access their line of credit. You stop doing that. Yeah, force people to pay you, you know, on time. Safe Banking Act, which we talked about, not much hope for that.

I mean, I'm hopeful.

Okay, we'll be hopeful. We'll say We're hoping it's going to get done. But here's another thing: will someone come up with a— some other type of cannabis solution for these businesses? And I think so, because I had a meeting yesterday that sounded fairly promising about some— you know, not the greatest solution of all time, but I would say it's very workable, doable, and possible.

So it's a winner.

It, it could be a winner. We have to talk to some, talk to some people about it, and we'll figure out whether it's a winner or a loser. But I think that it's a winner from this, from the standpoint of banks being able to use this product with their cannabis customers. I think from that standpoint, it could be— banks could use that to leverage that business. Will merchants gravitate Here's a good question. More towards platforms where you can answer a few questions and get approved for a merchant account in 15 minutes in 2023? I think so. Yeah, because the move has been going in that direction for the last couple years, and it's here now on nationwidepaymentsystems.com. Can answer 10 questions, get approved in less than 5 minutes. Forget 15. But I saw this posted, somebody said are people going to gravitate towards these platforms. They've already been gravitating towards PayPal, Stripe, and Square for years, and now there's alternative to that.

I mean, the 5-minute thing is there's variables to that, right? You got to have the right IDs and all the— you know, of course there's things that'll stop that from happening, right? But for the most part, if you're a US citizen, you have a state ID, driver's license, Social Security number, you're going to get your merchant account in literally less than 5 minutes.

Right. So I think people— I think that's going to become a trend. And also what we talked about with the software companies, software companies are going to want to be part of using that to get their merchants on board.

Yes.

So that's going to be really, really, really important. High-risk merchant services. Now here's something most people don't know about. But because of all the acquisitions that are going on right now, there's like a huge acquisition going on. I can't talk about it, it's like private, you know, it's not been fully announced. But that acquisition is going to literally take 3 companies and have it under one ownership, and those are 3 of the largest processors taking in high risk. So that's gonna start to lower the places you can go to get high-risk merchant accounts.

I don't like when that happens.

I'm sorry. No, I don't either, because I'm all for like companies buying companies.

I get it. But like, no, because they're— when you're buying one company inside of one industry, right, it just, it just to me, it muddies the industry to the point where we've had so much— you can't see what you really know.

We've had so much acquisition and payment process processing in the last couple of years that higher risk merchants are having a hard time finding merchant accounts. Like today, today we were working with a merchant that got shut off by two payment processors. Now, whatever, you know, I don't want to go into the whole story, right? So we work with another privately held bank, you know, it's one of our, you know, concierge type things that we do, and we're able to take them to this Concierge Bank and they're able to get approved for 2 merchant accounts. So we just got the— I got a text before we started the podcast that they got approved for 2 merchant accounts. Now, probably not at the kind of volume that they wanted, but they got somewhere to get started and they can earn their keep and then probably get their limits increased. But, you know, people are— a lot of, a lot of the other high-risk providers are not accessible through the normal, like, agent channel, right? And merchants that are looking for high risk are going to need to seek out—

you need to know somebody like Allen Kopelman.

Yeah, you're going to need to know somebody like me who acts more— who acts as a consultant between you and getting you into the right bank, because the amount of company— the amount of banks is being reduced, and the processors and the companies who control all those processors— when one company controls 3 entities, that's a problem, because now instead of 3 places to go apply to, you can apply one of them and the other 2 are going to know about it, and you're not there. I don't know how they're going to treat all of that.

It just sounds terrible.

It's not— it's, it's, it's kind of good. It's good for me because if you really need a high-risk merchant account and you, you have the business that can do considerable, considerable, considerable amount of volume, we have banks that will work with you. So that's how that goes. Okay, the next one: will the government try to regulate the credit card processing industry? So let's talk about Durbin 1.0, that was supposed to help small businesses and it didn't. And we've done podcasts about that. Then they came up with this new debit routing rule, but that's never going to happen because the fantasy network that Senator Durbin talks about that's going to process these debit payments and route them around, right? That doesn't exist, right? And this is the same thing they did in Europe. They said, oh, we need this other network. Well, no one's building the network. The network doesn't already exist. So I don't see how they can ask the credit card company to go do something. Oh, we want you to do this routing. Well, that doesn't exist, Senator Durbin. Well, we don't care. You know, just do it. I think— I don't know if they do it to garner votes or make it look good, like, oh, we took a hammer and we beat Visa and Mastercard. Card over the head, you know, a little bit. And we call them before the committee and ask them a bunch of questions that don't make any sense, that they don't get answers for because they don't know the question to ask because they're not educated on payment processing. I wish they would just call me before Congress and I'll bring my whiteboard out there and I'll explain to them how transactions work and how the whole business works and all that, and how there's tons and tons of competition out there. And what's actually going on with processing. And then the Durbin 2.0— if Durbin, you know, Senator Durbin, come on the podcast. If you think Durbin 2.0 is so great, put it in its own bill, right? And try to pass it by itself. Instead, the guys tried to stuff it inside of the infrastructure bill, another COVID bill, two military bills. It all got kicked out because none of it has anything to do with any of that. So it got completely booted. And it's based on also another thing, this fantasy third-party network that doesn't exist, right? That's going to end up— if it did exist, it would end up costing more money than the current network, because you don't understand how processing works. And it would just be, who's going to handle the chargebacks? Who's going to handle disputes? Who's going to do this? None of It's not set up. So how are you gonna— sounds like it's a fantasy. It's all like a paper thing. They hold the hearing and it's a big show, and the people come from Visa and MasterCard and Discover and American Express, and Durbin yells at them, blah blah blah blah blah, a lot of words, right? And he doesn't know what he's talking about, and they're just laughing at him because they know he can't— he can make something up like, oh, we need this other network. Okay, well, go build it, Dick. Now here's— go build it, go build it. And then here's another thing. So here's the thing, like, that I talked about in— on one of the podcasts, I talked about the future of credit card machines. Remember, we did a podcast about that. Now here's a couple of things that I think. Number one, Like we're selling a thing called the Smart Terminal. So every receipt can be— you can print it, text it, or email it. And I think that's like the greatest thing ever. I think businesses should be using that because you can collect that data and then use that for marketing. And I don't know if anybody else is going to make, uh, make terminals that do that. There's very few of them out there compared to like the whole market of terminals, right? And I think that we're going to see that grow. The next thing is mobile payment processing. This is going to change greatly in 2023. We are very close right now to having— you have an app on your phone, you can have an app on your phone now, right? But you need a little box, and— but we're going to have We're gonna have that thing, that process to where you can get approved for that in 15 minutes, get your little device. But because you're going to have this special app on your phone and you're approved right away, you'll be able to start taking payments right away. And then the next level to that is going to be on both Android and Apple. You're not even going to need a credit card machine, but you're going to need the newest phones, because the new phones have NFC readers in them. And with the new phone, you're going to be able to— let's say Justin is a mobile detailer, or let's say you were a barber, or let's say you had a tattoo business, right? And then I come in to pay, you'd be able to just take out your phone, you know, whatever, log into the app, I put in the amount, show it to me, I'll be able to just tap my card on your phone or Apple Pay or Google Pay right to your phone. You don't even need a credit card machine. Text me the receipt after. I mean, that's insane, but that's coming 2023. We are going to see that, and that could be a huge game changer for tons and tons and tons of businesses, event companies when they're having events, charities, uh, small businesses, solo preneurs, you know, a single owner business, you know, maybe even businesses that have employees that say, hey, we'll invest in a phone. You know, let's say you had a parking garage, right? And people are coming to pay. Instead of having this clunky credit card machine and stuff, or having the thing with the phone, you can just have them pay right there on the phone, on the phone. It's nice without anything, nothing. 'Oh, here, let me text you the receipt. What's your email?' Boom, boom, and the person's gone. I mean, that could be a big game changer. That looks like— that looks like it's actually coming, and it's going to work on Android and Apple. So that's going to be a big game changer. Nice. And I think the other thing, like we talked about, is merchants waking up to the fact that they can get a merchant account in 15 minutes, you know, and they can get these smart terminals and get the, the dashboard, because this dashboard enables you to send out an invoice, plug in your website, create social links for selling, to do all kinds of things that you normally can't do with a regular— like, we can give you a regular merchant account, fill out paperwork, blah blah blah, send you a machine, and it's very one-dimensional. This is the complete omnichannel, omnichannel complete whatever you want to call it, omnichannel, omnicommerce experience, the complete merchant experience. And it's not just a complete experience for the business, it's a complete experience for your customer. Yeah, because now you're able to have your customer can pay you any way you need to get paid. Send me an invoice, sell me something on Facebook, sell me something on Instagram, sell me something on TikTok, right? You're going to be able to do all of these things. Right? And I think that's going to be a big— um, it could be— it's— I think it's a game changer for businesses. They just need to know that they need to check it out. We're going to make some videos about it, uh, make videos about all these new things that we're— that we're doing and get and put it out there so people can see what they can actually do with their business to grow their business. What do you think about that, Rocky?

He's ready to go.

Rocky the Podcast, are we ready to end FinTech Friday? You have any thoughts on all the crazy stuff we talked about?

Uh, I mean, yeah, man, I think there's going to be some interesting things to come about, you know, with the omnichannel solutions. I, I'm appreciative of that as far as a consumer. Um, as a web developer, it's interesting to see the the, the new ways that people are able to accept payments.

Um, I mean, don't you think it's cool as a web developer someone could sell somebody something in another country and not deal with a chargeback? I think that's when that's—

when that finally like is fluid, right? I think that'll be a— that's going to be great for both, like, for people all over the world, right? Because the one thing that the internet was created for was that so that everyone was accessible, right? So the, the, the part we're missing is like, I can't buy this bracelet from the person who made it in Thailand.

Well, you can, but there's a risk.

Yeah, right, the risk is too high most of the time. You don't know where, whatever. But yeah, so that's, that's interesting.

This is going to reduce the risk for the U.S. merchants to sell internationally, right? I think the risk is much lower when you buy something Like, if you buy— if I buy something from China, right, you could do— still do a chargeback, you know, on that. But I'm just saying, so this is just a risk— reducing the risk on— with international payments for businesses in the U.S. to accept international payments and send money and send goods and services around the globe, right? The upper So from that standpoint, that's a pretty big game changer. I think we'll see that in the first quarter, that we'll hopefully be able to release that in a big way. Cool, cool. Peace out. Thank you for listening. Happy New Year in 2022. We look forward to sharing many more episodes of B2B Vault in 2023. Um, we have a whole new social media campaign going on in 20 that's getting ready to be launched in 2023 that you're going to be able to check out. So check us out on social media, follow the podcast. Peace out, carpe diem, Happy New Year. We're out of here. Show Rocky on camera so everybody can see Rocky. Come here, come here. Here's Rocky. Rocky, sit, sit, sit. Look, look, everybody wants to see Rocky. Rocky says Happy New Year. Happy New Year from Rocky.

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