FinTech Fridays | 1 Year Anniversary of B2B Vault: The Payment Technology Podcast

What's up everybody, it's Justin live from B2B Vault, the payment technologies podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems. With your host, Allen Kopelman. And in today's podcast, it is FinTech Friday. It is the 1-year anniversary of the Payment Technology Podcast. High five! High five! You know, so today we have a few things, uh, to go over as far as, you know, FinTech Fridays. But otherwise than that, you know, we're just going to be talking about this past year, man. A lot of, a lot of interesting things have happened within a year. We've learned a lot. I've learned a lot.

I'm sure we definitely learned a lot about podcasting.

Yes.

Lots, lots to learn about podcasting, video editing, video editing, what else, presentation, organization. I mean, there's so much involved in the podcast.

You know, mix of things, I guess, on the podcast. Rocky getting a treat. Yeah, happens during the podcast.

Yes, quite often. So yeah, man, I mean, it's been a— I remember our first episode, uh, it was horrible.

I mean, it wasn't that bad. It was—

it is what it is, right? Uh, It was what it was, and it is what it shall be. Um, yeah, it was cool. I mean, I think a lot about like how far like the progression of the podcast has come. Um, from the—

yeah, I think we progressed a lot from like what we started to do, and then we changed the presentation of it, and then we changed the presentation of it again. And I got convinced Justin to get more involved, which helps with asking questions because I look at it from a merchant service standpoint and Justin looks at it from like a business owner standpoint, right? When we discuss a product, and that helps people understand the concepts that I'm talking about, and Justin can slow me down and say, oh, explain that a little more, right? Right. And I think that's a— that's an important aspect of the podcast. Like, I've heard from people, they're like, Oh, you know, the way you guys explain things, you know, they enjoy it.

It's good.

Yeah, yeah. So I mean, it's FinTech Friday. It's FinTech Friday, man. We're live.

So right into it. Um, obviously it's FinTech Friday, so those that don't know, what is FinTech?

So FinTech, in a simple explanation, is any kind of software or application that's moving money, financial technology. So moving money in, so you can take money, moving money out, or both ways, in and out. That's fintech. And fintech has been like the big buzzword for 2022. Definitely been a big huge buzzword. Everybody talks fintech, fintech, fintech. There's tons of articles about fintech, websites devoted to fintech. I mean, fintech goes into everything that's involved with financial technology.

Indeed.

Probably the, the next biggest thing, and I, and I'm gonna guess for 2023, right, one of the biggest things we're going to hear about from fintech is open banking.

You've been talking about that a lot lately, right?

And I think open banking is going to really going to really grow.

And what is open banking, for those that don't know?

So open banking is the ability— or real-time payments, sometimes referred to, or people heard about FedNow, right? And that's the ability to move money back and forth, you know, instead of an ACH or a wire. Real-time payments. So real-time payments like Zelle you know, you Zelle somebody some money. But there's going to be more things coming for real-time payments. And actually looked at a product today that looked really, really cool. I want to see that— we didn't see how it exactly works, but we're going to find out how it works and how that's going to help businesses, you know, get, get paid and pay people using a product that's basically linked to open banking. Nice. So open banking is huge. Like, I interviewed somebody on the podcast, Pocketbook Network, Brian Crumpler, you know, and that's another like fintech open banking product where people are going to be able to take an app, go up to an ATM machine using the cardless transaction mode of the ATM by scanning a QR code, and then getting money out of financial applications that are linked into their pocketbook account. So things like get money from Cash App or Venmo, because PayPal, different things, or people have like savings accounts on Chime, right, right? And they have their money there, but to get it into their checking account so they can actually spend it, sometimes they have to send an ACH, and that takes a couple of days. But maybe you need some cash now. You're going to be able to go to the ATM with an app like that very soon because we were at the ATM Show and that was one of the things that they showed there is these new things with the ATM involving a lot of it open banking. Yeah, so that was really interesting. And, you know, one of the things that we're also doing now is with our new website, which is almost ready, you're going to be able to— you know, we're combined, you know, we're bringing a fintech product You know, and combining it with merchant services. And now you have this— you can have this complete crazy fintech product that you're going to be able to, you know, be able to process credit cards and then do all sorts of communication with your customers and run loyalty programs and all kinds of really cool stuff. So, you know, the future we talk about— we did one of the most popular episodes we did Yeah, was the future of payment processing.

Yep.

And the future is crazy, what's going on, the, the amount of innovation that we see, right, through emails. Like we saw— remember I showed you that email a couple weeks ago? It was like a credit card machine, but it was like a hologram. Oh yeah, yeah, crazy stuff. There's, there's people out there that are coming up with the craziest stuff to do. And, you know, and it's gonna come.

Technology is definitely, uh, not going anywhere.

Yeah, technology is evolving, um, the way you're gonna pay is evolving. It's an ever-changing thing. That's what excites me about this business all the time is, you know, what's changing, you know, like alternative payments. I was just on the phone with a company, Alternative Payment Company, you know, and talking, talking to them about, you know, what they're doing with alternative payments and And it's just interesting, you know, and it's, and it's going to grow. I mean, it's just, it's now like it's in the beginning. It's like at the tip, you know, we're at the beginning of seeing what's going on with alternative payments. And then another popular thing, what we did was, uh, which one? The second one.

What kinds of products?

No, CBD.

Oh, the CBD process, right?

So we talked a lot about CBD this year, what's going on with CBD and legalities involving CBD, and, um, you know, all the different sorts of products that people had. Me and Justin went to that— what was that called?

The Alternative Products Expo.

Yeah, Alternative Product Expo, where we saw all sorts of different products, you know, things involving the CBD, hemp, Delta-8, Delta-9, kratom, you know, all these products. And then, you know, what are banks doing with these products? And how are, you know, and they're allowing it now. They're allowing all these products to get processed online. Yeah, you know, they're just asking that the biggest thing that we see is a lot of the companies that have come to us, the tests are really old. So they want the tests to be within a year. So that's the big thing, is having their products tested and having the results updated on the websites yearly. That's a big— it's a big thing. But the CBD business is booming. It's booming. It's going strong. Um, I think a lot of the smaller companies are finding it harder to compete, maybe But it's just because the testing can be expensive, you know. But I think if, if I think if they did their homework and found some, some lower cost testing places, you know, because somebody told me they knew a place that was like $50. It's not expensive, $50 to get your product tested.

I don't know if that's what's stopping you from making money.

Right, but I'm just saying, test done. Yeah, you got to get the test done, you know, so that everything is, you know, correct on the website. And then, then let's talk— what's the next subject up that we were going to talk about?

Uh, you said you wanted to touch on processing for cannabis and what's the latest with that, right?

So there's a lot of, you know, bills going around in Congress And in fact, I think yesterday Biden signed an order. Yeah, but it was kind of— they made a big deal out of it, but once you dove into it, it wasn't like that big a deal because it only affects 6,500 people that are in federal prison.

So when I was reading it this morning, the people that it's affecting, the people aren't even in prison.

Oh, they're not even in prison?

No, they've just been convicted of it already.

Oh, okay.

So like I don't know. I mean, if it's a— so for me, like, I think this is a great step towards the right direction. Someone that has been— I've been directly affected by the war on drugs. And, and so I think that Biden—

it's a move in the right direction.

It's in a move in the right direction. But also, this is just you know, it's midterms and we'll see what really happens. Uh, I don't see why, uh, why it's been taking this so long. And honestly, like, it's not really doing much. So yeah, I want them to— what they really need to do is to reschedule cannabis.

Yes, that's the—

like, that's out of everything that I read That was the only thing that I— that, that was important to me, right?

Yes.

Because the, the classification of cannabis is that it's as dangerous as heroin, and we all know that that's not true, right? So let's get that figured out. I mean, you know, getting the, you know, clearing the records of 6,500 people of you know, nonviolent cannabis offenses, is that really helping? I don't know.

And shit, yeah, it was only people that were federal. The state—

the whole federal thing is ridiculous too, because the whole state—

because it doesn't go down to the states. Now the states have to make decisions. But right, so there's a bunch of bills in Congress. Like, they came out yesterday with like Bernie Sanders introduced the bill Huh?

The Safe Banking Act.

Right, the Safe Banking Act they're talking about. Then we also heard at the, at the, uh, ATM convention talking about the crack— the banks are cracking down on these cashless ATM companies, and a bunch of them recently got shut down.

What's a cashless ATM?

So an 8— a credit card machine, but it's programmed to the ATM network and instead of spitting out cash, just gives a piece of paper, and then the store has to give change. So that's gone. Oh, we got a present for the first anniversary.

For me?

It's for—

well, for us, for everybody, for everybody. So what, you open it?

I knew something was gonna fly out of there, man.

I swear I knew it was gonna fly out of there.

That was cool. Oh, Rocky! Oh, this is one— this is—

I—

yeah, this is cool.

Yeah, and we got a little cake. Uh-oh, Rocky's eating— he's eating a butterfly. No, don't eat the butterfly! Rocky, come here! No, don't eat the butterfly! Yeah, don't eat the butterflies. You'll get sick. They're plastic.

Happy anniversary!

So happy anniversary, B2B Vault.

Happy anniversary! And thank you, Anna. Thank you, Samantha. Yes, Samantha is the graphic designer that puts together all the cool stuff. Yeah, Anna is the office administration assistant. She helps Allen and myself out when we need it and Thank you.

And she helps, uh, type up the, the, the transcription, transcription of the podcast. Yes, it's a whole team effort. Even Rocky helps out with the podcast.

He's a security guard.

Yeah, he guards the room.

Guard dog, mascot, you know, snack eater, snack eater, snack tester.

He eats his snacks, disturbs us during the podcast.

How did I know something was gonna fly out of there?

Because you know me. That's always something funny. I got something planned.

I knew something was gonna fly out of that damn box. I swear I did.

Well, at least I didn't bring one of those poppers in here and pop it off. He told me no poppers.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of poppers.

Okay, so this was, uh, the next best thing. Yeah, that's nice.

I'm gonna have— now that I've seen it in action, I'm gonna have to get one for my mom.

Okay, you have to get one for your mom.

All right, she will freak out about one of those.

So, you know, the banks that process the ATMs are catching people with the cashless ATMs. And then there's, there's CANRA, which is the Cannabis Banking Association. So they're pressuring their members not to use these cashless ATMs. That's a whole big thing. And then, you know, you can put— legally, you can place an ATM in your cannabis dispensary As long as somebody else is loading the money. Someone wrote, don't accept a cigar from me.

Oh yeah, no, Dale, no way.

I would blow up.

Yeah, he's putting a firecracker in the tip. Yeah, no, I'm not falling for that. This is the guy that was sticking bananas in tailpipes in the '70s.

No, I don't, I don't think I ever did that. But, uh, but the thing is, is like with the ATM machines, the There's a, there's a new way that it could possibly work with the cannabis dispensaries where they could put in these— we saw them at the ATM show, those cash recyclers. Yeah. And we're waiting to get approval from the bank to talk about that. And that could really help cannabis dispensaries because they could take their extra cash and have it electronically deposited to a bank account, and then they wouldn't have to handle any cash at the business, and the armored car would come pick pick it up. But we're waiting to see, like, we're waiting for like the bank, the bank that we work with, that they're going to approve like that whole process of using the cash recyclers and then taking the excess cash and electronically depositing it to the bank. I think that would— something like that would tremendously help out the cannabis business. Unless of course SAFE Banking Act gets passed and voilà, you can process credit.

I think this, this is the whole the ploy or plot of yesterday's announcement is directly of the iceberg. I think it's directly related to the same. Well, let's hope so too.

We need it. Listen, it needs to happen. It's been going on for too long. It's legal in so many states, and the, the cannabis needs to get legalized already on an economic level.

It could be— we could be producing paper off of hemp, clothes, so many textiles. I mean, they made a car out of hemp.

Yeah, I mean, there's companies— I've seen companies that make bricks out of hemp. Yes, they make all sorts of stuff.

But I don't think it's encouraged enough because they can't grow it in their state, right?

That's what I mean.

So, and then when it's the, the cost of the, the product is too high So no one's going to pay $10 a brick, right, you know, of hemp brick when they can go get a brick for a quarter, right? You know, I mean, I wouldn't—

I wouldn't do it.

Well, the cost has to come down. They got to figure— they get— they got to figure all this stuff out because it just— it just needs to happen. You want— and it's a sustainable— the thing that I really like about hemp is how fast it grows.

That's what I'm saying. Like, yeah, we would never have to cut it down another tree ever again if we just— if every— if like, if what was it in the— during World War I or World War— I mean, uh, the Civil War, right? Every farmer was required to grow a certain acreage of hemp, right, on their farm, right, to be used for military, you know, clothing, stuff like that. Why can't, why can't we do that now?

I don't know. That's the—

because hemp is illegal in some states still. And then to grow it, I guess to cultivate it, is, is, you know, most of these, the companies would have to switch, you know, like their, the whole process is going to have to change.

Yeah, but there's— we come to the point where we're like growing stuff and we're exporting tons of stuff out of the country, and then we're importing other things into the country.

And we need to figure out why we export beef to get packaged in China, make it get shipped back to America.

I won't eat that.

When you tell me, when you explain to me why, I'll eat a burger with you.

I don't even know.

I haven't eaten beef in over 20 years.

Like, I don't understand how that's even cost effective. It can't be, right? I don't eat that stuff. That's why I buy organic and kosher, and I look at the meat to see where it came from.

Yes.

And I will not buy that frozen stuff that's coming from—

I just don't—

even chicken doesn't make sense. They kill the chickens, then they send them to China to get processed. Water makes no sense to me whatsoever.

Yes.

Hold the whole process. We need to get manufacturing back in the US.

People need to stop being afraid to grow their own food. We need to be encouraged to be growing our own food. I don't know, this podcast is taking a left or right, or right, whatever way you want to—

yeah, my daughter, she grows— she has vegetables growing outside her house.

She lives in Iowa, so it's a little easier to grow food out there. Yeah, you can't grow much food down in South Florida, probably not, not unless it was in the shade or—

you got fruit trees, fruit trees.

Yeah, you definitely need a greenhouse down here.

All right, and then the next subject that's been super, super popular is cash discount. And the ability for merchants to pass the fee to their customer. And, you know, there's all sorts of different— all sorts of different ways how to do it. We offer it. You can, you know, and a lot of businesses are doing it, you know. And it just, you know, I was telling Justin, he's like, oh, how many people do that? And I was like, almost 50%. Of clients want to pass the fee to their customer in one form or another. I mean, all the fee or part of the fee.

If the client could pass the whole fee to someone else, I, I would do the same thing, right?

Yeah.

Well, they're having a hard time.

But does— I guess the reason why— I get why it's popular for the merchant, but does that stop your customer base from coming?

I don't think customers really care. I think if it, if it was a super, super expensive expensive item, I think customers would care about it. But I think on the lower end, I don't think customers really care.

Yeah, I think so. Like, what do you— the, the— what he's saying on the lower end is like when you go and then you, you know, $40, $50, the total's $50, and then your bill comes out to $52, right? Most people aren't gonna bat an eye at the $2, and they're not even going to pay attention.

And maybe at $1,000 you might get upset.

I just learned something very kind of crappy. Okay, um, so banks have a tipping—

yeah, well, we're gonna do a whole podcast about this on Monday and then it'll come out next.

That wasn't on Monday. That's not what you're talking about.

Yeah, the tipping thing. We're gonna do a podcast about it. Okay, so what happens is what Justin's talking about is when someone goes to a— let's finish up about cash discount, then we'll talk about the tipping issue. So the cash discount, that's where people can, you know, pass the fee to the customer. And you can do it, you know, you can do a search or there's ways to do it.

When you use cash discount, meaning if you pay me for my product in cash, I don't charge you, I don't charge you the $2, right? But if you're going to use your card, I'm not taking a $2 hit for you to pay with your card, so you're going to pay $2 extra. Great, that's what you want.

You— you're—

it's your convenience fee, basically, right? It's good, whatever, you know, can be processing fee, convenience.

And actually it's been going on for decades, right? But it's been going on forever.

Like, what are all the other names that you see?

Dual pricing, where— yeah, item fee, technology fee, convenience fee, surcharge, non-cash adjustment. It can be called anything. But the thing is, is like, I think you called anything you wanted. No, but when I say, when I say to people, you pay fees a lot. Yeah, go to the gas station. Most gas stations have a cash price and a credit price.

That's always been that way, right?

It's been that way for before the Durbin Amendment.

It's been that way since I can remember.

No, and then there's other things like education. They've always been able to charge a fee for credit card processing at education. Right? They've been always allowed.

Okay.

And then there's tons of other third-party companies like— who is charging a fee?

Ticketmaster.

Even— uh, well, let's forget— I want to talk about something the government, right? It's government-related because it's the IRS. So the IRS had like this online payment thing, and I think it's been around maybe even before the Durbin Amendment. And you have to pay them a fee if you want to pay your taxes in cash.— in a credit card online, right? Online you have to pay them a fee. So yeah, there's fees everywhere. Then, you know, Ticketmaster charges fees, any other ticket companies charge fees.

Ticketmaster is crazy. You could go to 4 concerts off one ticket.

Yes, it's nuts.

I don't know how to— I don't know how people can afford to go to concerts.

It's crazy. Like, I wanted to go see a concert, then I saw how much the tickets were. I was like, no, I'm to skip that.

$200, you said, right?

No, it was— no, it was $200. I would pay $200. No, they wanted $500 a ticket to see a comedian. I was like, no. Oh yeah, yeah, I was like, no. And then— and, and then I saw another concert where it was $1,000 per seat. I was like, no can do. $1,000 per seat. Like, I can't even bring myself to do that. Like, I can't do it. Even if I had the money, right, I can't spend $1,000. Two seats, $2,000, plus dinner, parking, and all that. You're looking at a $2,500 night for a concert. No, too expensive. I mean, even Kid Rock— like, I went to see Kid Rock, tickets were cheap. He doesn't believe in expensive concert tickets. Not for everybody, but you know, there's a lot. I'm not So now let's talk about, like, uh, we'll talk about the tipping thing. And so just a quick—

you just— this was very interesting to me, right? I learned today that there's a 20% cap, meaning you go to a restaurant and your bill's $100, you're $100, and you want to give the person a $20 tip.

Tip, right?

If you give them a $22 tip, your bank is gonna say no.

Maybe most—

from, from what I learned today, yeah, most of the time they're gonna be like no. If he— if, if it's not like a regular thing, like you're— this is how you tip, they're gonna be like, nah, this is abnormal.

Or let's say you put $30 or $50, or you wanted to be nice and give them $100. Yeah, the server is one that serves you all the time, you want to give them $100, just had a baby. Yeah, but the thing is, is if you write it down and then they add it in, the thing is your card was only authorized for 100 bucks plus the 20% variance, and then you gave $100 more— you gave $80 more— the bank's not going to do that. Now I think personally, like, that the banks should send text messages to the customer. I think they should send a text message every time you use your credit card.

Card.

They should say, did you just charge $24 at CVS? Did you just charge $149 at Publix? Whatever it is.

If, if Gmail can send you a notification about logging into your email account, I would assume, yeah, that these multi-billion-dollar banks, yeah, they could do it, can afford to pay somebody to—

it would be a program.

Yeah, it's— that's not—

I mean, I used to have— I used to have Capital One, and they used to send me stuff. Oh, you left a big tip at this restaurant, is that okay? And you would hit yes or no. Maybe the person— maybe you didn't leave the tip.

And so now the banks are just like— they're just took it in there.

Yeah, but it's been like this. It's— this is not new.

Oh, I didn't know that.

No, it's not new. This has been around since I've been in the business.

Can I tell you why this like it kind of was an aha moment for me, right? Because I'm one of those guys that tip, right? My wife is like, you gave her too much money, why are you giving her so much money?

You like her?

You know, she's like, yeah, no, that woman is making $6 an hour, right? She just served our entire family of— there's 8 of us. How many drinks did she fill? You know, like If I'm one of those people, I pay attention. How many times did she fill our water up?

Right?

How many times did she come to check on us?

How many times did she, you know, if you have good service, you're gonna leave a better tip.

And so there would be times when I would go home.

Yeah.

And then you look at your, you know, you look at your, you're doing your budget or whatever. And it's like, how come that tip's not on my card?

Now you know.

Now I know why. Because if it was over the $20, over the 20%, over the 20%, the bank was like, yo, no.

That's why I like— we saw this problem. It was happening since I've been started doing this company, 2001. That was happening. And, you know, as soon as they started to have, like, especially 2015 when we introduced EMV and you had certain terminals where you could take it to the table. Yeah, there's Wi-Fi, then the customer can put the tip in and then it's authorized all together.

So what about the ones where it says like it's got the numbers in there when it's like 15, 20?

What do you mean, on the terminal? Yeah, right. Yeah, when you're doing that, it's doing it at the time of sale, so it's getting an authorization for the total.

There's not an extra charge going through, right?

Right. So there's still the 20% variance there. But because they're— let's say your bill's $100 and you hit $20 tip.

Yeah.

Or you hit $30 tip or $50 tip, then the machine is calling out for the total amount.

Exactly.

Not the— you're not, you're not adjusting it the amount.

Right.

Right.

The other way. So if someone brings a paper to your table and they have to adjust the amount, then that's going to be a problem if you go over the 20% variance. But we're gonna do a whole podcast.

Yeah, no, I don't want to get too far into it, but I would just say if you're a restaurant, do away with that and go to tip at the time of sale. That's it.

I tell every merchant, do tip at the time. So as we saw this problem, especially in bars—

are we going to keep going? We're going to keep going.

No, we're not gonna— we're gonna stop on that.

Yeah.

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.

Now the last one is one— man, I got stabbed in the heart yesterday on this one. Durban 2.0. Okay.

Here's—

I'm going to tell you the good, the bad, and the ugly. Okay, there is no good. The Durbin 2.0, it's a loser.

For those who don't know, right, it is the Credit Card Competition Act, right? Which is— there's the, the government is saying there's not enough competition within the credit card processing industry. So like Ameri— Visa, MasterCard specifically. That's who these— that's who the two, you know, the biggest ones that he's always addressing, right?

Senator Dick Durbin.

And Dick Durbin obviously might have a relationship. Senator Dick Durbin obviously has a reach-around relationship with American Express because he never brings them up.

No, he doesn't ever. Well, he did bring up American Express and Discover a little bit, but why does the biggest ones are Visa?

But so like, how come American Express is like, gets to float underneath the table and got— they got like special stuff going on.

No, because the biggest— no, because the biggest ones are Visa and MasterCard. You know, you open your wallet, you got Visa, you got MasterCard.

Yeah, I mean, if back in the day if you had American Express, that would mean you were rich.

Yeah, you were high level. But now a lot of banks offer, you know, like I have USAA, you can get a Visa, a MasterCard, or an American payments for us from them, from that bank. No, but what he's trying to do is he's trying— he wants to mess up the whole industry. And then yesterday I read this article from the NFIB, National Federation of Independent Businesses, and I'm like holding my head going, man, this guy who wrote this article saying this is good does not understand the payments business.

Did you reach out to him?

Yes, I sent the guy a LinkedIn message yesterday.

Let me pull—

let me see. Let's see if he responded to my LinkedIn message. I said I would like to speak to you about this. Let's look and see in here. No, no, that's not the guy. Let me find this guy. I get a lot of messages on LinkedIn, so it's, uh, so— oh, here's the guy, Jeff B-R-A-B-A-N-T, Barbandt, Bra-bandt, Bra-bandt. And I wrote to him, I said he's the director of federal government relations at the National Federation of Independent Business. Listen, Jeff, I would love to have you on the podcast along with Senator Durbin. Both welcome onto the podcast. And I, and I would love to explain to you why this legislation is bad for everybody. Number 1, this is bad for consumers. Oh, we're getting a phone call, so I promised I would answer the phone.

Hello?

Hello, is this the secret caller who wanted to call in today to the podcast?

I did. I was calling in, a long time listener, first time caller, and wanted to call in and congratulate you on having a year on here.

All right, thank you so much. One of my business partners We won't—

we won't—

Mr. H, we'll call him. We'd love to have you as a guest on the podcast sometime.

Well, if winter wasn't coming in so early to my folks in Kansas, I would be able to carve out some time. There's gonna be 30-some degrees tonight in Kansas.

Okay, work to do.

But how's the show going? I just got a chance to tune in.

Yeah, the show's going great. Everything's good. We had a— we had a cake We got balloons. Rocky's having a good time.

Good night. Is that part of his, uh, his personal celebration?

Yeah, we're gonna get Rocky some steak or a hamburger tonight.

Yeah, chicken for lunch.

Yeah, he had chicken for lunch because we had our staff lunch today.

Ah, so he's living the good life.

Yes, Rocky's living the good life. As the podcast mascot.

Very nice, very nice. Yes, congratulations, and, uh, pretty awesome. I can't believe it's already been a year watching you.

All right, thank you so much.

All right, well, coming up is your next guest.

Oh no, we didn't—

you tell us, can you tell us listeners who's coming up, uh, in the second year of the, uh, Allen show?

We're gonna have some— we're gonna have some guests from the alternative payment world, and we also invited, uh, the House of Representatives representative from Tennessee, John Rose, to come on and discuss the Durbin Amendment with us, this— the Credit Card Competition Act. And we're also going to have somebody on the show from one of the payments, um, data companies, and we're going to have them come on and present data also on the show.

One other thing is I've been— we've been thinking about having more small business guys, you know, just, just to check in and talk about— yeah, like process payments.

Yeah, we're gonna have like a small business person come on, and then we're gonna have a secret guest come on and talk about the world of high-risk credit card processing, possibly.

Well, I will definitely tune in for that one. I've got to, uh, unfortunately I can't stay long. We have homecoming up here, so I got to get the mud literally off my boots and probably the diesel fuel I spilled on it as well. But, uh, congratulations, congratulations Rocky, and, uh, look forward to hearing some of those future podcasts.

All right, we'll talk soon.

All righty, have a good one.

Thanks, bye. So, so why is this bad? So I have wrote the guy a letter, Brian. We'll get back to Brian, this, this guy. Let me pull the message back up. Jeff, Jeff Brabant. And I told them it's very bad for the banks and that it's very bad for consumers because the aftereffects of The aftereffects of this Durbin, okay, is going to be, is going to be horrible because, and it's already been shown that, it's already been shown from what happened with Durbin 1.0 when they did the debit cards. Debit card rewards went away, free checking went away, free safety deposit box went away, free checks at the bank went away. Free everything at the bank went away because the banks lost a ton of revenue. Now you're going to go and reduce interchange fees, right, because 1,600 businesses are complaining versus the millions who are not complaining, right? There's millions of businesses, but we're going to focus on these 1,600 businesses that include Walmart and Target Okay, I'm sorry, which is not a small business, right? A small business, you know, I was talking to a consultant today, so I said, how do you guys classify— for one of the payment companies who aggregates data, right? So I said, how do you guys classify a small business? They said it's classified by the number of employees. So they said a medium-sized business goes up to 1,000 employees. That's a pretty sizable enterprise. 1,000-employee business, 500 to 1,000 employees.

Who the heck decided this?

No, no, but so what's a small business up to, 500? No, no, I'm just saying like a medium business was classified as 500 to 1,000 employees and a small business is 500 to 1, right? A small business, dude. So that's a wide That's a wide amount of businesses. Yeah, but when you think— yeah, but you got to remember, like, let's say you have a hotel.

I tried to put the math together. Like, you have 500 employees, let's say you're paying $10 an hour for each employee.

Dude, that's a big payroll.

That doesn't seem like a small business to me.

It's a medium-sized business because let's say you have a guy, someone, they own 2 hotels, right? A company owns 2 hotels. Yeah. They could have 500, 600 employees between the two hotels. That's not really, you know, and you got to remember the profit margin is not that gigantic, right? So, but somebody spent a ton of money building that business, right? It's a medium-sized business and they're supporting—

government said that is the, is the amount of people and not money, right?

Amount of people, that's how they measured it.

How does—

I don't know, I'm not the one that came up with that. That's just what this Guy told me, goes, according to payroll companies and the government, that's how they decide. Someone with 500 to 1,000 employees is a medium-sized business. Someone with 500 and less is a small business. No, but there's a lot of sizable companies out there that— listen, you look at a restaurant, right? One, a good-sized restaurant that could be owned by a family, right? Let's say it's a 200 or 300-seat restaurant. Restaurant, right? Which is a pretty big restaurant.

That's a big— I'm okay.

Let's say they have a 100-seat restaurant. Okay, okay. Nobody really builds that because they want to serve liquor. So if you want to have liquor in Florida, you got to have 150 to 200 seats if you want to have booze. So that way you can get what's called the 4-COP license, allows you to sell.

So much involved in the liquor and retail and restaurant business.

So, you know, I came from the restaurant business. So I'm familiar with that business and the rules and regulations. So let's say you have a 150-seat restaurant. Okay, you're gonna have, I don't know, 10 waiters for lunch, 10 waiters for dinner, 10 guys, 10, 15, 20 guys working in the kitchen all day. You got a lot of employees. You could have 150 employees with the hostesses, the managers, and everything. And you have a large payroll. Yeah, there's gonna be money coming in the door, but the restaurant business traditionally, unless you own the building like completely outright, you know, profits in restaurants, 10-15%, you know, some restaurants make less than that, right? But I'm just saying, you know, so let's say you did $1 million in a month at a million dollars a year in business, you're making, let's say, $80 grand, right? Somebody could, you know, they're happy. Oh, I made $80 grand profit, net profit.

But you still got to pay your employees, right?

You paid your employee. That's what I'm talking about. After you paid everybody, yeah, man, you made 80. You paid 80 grand.

80 grand ain't a lot of money to me.

No, I'm saying it sounds like a lot of money, right? At first, if you don't make 80 grand— yeah, 80 grand sounds like a lot. But look at the responsibility that the person has. They're employing 150 people, let's just say.

When you put it in that perspective, I, you know, I didn't— when you think of like a restaurant, you forget that there's more than one shift, right? Right. Typically at a restaurant, they open at 11. Right, right.

But there's somebody's in there at 7, 8 o'clock in the morning prepping all the food, getting it ready, the lunch. Then more guys come in for dinner. There's cleaning guys, and they close, and there's guys cleaning up at night, cleaning the dining room, cleaning everything.

10, 20, 30. I can see a restaurant having at least 60 employees.

No, right, exactly. That's what I'm saying. So, you know, this Durbin bill, if this gets passed, okay, now you're gonna attack— Durbin already attacked debit cards, and look at the negative effect it had on debit cards, right? Okay, they attacked credit cards in Australia and in Europe. What happened in those two countries? Exactly what's going to happen here. It's not good for consumers. Consumers do not believe Dick Durbin and his puppets and his guys and all that. Prices are not going to go down. They're going to go down in Australia. They didn't go down with Durbin 1.0, okay? Nobody lowered their prices, okay? So they're not going to lower their prices this time. So we're not going to save any money at the store, but you're going to pay more money because credit card fees have to get paid by somebody. They're either getting paid by the businesses, or they're— or if that goes away and the businesses and Visa and MasterCard and the card issuers The card issuers are going to get less money, and those are your banks, the card issuers, right? So now when you go to your bank, guess what? You're going to have less services than you have now, and we already have less services because of the debit debacle. The next thing is, you know how you have those rewards on your credit card and no interest if you pay your bill at the end of the month? Duh, that's going to be gone. So you're not going to have— in Europe and Australia, there's hardly a card that has any type of rewards, and if it is, it's very minor, okay? Their reward system is in the toilet over in those places. And interest rates are up now. Interest rates on credit cards right now is through the roof because of inflation, okay? Because everything is based on the prime rate plus plus, right? So the interest rates— I, I saw a credit card offer come in. I I have one of my credit cards I have now, and they sent me a letter, and I was like, I pay it off at the end of the month. Well, I start— I started like, my eye started twitching because I saw it said 27%. Oh yeah, I was like, are you kidding me? 27%? You're gonna send— that's putting people in the poorhouse. So all this Fed raising the interest rates right now, instead of credit cards having like 7%, 8% interest and all that, no, it's high. Instead of your home loan having 2, 3, 4% interest, now it's 7, 8, 9% for a home loan. It's out of control. And if Durbin— if this 2.0, this 2.0 thing is so sucky, Durbin can't even get it approved as a standalone bill. He's trying to slide it into this defense act, right? And then part of it is he wants to erase credit card fees on military bases. I mean, it's such— the bill is full of so much garbage.

So there's work, there's work.

How can this National Federation—

there's something else that's in there too. So on top of what Allen's talking about, once you, you know, once you start opening up the networks, how secure do you feel paying with your credit card right now?

No, it's very secure, right? And if I want to do a chargeback, I can. But once you erase Visa and MasterCard off your credit card— but what I'm trying to get to, there's a lot more.

When, once, once, just once you can't use the Visa and MasterCard network, he wants to open it up to other ones. Where are you sending them the payments to? There's all types of fun. There's in China, all over the world, and it's not secure.

Not secure. Not only that, forget that it's not secure. That you're gonna— you lose all your consumer protection. So I'm not even talking about this from— I sell credit card processing. Guess what? They love— we don't make money from interchange. Understand that people who sell merchant services do not make money from interchange.

What's interchange?

That's what the banks get. We don't get money from that. We make a small thing. I was telling somebody, I said, if you took a plate of food right? And you had a big steak, and then next to it you had a baked potato, you had a big, you know, one of those big chunks of broccoli, and then you had a sprig of parsley. Okay, so basically the steak is the card issuing bank, right? Because the, the, the— they're the ones who are getting the bulk of the interchange. Okay, they're getting all the interchange. Nobody else shares in the interchange.

Only only that.

And the baked potato is what Visa and Mastercard get, which is 0.013 of a percent. That's what they get, 0.013 of a percent. Okay, it's not a lot of money, it's not 0.013. Meanwhile, the interchange, they're collecting 1, 2, 3%, right? They're collecting big chunks, percentages. Right. Let's say the average cost on interchange is 2.5%. That's what they're getting. 2.5%, right, is going to the card issuing bank, not to Visa, not to MasterCard, not to American Express, to the bank that issued that credit card. Then the broccoli represents the processor where, you know, like, so when you put your card in the machine or you go online and you hit enter, then, you know, it goes over to the credit card processor. You can catch the whiteboard presentation where I explained that last week on FinTech Friday. And you see the, you see the, um, uh, that, that they collect a few cents per transaction, right? And then whatever we charged on top of the interchange, right, and all that, we're the Sprig of parsley. We're getting tiny little bits and pieces and crumbs from the whole transaction, and that's what Dick Durbin doesn't understand. So if he takes interchange and lowers interchange—

this—

if this guy calls back again, he's coming on the podcast. All right, I was about to say, answer the phone.

If he—

if Jeff calls back, he's going to be on the podcast with say, hey Jeff, you're on the podcast. Hopefully he doesn't say a curse word because we'll get mad at him. But you know, so Durbin doesn't realize is what is the aftereffect of what he's going to do. Bad for consumers, number one, it's bad for consumers. We're going to see interest rates go up. Like, I use a business card, right? So with my business card, I can charge all month, then I can bill customers for what they owe us right? Then they can pay us with a check or a credit card or whatever, and then we can pay our bill. You know, we usually pay throughout the month or whatever. Or let's say we have, you know, we probably have 30, 40 bills that we pay of recurring subscriptions for all types of software, and the phone bill, and the internet, and this, and insurance, and that, right? Who the heck— I don't have time to write all those checks. So credit card makes it so convenient, right, right, to just pay all your bills. The bills are automatically paid, or I get a bill in the mail for the city of Fort Lauderdale. I need to pay them for the business license, right? Go online, click, click, click, and you pay your bill and you're done. It's so easy, the convenience of credit cards. That's why it's not that big of a deal. But that, you know, Durbin is just out of his mind what he wants to do, because if he does this, forget it. Your business card— you own a business, you have a business card, Mr. Business Owner, you're listening to my podcast. You will be paying interest on your credit card daily like it used to be in 2001 and 2002. That's how it used to be, right? You paid interest, daily interest. I mean, it used to break my back. Like, we, you know, we didn't have much money in those days. I mean, now whatever, but I'm just saying, all of a sudden we're going to slow things down to like back to checks because what Durbin is going to do, you're going to limit what people can spend. You're going to limit what businesses can spend. That's going to stunt their growth. Then only big businesses are going to survive. This is— this bill, Directly 2.0, is bad for consumers, bad for small to medium-sized businesses, because it's going to affect our cash flow. Okay, it's going to affect cash flow for businesses. People, you need to understand, Mr. Jeff Bro, what's this guy's name again? Jeff, uh, let me pull his name up again because I'm gonna, I'm gonna tag you on Twitter, Jeff, so you can come on, so we can get you on the show. Uh, now I can't find his name. What was this, this guy's name again? Barberin or something, he said.

Yeah, hold on, giving that guy a lot of plug on it.

Okay, we don't want to— I don't want to give him any, any more plug. But I'm just saying, we can't— that this Durbin 2.0, you need to write your senators, you need to write to this guy. If you belong to NFIB, write to them and say, hey, you got it all wrong. Listen, go talk to Allen Kopelman over at the B2B Vault, hit him up, b2bvault.info. Send text the word book to 954-827-9818. Dick Durbin, text, text us. We'll book you on the— we'll book you on the podcast.

Yeah, man.

Okay, we'll get whoever wants to come on and talk about this bill. There's no way that this bill is going to help consumers. This is the most horrible bill sitting there. If it could stand up by itself, Durbin would take it to the, uh, the Senate floor, have it voted on, and it would not pass. Wants to put— he's trying to put it in two different bills. Both are connected to defense, and it's kind of sneaky the way he's doing it. In one of them, it's saying that on military bases, that nobody should pay for credit card processing. I don't think that's fair. Why shouldn't a military pay for credit card processing? Like, the people on the base, the soldiers, should be exempt from paying the credit card. No. Doesn't make sense. What they're going to take— who's going to process it? Go to your mystery— go to the Durban fantasy processing that you talk about, your fantasy processor, and ask them to process all— everything should be free on a military base for the military people, right? Why are you charging them? Yeah, like they go to the K— what do they call that, the store that they have at the military base?

The KP?

No, that's not— that's when they clean. They call the whatever, the base store. They shouldn't be charging the sold— whatever they charge, whatever they call the store at the, at the military base, make all that stuff for free. What, you want the credit card company to, to take— not get the fees? That doesn't make any sense.

I'm sure that the, the—

that's the biggest joke that I ever heard.

That doesn't—

yeah, the soldiers would rather have free stuff instead of charging them for a Red Bull. Give them free Red Bulls. Give them a free soda, a free bottle of water, free shampoo. Like, they're in the military, it should be free, right? Don't you think?

In my opinion, yeah. Like, I don't— I always laughed super hard when my friends would be like, yo, we have to pay for everything. And I'm like, what? It did— like, everything? They don't get nothing?

That doesn't make sense. Like, they need a hat? Give it to them for free. You can pay for a haircut. They're not getting much money. The military shouldn't be paying for anything. Dick Durbin, you want to save some money? You want to save the military people money? Make all the stuff on the military base free. Don't come after Visa and MasterCard with your BS bill. You're going to screw over every consumer in the United States if this thing passes. Believe me, every day I'm writing to Marco Rubio and to Rick Scott, and I'll tag them on the podcast. Come on the show, let's talk about it, because I'm telling you right now, this bill is a killer, especially with what's going on now with inflation. This is gonna make— forget inflation, you're gonna have double-digit inflation if this thing passes, and you're gonna have tons of businesses, small businesses and medium businesses, go out of business. Imagine some guy owns like, let's say, 4 car dealerships.

Dick Durbin is like pumping for the Great Depression 2.0 or something.

Dude, he's—

who—

Target must be— Target and Walmart, they just must be backing up trucks over to Dick Durbin's house and unloading the food and toilet paper and everything over at his house. I don't know what's going on with this guy, but Dick Durbin, Target, and Walmart are not small businesses. They're not even a medium business.

Is, okay?

Far from it, okay? This is ridiculous what you're proposing, okay? And it's already been shown in other countries. Your data that you present is wrong. All your data is completely wrong. Come on the podcast, Dick Durbin. FinTech Friday, we're at your anniversary. We're gonna have some cake. We're gonna have some cake. We're gonna wind up the butterflies. Fly the butterfly, and we're gonna have a great weekend. Everybody have a great weekend. Enjoy the podcast. We're looking forward to year 2 of B2B Vault with all kinds of great stuff coming your way. Peace out.

Peace.