FinTech Fridays | Payment Processing News | Small Business Tips

What's up everybody, it's Justin live from B2B Vault, the payment technology podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems with your host Allen Kopelman. And we'll be providing you educational information about small business, fintech, payment processing, and the technology businesses are using in the world today. And today is Fintech Friday.

Shout out, it's Friday!

It's Friday, been a long week.

Excuse me, very busy this week.

Allen is very busy as always. Uh, we're always got a lot of stuff going on, um, getting ready to launch New site, um, tightening that up. Been going, having a, like, a juggernaut match with Allen about content. So he's gonna have— he's gonna take that by the bull by its horns this weekend and go through the site like a fine-tooth comb. So that'll be cool to, to get that done on Monday, right? Yes, yes.

All right, high five, high five.

All right. And yeah, man. So it's also Cybersecurity Month. We had a podcast earlier this week. If you missed that, check that out on YouTube. It's there for your viewing pleasures. Yes, your ears will very much be happy to hear about all the stuff that we talked about. So if you want to check it out, listen to Spotify. If you want to see it, see our faces, our ugly mugs, check it out on YouTube. That's there for you as well.

Yeah, I mean, cybersecurity. Yes. It's important, very, very important.

And Christmas and all the holidays are coming up, so you know you're gonna be buying stuff.

Uh, oh, hey Christian, shout out to Christian.

Uh, yeah, so a lot of stuff is going on, uh, with the cybersecurity fraud. We talked about that, we touched on that. Um, what was the other one that we talked about? What else? What do you do if you get kicked off a Stripe, Square, and PayPal? So, you know, if you're having some issues with your payment processor at the moment, we have a podcast discussing all the stuff that, you know, what led you up to that point and some things that you could do to, you know, prevent that from happening, prevent that from happening from any payment processor. Exactly. And then Allen's getting ready to go on a trip to Vegas. He's going to be next month. What's what? Yeah, 3 weeks.

Yeah, 3 weeks. We're going to the Financial Brand Conference., which is a conference for banks, and we're going to be showing our—

showing you the money.

We're going to be showing off our new product for banks, a turnkey solution to compete against PayPal, Square, and Stripe, because they are losing tons of, uh, accounts as well. They're losing their mark— people are doing their banking there, but then instead of, you know, they click the button for merchant services and and call, you know, they have to call someone on the phone.

There's no application.

People don't, people don't make that phone call anymore. So now we have a whole process set up. Basically answer 10 questions and you can get approved for your merchant account.

Hit the ground running, buddy.

Hit the ground running. Um, multiple equipment options, no equipment, e-commerce, virtual terminal, invoicing. It's going to be very exciting.

Too much, right?

Gonna be very exciting. So let's get into today's podcast. So, you know, some stuff that was in the news today was pretty crazy. You have this Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, otherwise known as the CFPB, and they basically— there was some bunch of court cases. One of them went to the court in Louisiana, and the judge ruled that they just can't make up willy-nilly rules. About whatever they want to make up rules about, which includes rules for fintech companies, neobanks, payday loans, buy now pay later, and all this. They're trying to make rules for those companies. They're saying, well, there's no oversight over this CFPB.

And who's in charge of them?

Yeah, nobody. There's no oversight. And how can they make these rules? Because essentially those rules are more or less a law, right? Or they're trying to say that it's a law, right? So there's some pushback on that, and it's causing a big problem. And with payday loan companies, buy now pay later companies, consumer finance— like, like companies who offer consumer financing. So let's say you owned a plumbing business or you had a furniture store and someone got a consumer loan to pay for that stuff. Like, they're trying to dictate the rules for all that. And the court said no, like, that's not gonna fly. Like, there's got to be some oversight. There's got to be more than just you guys saying what, what it is and what's not, right? And then on the turn— so that was one story in the news. And another story in the news was it was a big convention out in California. I can't remember if it was in California or Seattle., and it was the, uh, Authenticate, and it was all about moving to a passwordless internet. And so there's an alliance called FIDO, Fido, kind of cool, Rocky, you know, you have a friend named Fido. And, uh, a friend of mine, Dale, was at the conference. I was reading her articles and some other articles about the, uh, conference, right? And then there was some— I saw a company that had some new kind of password that had called— like, it had colors in it. Like, you could turn the— like, you know, let's say your password was ABC123456789, right? Then they could turn some of them colors. Well, that was pretty weird. I don't know how that's going to work, but But I saw something recently on with a few like services.

My password is Brooklyn and BRR, BROOK is green and the LYN is red.

Right, exactly.

And that's, you have to input it.

I don't know how a website could recognize that, but that's besides the point.

That's cool, I guess.

So, but I like something else that I saw. So there's a few websites that I'm on now. I can't remember the names of them, but you put in your email address or your phone number, right? And then it does the two-factor, and then they send you an email or a text message with a 6-digit code or an 8-digit code, whichever, depending on the company, right? And then you use that, and it's a one-time login.

Yeah, I'm a fan.

I'm a big fan of that. I think Everybody needs to change to that because that's way easier than the hot mess I got going on in LastPass and Google Passwords.

I gave you LastPass to organize yourself.

No, no, but I'm saying like I downloaded all my passwords into there last time.

You didn't, you didn't organize them.

No, no, I organized them. But what I'm saying is, is there's a whole bunch of websites that I don't use and there's like 1,500 websites in there.

Gotta go through there, buddy, right?

I'm just saying, I don't want to do that. Everybody switch over to this system, to this thing. This is much better. I put in my, my email address or my phone number, you send me a text or an email, boom, I put the code in, I log in, I'm done. It's a one-time deal and I'm finished. I have some, some, like, I have one for my insurance company, right? I put in my username, I put in my password, and then they still send you a code. Just get rid of the whole password. Forget it. Forget the password.

Yeah, my— I mean, Gmail, my bank.

There's too many.

Every— no, I'm saying all of them. I think more of the like secure sites and apps that you go to have that already in place.

No, but I'm saying skip the password.

I'm saying they already have it in place.

Some of them do, not all of them. Well, yeah, it's a combination. You still have to put your password in first couple of times, right? And then it's just— they need to just do away with it, come up with one system this 2FA thing. Perfect.

The facial recognition thing with iPhone is— that's nuts. I just got a new phone and got an iPhone.

Yeah. Oh wow, you really, you really sold out. Yeah.

Well, I've talked to my— I was telling Samantha, I was like, yo, I've talked to my kids this week, more this week than I have in like 5 years.

So wow. So shout out to Apple. So then another thing that was in the news, this was pretty cool. I saw a news story about it. And then I'll get into it. So it was a news story about some kind of way where you have this one credit card and you could take the credit card and use it. And then somehow in the app, your app will tell you, even though the credit card was authorized by this whatever super credit card, right? Then it tells you based on the back, you know, your balance that you have available on your other credit— on your, on, on your actual credit cards and the rewards those cards give you. It tells you which one you should put the transaction through, but it's already been approved, like tokenized. So then you just hit the button. Oh, it says, oh, use this one, they give the most cash back on restaurants.

That's cool.

So you hit it. So I read the article, I was like, that already exists. I don't know what they're talking about. There's this company— so I watched this guy on Facebook most of the time. Dave Portnoy from, uh, Barstool. I don't even know what it is. Yeah, it's like a gambling thing, right?

Barstool Sports is a bunch of different things.

Yeah, it's a whole bunch of things, right? Yeah, right. He's got a podcast, he's got it.

There's kind of— Football Sports is a company, and then there is stuff underneath it, right?

There's a whole bunch of stuff going on, but the guy who owns it, Dave Portnoy, right, the guy who goes to eat the pizzas, right? So he goes and he started it. Right. So he's eating pizza. So the other day he's eating, he walks out of the pizza shop and he goes, oh, today's podcast is— today's pizza review is sponsored by Curve. So I looked it up. That credit card is already doing what this article is talking about. They're already doing it. They're like, go sign up for Curve and you can get $20 on your Curve account. It's already doing that. You put all your credit cards and And then the Curve thing has it. And then you get— after you do a charge, you open your app and you go, oh, it says, oh, use this card because it gets the most rewards for restaurant, or that's cool, gives you the best deal.

Did you sign up for it?

Not yet. I want to get it because I want to try it out.

Did you, uh, did your son fill out for the— sorry, did your son fill out for the, uh, student loan forgiveness?

He doesn't have a student loan. I mean, your daughter? No, she didn't have any. She had grants and scholarships. That's the one thing I don't understand about the student loan forgiveness. They're talking about, uh, you could get— you don't have to pay back a Pell Grant. You don't pay back Pell Grants. I don't understand that part.

They didn't say— they said if you got a Pell Grant, you get more. That's because you were—

you were— but you didn't—

in order to get a Pell Grant, you have to be under the poverty line.

Not necessarily.

Yes.

Okay, well, I don't know how that works.

A lot of colleges— there's different Pell Grants.

Yeah, no, but what I'm trying to say is a lot of college students, you're over the age of 18, you have no job, you you're under the poverty line.

So most—

it's pretty easy to get a Pell Grant from what I understood.

Yeah.

And so then the other thing, like, the Barstool Sports guy was in Florida doing pizza reviews, right?

I've seen that. So you know that pizza place?

Which one? Willie's? Yeah.

You know, they're— no, I know—

I don't know the place, but I thought it was pretty crazy. I'm watching it, and he usually doesn't get like that technical about the whole interview with the pizza person. Right? So he goes in there, he's talking to the guy. Turns out the guy learned how to make pizzas in New York. He's from Colombia, he's not even Italian, right? He learned how to make pizza. And then he's telling Dave that the reason the pizza tastes so good is because he makes his own water. And he's showing him pictures in his house how he's got a water softener and then some other kind of filtration system and all this. And then he fills up buckets and he brings it to the pizza shop That's how he gets his dough. That's how he makes the dough with special clean water.

I mean, that's how they— that's what they say about the bagels in New York there, because the water, you know. Yes, there's one bagel shop down here ships their water from Brooklyn.

No, they have a filtration system in the Brooklyn.

I thought they said— they said when they first opened that they brought the water from—

no, they put in this crazy— this Brooklyn bagel place, the one by my house closed up. I think there's one in Boca. But they, they have like a huge filtration system in there to filtrate the water, really, to get it to— whatever.

I think we're talking about the same.

We are, we're talking about the same place.

It's got the— it's one on A1A.

Yeah, I think so. I don't know, maybe there's a few people though.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure, like they said, like their thing is like our water's from New York.

Okay, well, this guy's making Willie's Gas Station Pizza at a gas station, making his own water, making his own water, bringing it there.

That's cool.

One guy by himself making pizzas. Dave gave him an 8.1. He said your place is going to be packed. I mean, that place— people are 8.1. He says that's drivable for 1 hour to get an 8.1 pizza. That guy's going to be really busy. Yeah, I follow him.

Yeah, that guy, he— when he likes the pizza and he, and he shouts out places. Yeah, the one guy, he was getting ready to close and he did a whole special on him in New York.

Right.

And because of his episode, it saved them.

Yeah, saved their business.

The other guy, there's another guy who does that with small businesses, New York Nico. Shout out to New York Nico. Um, he goes to small businesses and he's, you know, he's like an influencer.

Shout out to Margo.

Shout out Margo. Hey. And, uh, he goes to these different small businesses and, you know, if they're struggling or whatever, he'll specifically target that business and go do a video and spotlight the owner and everything. And there was this one, uh, like an army surplus store that everyone goes to in New York to get your bags and stuff. And he was gonna— because of COVID he was getting ready to shut down.

And oh, is that the guy that moved— they moved their business to Florida? I don't think so. No, there was another guy similar to that that I watched the whole video on. To save his business, he moved out of New York and they moved down to Florida.

Well, no, that's not— definitely not, because then he— Nico went and did a video, you know. Shouted out the guy and everyone went and bought their bags from him. And so now he's good, he doesn't have to close the shop.

So shout out to Willie's Gas Station Pizza.

I gotta— I'm— that's how far away is that, Juno?

Like at least an hour drive.

Oh, that's not bad. That's north from here.

Yeah, north. Like it's a little north of Jupiter. It's a pretty— it's a good— I mean, maybe, you know, a day trip. You probably get there, there's 20 people in line.

Yeah, no, I ain't gonna be feeling that. Last time I went in Jupiter, I wasn't even that excited about being there.

So then another story I saw on Facebook this morning. Now, this—

no disrespect to people in Jupiter, I'm just saying I didn't know what to do. I'm sorry.

Yeah, Jupiter's cool. Like, you know, the last time I went to Jupiter, I went up there to go see the preseason, you know, the— yeah, yeah, which is fun, you know. The Marlins play and you can see some good teams for sure. So this story really, really, really disturbed me this morning. And I was really upset with the whole thing. But I feel bad for the business owner, I feel bad for the employees. So apparently this happened in Orange County, California. Now I think this is a total inside job, that somebody knew something. That's— I'm going to explain more. So somebody broke into the salon at 2 o'clock in the morning. This is This story, 2 in the morning, and stole the credit card machine.

Okay, the credit card, like their cash?

Yes, the little credit card machine. Okay, stole it. Okay, knew exactly what he was going for. It didn't take the cash, right?

Just turn. That's odd.

Didn't look around for any money, just took the credit card machine.

Then, so he obviously had an agenda.

Oh yeah, definitely this guy had an agenda. Apparently planned.

He was playing this.

So planned. So A lot of these credit card machines can hold what we call multiple merchant numbers.

What is a merchant number?

So each person, each business has their own merchant number. And it sounded like that this salon— it made sense to me. Well, from what they were describing in the news story, it wasn't like too specific. So I have to take like what they said in the news story and then my knowledge of the industry and put two and two together.

So each, each desk, each—

so it appeared that each person that worked in the salon was a merchant, had their own merchant number, and they were all in the same machine. Now we have businesses that do that all the time at a barber shop.

Yeah, that's pretty standard, right?

It's pretty standard to do that, you know, or everybody has their own little square thingy, you know, toggle, like, yeah, dongle, dongle. So apparently the guy took the machine on a Sunday night at 2 in the morning. The machine apparently was not protected— password protected for refunds, you know, for to give a refund. And the guy refunded out of the 17 accounts over $40,000. Now, the credit card— to me, most credit card processors, if they see a bunch of refunds and then those cards don't match a sale, they usually hold it up. But plus, if the guy got robbed at 2 in the morning, that batch is not going— even if they got batched the machine out, like knew how to run the batch and he batched it out, the business owner could have called the credit card company and say, hey, someone stole my credit card machine. But it doesn't sound like he did that.

What time, when did the business owner realize his place?

2 in the morning, that guy alarm went off, cameras were on.

So he didn't stop anything after Apparently, I don't know if they called them.

I would be asking like these questions. Did you call the credit card processor? It said it's Wells Fargo.

And so, okay, keep going.

No, so now the guy refunded all the money to these prepaid cards that are debit cards and then went to the ATM to go get money out. Okay, so, but I don't know, doesn't sound— it sounds a little fishy to me, like First of all, you know, that's not something everybody knows how to deal with, a multi-merchant.

I was gonna say, so like, how did this— so some thief, I'm thinking like, so I run into a salon and I, I'm wanting money, and so I steal this, my— this, this credit card processing machine refund, and I— but I managed to take all the equipment as well?

No, just the machine. You don't need anything else. It's power and plugged into the internet. That's what I'm saying.

But you, you still— he had to be mindful enough, like, oh, I need to— yeah, the power cord, and I'm gonna need the, the, uh, ethernet cord to plug in.

Don't need the ethernet cord, but—

or it's Wi-Fi.

You need at least the power cord.

Okay, so he was— so the thief was mindful enough.

That's why I said it's an inside job.

Get out of here, bro.

The guy knew what he was going—

it sounds to me like he wanted to fire all the people that he had working in his shop and he screwed them over.

Not the guy work— maybe somebody that previously worked there that got fired.

That was nuts, man. Okay, so what did Wells Fargo say they were gonna do?

They're investigating it, which means you're there. But meanwhile, like, money came out of people's bank accounts for the refunds. Like, let's say you were a barber there, the guy whacked your account for a grand. The grand came out of your bank account. I don't think the guy called this credit card processor and said, hey, my machine got stolen. It was not until after, all of a sudden, hey, there's money missing out of my account, which probably happened a couple of days later. I'm just saying, you get your credit card machine stolen, call the cops. Don't forget to call the cops. Call the credit card processor.

Don't even call the cops first. Call the credit card—

call the cops, then call the credit card processor.

I was gonna tell you what to do.

I'll tell you, we had some similar— we had some other crazy stuff like this happen. So we had a place that was a store, and I call the owner up and I go, hey, you know, somebody went in— somebody's running refunds in your store in the middle of the night, and it happened twice over the weekend. And the guy told me that I'm out of my mind, right? And all this blah blah blah blah blah. So we go get the, um, thank God we stopped them both, both the refunds. One was for $1,700, one was for like $2,400. The guy goes and checks his cameras. Guess what? Somebody comes in, shut off the alarm, went into the— went over to the credit card machine, ran a refund, batched it out, took the paper and walked out the door, turned the alarm back on. And they don't know who did it. Wow. Now we found out whose credit card it was. The guy claims he doesn't know who that is, but we don't know what happened. How much is the refund for? One was like $1,700 and change. The other one was $2,300 and change. What did they sell? No, the guy ran the refund. We didn't let it go through.

We're asking like, what is $1,700?

What are they— no, nothing. They don't have anything in the store for $1,700. They never had a sale that big ever. It got flagged at the credit card processor and they called me up. I got a call at like, you know, in the morning. Hey, check this out, we didn't let it go through. So we called the business owner, said, hey, you know, do you know about this? The guy thought I was nuts. I'm like, no. We sent him the records, we told them it was on the credit card machine, we could show the V number, this and that. Now we did reprogram the machine and all that and deactivate just in case, you know, somehow someone was able to spoof it. But the guy did go check the cameras. Guess what? Somebody did go in the business in the middle of the day, 2 days in a row on the weekend. And it must have been somebody that used to work there or something because they knew how to shut off the alarm and they had a key. Yeah, so I mean, we had another case where we had a restaurant—

cold case closed by Allen Detective Kopelman.

We had another one with this restaurant. This one was pretty clever. The manager wasn't getting paid, right? Okay, so the business— so the manager decided, like, on Friday night they batched out— let's say the batch was $1,249.87. So they would batch out the machine, then she'd run her card for a refund for the same exact amount. And she did it on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. And then the bank called and they said, hey, you know, we stopped these refunds, right? And I called the business owner and he said, go talk to the manager. So I talked to the manager and the lady hung the phone up on me. So then I called back and I called the owner and I said, hey, The credit card belongs to this person. We got, you know, because we called back the bank, you have to call up at the right security department, whose card is it, right? I said, oh, do you know anybody with that name? And the guy dropped the phone. It was the manager.

Wow. But I mean, why was he not getting—

I don't know. That's just what the lady said. She called me back and she goes, oh, the guy's not paying me. I go, well, that refund's not happening. We stopped. Then we had another one that was— this one was really crazy. What was really crazy about this one, if I wasn't pushy enough with them, with the actual client, they would have never figured it out. So this is what happened. Somebody would come in to pay and was at a school. So let's say, Justin, you came in, you paid my tuition, $800. For my kid. You said she would batch out the machine, then she'd run a refund for $800 on her credit card. Okay, so one day we call the lady on the phone and we go, hey, you know, there's a lot of— we call the guy up, hey, you know, there's a lot of refunds, you know, the owner, there's a lot of refunds. He says, talk to the bookkeeper. So we tell the bookkeeper. The next thing we tell her, like 3 or 4 times, like, hey, you need to look into this. What's going on? Are these legitimate? Blah, blah, blah. Even the bank calls her and she tells them it's legitimate. The owner— so then the owner calls up, he says, uh, we got to change credit card processors. You guys are way too expensive. I go, what are you talking about, way too expensive? So I go down to his office and then I go get all these— read this list of refunds, right, that this lady okayed, all these refunds. It was a whole page. It was thousands. I don't even want to say how much it was. I said thousands of dollars. We had to sign an NDA and everything, never to mention the name of the name of the place or anything. The— so we get the names of all the credit cards, go down there, show it to the guy. These guys, these people that run, that own the school, they like turned white right in front of me. Like, they just—

everything, the blood just ran out of their face because they knew every one of them.

No, they just saw like the last name. And I said, well, who is that? And they said, that's the bookkeeper. And I said, well, the bookkeeper's name is Cookie, right? And then they said, yeah, but that's her real name. We didn't know her. I didn't know her real name. I just knew that nickname. So apparently she was running all these refunds, whatever. They worked it out.

And she was keeping all the money.

Well, she got all of it refunded. Apparently she had a lot of debt within the company. No, she— how do you—

how do you—

so a parent would mind blowing. It was over like a few months.

I can imagine. Okay, so like, you paid $800, you refund the money onto my own credit card. How can you do that?

You can do it because we're— if we don't see a sale— it's called the match, where the refund matches a sale. So if we don't see a refund match a sale, we hold it, call the merchant up. She goes, yeah, that's fine, don't worry, it's good. She told the processor because the guy didn't want to be involved. He said, oh, talk to the bookkeeper.

Holy moly.

So you got to watch. And I've seen that happen, that same exact scenario, in at least 4 businesses over 20 years.

That's happening a lot.

That exact scenario, it's happening right now, happened in 4 places. And I'm telling you, when I tell you the person did damage, I'm talking about one place I know the person stole over $150 grand over a year. Over $150 grand. The guy stole over maybe a little over a year period of time. I spotted it and I told the owner and the owner's like, oh, we'll talk to the bookkeeping department. And I'm like, no, I need to talk to you. Like, here, look at this. This is not right. You know, you need to look at this. This is, this is a lot of money refunded. Why would you be refunding $100,000?

And he's, he was like, to still talk to the book?

No, I said, I'm, that's it, I'm done with you. Like, here, look. And then finally he went to his accountant and they were like, holy moly. And he wasn't just refunding his card, he was refunding all kinds of credit, all kinds of people's cards. Friends, family. Like, it was a— it was a big— it was—

did he go to jail?

I don't know. I did not get involved. We ended up losing the client because they kind of like— they tried to blame us for—

for it.

I'm like, we, we logged it in. You, you took a phone call from the risk department and transferred it to the guy, and the guy said it's perfectly fine. You can't do that. You own a business. Yeah, we had another one where—

that's what I say. You don't like me saying it, but I'm going to say it. Stop being lazy.

Yeah, stop being lazy. You got to watch what's going in and out of your bank account. Look at your merchant statement. Now, many times back in the day when I used to go door-to-door sales and I would come in, I'd say, hey, Justin, you want to switch your credit card? Maybe you're paying too much. Oh, I never looked at it. And then Justin goes in his office, goes, finds like 3 envelopes that haven't even been opened up.

Yeah.

Hands them to me unopened. I'm like, dude, look at your processing. You have chargebacks, you have this, you have that. And you're— the guy would be like, oh man, I didn't even know about this. No, you can't do that. So here— so let's just get away from that. You have to watch what's going on in your business. Be aware of what's going in and out of your bank account. I don't care how big your business is, you're small, and it happens in big businesses. Big. No, yeah, for sure, all the time. The people who are doing hundreds of thousands of dollars a month It ha—

that's where they delegate that job to someone that they don't know, or they—

doesn't matter if you don't know, you could trust the person. Then all of a sudden, you know, you don't know, they got their kid got into gambling debt, somebody's threatening them. Yeah, you don't know what the— I've heard all kinds of stories in 20 years. Yeah, I bet on that. I mean, we've seen thefts that were small, few hundred, few thousand. To hundreds of thousands, hundreds. One was $400 grand. The guy, the guy, when he found out, he had a heart attack.

Yeah, before you get into new things, Shay, shout out to the sponsor, Nationwide Payment Systems and MPS Printer. Thank you for everything that you do. Check out B2B Vault on all of the streaming networks, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Spotify, Pandora, anywhere that you listen to your podcast, just search for B2B Vault, and I guarantee you we pop up. Please subscribe to the YouTube channel at B2B Vault, the payment technology podcast. Please like and subscribe, turn on those notifications so you get notified for our FinTech Fridays and every time that we post a podcast episode on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Um, if you need a merchant's account, you can head over to b2bvault.info, click a button that says Apply Now. It takes you to Nationwide Payment Systems. There's some questions for you to answer, and you're on your way to making money. Um, follow B2B Vault on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and YouTube.

You can even catch some in the, in the reels, like with Rocky's antics.

Oh yes, yes. And Rocky the mascot is always, uh, well, he's, he's been chilling super hard since you took him to the vet.

Um, yeah, but he's gotten a little older.

Hey, he's aging. So b2bball.info, apply now, hit that link. If you want to get in touch with Allen and myself, there's also a form for you to fill out there. And if you're looking to sponsor the podcast, we're always looking for more sponsors. Show Me the Money, man. Uh, there's a form for you to fill out there as well.

All right, so now I want to give tips for small business, what you can do for the rest of the year, things to look at, things to consider.

Finish this quarter, the final quarter strong.

Finish the 2022 strong and start 2023 strong, right? Because we're working now like on our plan for the end of, you know, the last part of this year and leading into 2023, our plan is in motion. So here, what do you offer at your business that makes your business unique, right?

And it's the very first thing, right?

And concentrate on that. Like, if you make an awesome burger, or you have some— like today we went, we got food from Halal Guys. Halal Guys. And Justin, all he talked about before we got the food was this amazing white sauce.

The white sauce.

The white sauce. Oh, you got to try the white sauce. So if you have something like that at your business, that's what you need to market. You need to say, hey, you got to come in, Pete, get whatever food that you like. You know, we have chicken, we have shawarma, we have steak, we have this, and you get the amazing dipping sauce. The amazing dipping sauce, right? It was really good. And they had some really hot, spicy hot Awesome.

I love that hot sauce.

So shout out, shout out to Allen, guys. And then, you know, look at your technology. You know, is it time to upgrade your technology? Like, we talked to some restaurants recently, we're like, you know, they're complaining. You know, we did a podcast on the 20% tip variance. Then somebody sent me something that I read that said that Mastercard was going to raise it, but there was a whole bunch of exclusions. So I go, I don't know if that's right information. Plus I couldn't find it on their website, so I discount that it was even true. That does it, because it didn't include tap and pay cards. So I was like, why would they exclude tap and pay cards? That doesn't make sense. Yeah, exactly. So it's a card-present transaction. So I was like, no, that can't be. Too many exclusions for it to be true and for merchants to believe that it's True. Right. Because you can't— if it's not blanket across the board, it's no good anyway.

Yeah. And if you still use— I mean, your technology is old and outdated, right? Come on. And also, you need to step up. If you don't have a website, get a website, right?

It's time for pay at the table, right? Do pay at the table. The one— your servers will be happy, turn your tables faster, and your servers will get more tips. Okay. They'll get more tips that way. And also it makes smoother in your business and you don't need one for each person that takes—

that removes the tip.

Yeah, you don't have to worry about the tip threshold and getting all these tip chargebacks because I keep hearing about these tip chargebacks from tons of restaurants. None that we process because we get everybody on tip at the time of the sale. We insist, like, if you're not doing tip at the time of the sale, hey, you're rolling the dice. And that's your problem, not my problem. We can't help you. Like, that's the way you need to do that.

Is that in our contracts?

No, but we just upfront tell them that. What, put it in the contract? No, we just let them know what the risk is. Then they usually go to tip at the time.

I would be like, hey man, you want to sign this?

Switch to it right away.

You want to sign this contract? Tip at the table only, buddy.

Yeah, we tell them tip at the time of the sale. I don't, I don't want to lit— look, when you call me Listen, I have bars, right? It always happens at like every bar or like the neighborhood restaurant, you know, like you go into your favorite restaurant and the waitress is about to have a baby, right? Waits on you all the time, once a week or whatever. So you tip her $100, tip her $100, and then she doesn't get the money. And then we get a call from the restaurant, we didn't get our tip, dude. It's over the 20%. I told you a million times, do tip at the time of the sale, you won't be complaining about any of this. Anymore. And go away.

And for like—

and your customer is gonna like it better. As a customer, you're gonna feel safer.

Like, if you've had a couple of drinks, you don't really want to do the math, right? Right. Like, you're trying to figure it out. Like, I don't want to figure out whatever it is.

I don't want to— it alleviates all mistakes too. What did the person write down? Is that a 2 or a 3?

Because my handwriting is terrible. All right, this real quick, like, this— the threshold thing really enlightened me because there was a lot of times when I would make a tip and when you would go and look at the bank, it's like, man, but I tipped that woman. Like, I know I tipped her.

Yeah, exactly.

You know what I mean? And I mean, not her. I don't know why I always say that, you know what I mean? I know I tipped that person. And, and, uh, you know, it, it doesn't come back ever. And I'm like, you know, when we talked about this, it really, it made one— I'm gonna If I don't have cash, you know what I mean, I'm not tipping, right?

So the other thing is, Justin said get a website, start, you know, offering e-commerce, start doing in-store pickup.

Oh dude, if you have a store and you have a product, a physical product, and you're not online, you don't have a website, how are you even still in business?

I'm telling you, you got to get a website to increase.

How are you in business, Allen? Answer me that question.

How are they still in business?

I don't know.

Some people, they just, you know, depend on the foot traffic. They might have an older clientele, but if you're looking to attract new clientele, it's time to get a website.

The people who have a physical shop and they do not have a website, I guarantee you they're just making it. Yeah.

Okay. The other thing is up your game on social media. Get a presence going.

It's tough, but you know, do it.

Just get a presence going. Post once a week, post once a day.

There's one video I always see on Instagram. Where it's like in the background you hear the person saying, everything is content, everything is content, everything is content. And it is, right?

Like, literally, like, I see people on there, like, they own a dress shop and they dance. It's content. Yeah, it's content.

Whatever it is you can do, throwing dresses in the air and watching them fall, that's content, with some sort of wacky music playing in the background. And put your—

hire a young person and let them do it.

Find your niece or your nephew who has an iPhone, or your daughter, or whatever. Some kid that's going to school at your community college that's looking to get college course credits. Ask them to do some, uh, video for you to post on social media. I guarantee you that your foot traffic or your online sales will increase.

Be consistent. Consistency is key, right? And then cash discount. A lot of businesses call us about this, you know, given your Oh, somebody go in there, get rid of that.

Whoa, that's too much.

Stop posting that. Whoever—

that's on YouTube. Not everyone—

that's on YouTube. Okay, well, we'll delete it. We can delete that. The spam.

Yeah, we can report that guy.

Well, you're getting reported. Cash discount is where you're passing a fee or part of the fee to your customer This is becoming really popular. Businesses are looking at ways to lower their costs, not continually raise their prices. You know, try to get reviews from your customers. You know, really important.

Don't try.

Yeah, ask for a review.

You got to ask for a review. If you're providing—

text—

if you're providing a service for someone, yeah, and you're like at their place, at their— like if you're a service industry specific, this what I'm— for those type of— because those, those type of companies really struggle with those reviews, right?

Exactly.

If you're a plumber or electrician, carpenter, whatever, HVAC guy, air conditioning, you're going to someone, you do a job for them, you know, as you— when they're sending that invoice, yeah, and they get that invoice, after they pay that, set up the, you know, the, the return that they go to. Hey, Write a review for us, right?

Exactly. Immediately.

Because if, you know, you lose their attention, they won't do it. You send it to them 3 weeks later, a couple days later, you follow up in an email, hey, no one cares. It's got to catch them right then and there.

Exactly. The other thing is, you know, if you're a wholesaler, a distributor, a service business, you've got to step up your game and go switch over to electronic invoicing. We can show you all different ways on how to do it. Send out an invoice, get your money collected faster. Don't be waiting for checks all the time, you know, get paid with a credit card, get your money, get paid right away. People go out of business, people lose their job, and then you don't get paid. So get paid right away by using electronic invoicing. People can click a button on their phone. If they got an iPhone, they could use their Apple Pay. They got a Google phone, Google Google Pay. They got a different phone, they can have some other kind of wallet in there with their credit card and pay you. You could even add ACH processing to that, and you speed up how you get paid in your business.

Not only do you get paid quicker, but the customer himself is— it's more efficient for them, you know, right?

They don't have to write a check, they don't have to think about it, they don't need to call you on the phone, you don't need to get the credit card number from them over the phone. Because people— some people think that's a little shady. I don't like doing that. No, no, but I'm saying especially today, everybody's getting used to this technology. So when you don't use it, they don't think you're as professional.

I agree.

As other people. Um, you know, do you offer the latest payment methods? Does your credit card machine take—

or do you still only take cash out?

Right. Do you— does your credit card machine take Apple Pay, Google Pay? Can you take You know, like the different wallets, the different wallets, you know, another, you know, you know, different things.

Are you able to take crypto, right?

Can you take crypto? Do you have pay at the table? Step up your technology game. Technology is here.

Technology has advanced for our benefit, right? And it's going to continue to advance.

But it's also for the safety of your customer, right? You got a lot of people that don't carry a wallet anymore. I went to a restaurant. I've told the story before. I wanted to pay with Apple Pay. They had no Apple Pay. I had to have my friend pay and pay my friend back, you know. And I was going to treat everybody, and she felt bad. I said, no, pay for everybody. I'll just send you the money, right? I'd sent her the money. But I'm just saying, you know, you got to step up your game because what's going to end up happening is all these new payment methods like Apple Pay, Google Pay, tap and pay, and all that— the, the people who are using like that those, those, those, those different types of payment methods, they're more upscale client, they're more technologically savvy type customer. They're also younger demographic, right? So then you're not appealing to that demographic because they're going to come to your place and go, dude, went to that restaurant, what bunk, they didn't take any Apple Pay over there, cash only. And then, or no, no, maybe it was cash only, or maybe it was and then go run over to find somebody had to leave and go to an ATM machine and go get money. That happened to me once. I went to this pizza shop a couple years ago before the pandemic with my kids. We're down where my daughter was here visiting, and I went to— they wanted to go to this pizza shop, and I didn't know it was a cash-only pizza shop. And then when we went there, whatever, it was like 8, 9, 10 people eating. The bill was a couple hundred bucks. And they're like, oh, we don't take credit cards. I'm like, are you kidding me? Like, it's 2000— it's the year 2020, no credit cards. So I ended up going and ripping— so I ended up having to walk over to a bank in the parking lot, get— wasn't even my bank, but I wasn't going to go drive. I saw there was a bank, went over to the ATM, got out whatever the money— got out like $300, went back, and you know, it's a little pissed. I like my cash back and my miles. And, you know, and of course they were pissed because everybody's sitting at the table, people are waiting at the front door to sit down. You're just slowing the— you're just slowing the whole show. And I wasn't the only person. There was 3, 4 people that were like behind me or ahead of me, and we're all going to the ATM going, man, what's up with this place? No credit cards.

So get over yourself, right?

You got to take credit cards today. You got to, you know, and also, you know, like I was talking to a couple of businesses recently and this guy was like, oh, I just take Cash App and Venmo. I'm like, have you looked at the rates lately? The guy goes, what are you talking about? I go, dude, their rates are way higher than credit card processing. I mean, are you kidding me? They're raising their rates up. I keep reading about PayPal, Square, Stripe. And Venmo, all the rates went up because they have to do the same 1099.

You're talking to these people?

No, no, they got to do the same 1099 reporting as the credit card companies now. So it's costing them more money to do business. And then you got to pay taxes anyway. So before, where you were hiding from the tax man by using these P2P payment platforms, they've identified that you're a business. They give— make you get a business. They switch your personal account to a business account without you even— without you even knowing. Then they're taking fees out. One guy didn't even know they were taking fees out. He went and looked. He's like, holy moly, you're right. And I showed him how much credit card processing was. I go, dude, it's less money. You could be doing the cash discount, then it's not costing you any money, just the monthly fee. So I said, you know, it's time to do cash discount, you know, and stop messing around. And also with these payment apps, you get one deposit at a time. So if you have 10 people pay you with Cash App, right? And 5 people pay you with Venmo, you get 15 deposits in your bank account. And then guess what? Your bank only limits you to a certain amount of deposits per month, and then you get charged. So you're paying for this. You, you don't even understand what you're spending until you actually go look at the, you know, the dollars and cents. How much did you pay those companies? And then how much did your bank charge you for all those separate deposits, right? Yeah, I was talking to one guy, he told me, he goes, I didn't even realize that. After he checked his bank statement, he's like, send me the link, I want to apply for credit cards because that doesn't make any sense, you know. Because I got all— he told me because he didn't know that his bank charged them after like 100 deposits. The guy got like 400 deposits in a month.

How do you not know that, right?

And he didn't realize, and then they charged him a lot of money. I don't remember what it was, but he told me it was— he went and looked at his last couple of bank statements, he said it wasn't an exorbitant amount over $100 for sure. Yeah. So I was like, you're paying— people don't realize what— that's why I say all the time, read your merchant statement. I had another merchant recently that I'm working with trying to get signed up for credit card processing, and the lady never looked at her merchant statement. Sent me 4 merchant statements. All 4 statements had different pricing on it. They changed the pricing 4 times.

How can they?

Because, you know, whatever, she probably complained that they charged too much, so they tried a different pricing matrix and a different one. And I told the lady, I go, I, I don't know what to say about that company, you know, why they would do that, how they did it.

It seems pretty shady.

Well, they're definitely not helping the business out here. They don't care. No, I'm just saying they're not helping the business.

That's another thing about Nationwide Payment Systems is that they actually have customer service, um, and they call— you can talk to someone.

So yeah, you can talk to somebody. We have support. You got Allen, you got me. I explain everything to you. Today I was talking to a guy, the guy's like, you're the encyclopedia of credit card processing. That's what the guy told me.

Then dresses like Tony Soprano.

Whatever, I don't dress like Tony Soprano. I don't have on a tracksuit. I, I'll tell you what, I'm gonna go buy a tracksuit. You should.

You should only wear tracksuits on podcast.

On the podcast, I'll get a tracksuit. Yes, I want it. Maybe how about a black tee and a towel?

Yes, yes, you got the gold necklace already.

Okay, you're gonna slick your hair back. My hair? Oh, can we get you a wig? What the guy— what's that guy?

Who is Halloween? So no, no, who was—

oh, for Halloween we should get dressed up as characters and do a podcast from Halloween. I could be Steve Jobs and you can be—

I'll be Babe Ruth.

You'll be Babe Ruth. I don't know. So what was the guy in The Sopranos? He had the hair.

Oh, that guy, he was nuts.

That— there was two guys with the hair, then it was like Little Steven, or what was that guy?

I can't remember.

He played in like the Bruce Springsteen band. Doesn't he? In the Bruce Springsteen band, one of the guys on Sopranos. I don't know.

I'm 42, bro.

You're 42. Listen, you're bald. You can be Stabler from, uh, Law and Order.

Get out of here.

Stabler from Law and Order. Yeah, or you could be Ice-T. How about that? Ice-T. Yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo.

Ice-T's got a full head of hair, bro.

Get a wig.

You can be Ice-T. That's hilarious.

Ice-T is hilarious on, uh, on Law and Order.

I love Ice-T. Yeah, he's cool.

He's cool.

And Ice Cube.

And Ice Cube. They're all cool. All right, so that's today's FinTech Friday. They're all cool. We all— we covered it. We covered a lot of different stuff. It was one thing I didn't get to, but we'll do it on another podcast. No, want to cover some stuff about PPP loans, but we'll talk about that on another podcast. We're going to talk more small business stuff, so You know, if you have a small business, we gave you the small business tips. We'll post them in the bottom. And then, you know, we talked about, you know, being care— talk about cybersecurity. Go check out the cybersecurity episode if you're interested in cybersecurity. You know, I don't know, shout out to Curve. Maybe we can have Curve and the Curve, Curve, the credit card. We'll tag them on Twitter. Maybe they're going to Curve. Maybe they'll sponsor an episode of the podcast.

That'd be cool.

That'd be cool. Or Dave Portnoy, maybe you'll sponsor, maybe you'll bring us a pizza one day for FinTech Friday. Oh, should we do that? Should we get a pizza for FinTech Friday and then do a pizza review on a local pizza shop once a week? That would be copying him. Yeah, we could— we have lunch on Friday, so we could do a lunch review every Friday. Why don't we start doing that? We'll get food from a different restaurant every other Friday. No, we'll do it every Friday. We'll get food every Friday and then we'll do a lunch review. Yeah, it'll be good. We'll talk about how good the salad was, the dressing, the special sauce, and maybe that business will sponsor and send us some free food. Maybe, I don't know. Well, you never know. We're not going to do it for the free food.

We're going to do it to shout out to local business, support the local businesses, right?

To support local businesses in South Florida. So the thing is, keep an eye on your merchant statement, keep an eye on your bank account. That's two lessons that we talked about today, you know, and look to up your technology game in your small business. All right, everybody, peace out. Have a great weekend. Thank you for listening to FinTech Friday. Maybe you're listening to it on Saturday. B2B Vault, we're everywhere. B2BVault.info. You can also text the word book to 954-827-9818, and we'll send you back a link. You can book an appointment, or you just go to the website, book an appointment, and we'll take care of you. You want to apply, go to b2bvault.info, hit the Apply Now button, go to the Solution Finder. It's really cool, it's brand new. And, uh, peace out everybody, have a great weekend. Peace. FinTech Friday! We gotta get a thing