FinTech Fridays | The latest trends in FinTech, Payment Processing, & The NAC 2022 Convention | B2B Vault: The Payment Technology Podcast

What's up everybody, it's Justin live from B2B Vault, the payment technology podcast with your host Allen Kopelman, and we'll be providing you educational information about payments, business, fintech, decentralized finance, and the technology businesses use in today's world. And in today's podcast, it's Fintech Fridays. Hey, it's Friday, everybody. Uh, yeah, it's pouring rain in South Florida, so it sucks. Anyway, uh, yeah, man, at least we're missing that.

Usually by now it's pouring and the internet's off.

Yeah, all week, this whole week, it's just been disaster.

3 o'clock, no internet.

Yeah, pretty much on schedule. Um, so yeah, this week, uh, we'll celebrate that we have internet. Shout out to the internet gods, uh, for keeping us going. Um, yeah, so this week was kind of crappy as far as, you know, getting stuff done around the office. Um, although it was pretty cool because we got to go to NAC 2022, the National ATM Council. Conference thing. It was over at the Hard Rock Casino in Hollywood, Hollywood, Florida. My first time there and my last time there.

Actually, you know, in the lobby, they have this huge fountain that's really cool. Yeah, you missed it.

Oh, well, sorry, you guys needed better ventilation system.

Anyway, I would second that. There was very Everything everywhere you went, it smelled like smoke.

Yeah, if you weren't into cigarettes— well, I'm, I'm an ex-smoker. I quit smoking about, I don't know, so it's almost 4 years now. Um, so immediately walking in there, it was kind of like getting punched in the face with an ashtray. Um, so that was whatever. Anyways, that's not what—

yeah, the NAC show was cool. We actually did a follow-up episode that where we talk about the show and a lot of the products we saw. And then we have another show that we're gonna also put out where we interview some executives from different— 3 different companies.

Yeah, the show, we're waiting, uh, for, you know, the go-ahead from the, uh, the organization to, to give us a thumbs up to post the podcast with the interviews. So sorry that it's not up. For those that we did interview, we did tell you that it would be up sooner than it is, so unfortunately it's not ready.

Hopefully we get an answer over the weekend.

I'm sure we will. I'm sure we will.

So let's dig into some FinTech Friday.

Yeah, once—

one story that I kind of was waiting to see, like, what was gonna— what was gonna happen, you know, with like— because it was like the story came out and then there was no like follow-up news about it. Okay. So is this gun SIC code? So a lot of people don't understand like what that's all about, so I'm going to explain it. So every business has an SIC code, like restaurant is 5812. So, you know, grocery has one.

It's like an organizational thing, right? Right.

And then there's a company or organization in Switzerland called ISO, and they're the ones who assign these codes. And for whatever reason, the world is pressuring them to give a code to the firearms business. So they issued this code, and then finally today I see a story come out— Visa doesn't like it. Really? Yeah, because I don't think— really think people understand, like, why they wanted this code, why the why Congress was pushing for this and other people were pushing for this. Because they're saying, oh, we want to track— like, somebody makes like a massive purchase, right? They want to be able to see that. Like, someone goes in the store and buys $20 grand of guns, they want to know about it.

Why would you not be able to know?

Another— I know, it doesn't make any sense because they have to report when you go into a gun store. First of all, yeah, when you go in Okay, you have to fill out a whole application, you got to get fingerprinted. I didn't know anything about it. I wanted to get like a gun license because I wanted to learn about it. Yeah, a couple years ago. Got it. So you go in there, you have to get fingerprinted, you get a background check, all that. If you want to get a concealed carry, you got to take a class, you got to go to the shooting range, you got to go to the— then you got to go down to the city or the county, and then you got to get fingerprinted by them again. Uh, you record— you know, you can also take out insurance in case something happens, right, and you get sued. There's all kinds of stuff that goes on with, with, with gun ownership, and they report it. So it gets reported to some national database. I don't understand how they don't know who buys. Now, there is some other gun stuff. Like, if you go to a gun show, I don't, I don't know how that's all reported.

Well, the gun show is all private stuff for the most part, right?

But I'm just saying, like, they're not reporting crap, right? That, that I have kind of a problem with.

Yeah, no, it's terrible. Guns— I don't think gun shows should exist.

Well, no, if they want to exist, then they should have somebody there that's reporting the sales.

I don't— yeah, I mean, right. I'm just saying, giant— all those conventions, right? Like dead.

No, no, but I'm just saying they can easily fix it.

Oh, you could fix it for sure.

That's what I'm saying. Just have some, you know, whatever. They're a company.

The company's same process that they have in the store, right, should be the same process at these convention centers.

Exactly. That's what I'm saying. It's easily fixable. All they got to do is make a rule. The problem is, is the, the, the rules are state by state, and that it should just be a national—

I mean, you start talking guns in America, Allen, it's like You're gonna take my guns away? Oh my God, no!

I mean, well, you know, there's whatever. It's a very sore subject with people, but I just want to explain like what, what's really going on with this gun thing. The real thing is, is they don't really care about this tracking thing of the purchases, right? The whole, the whole end game is so that the people who want this SIC code implemented— who did want it Congress, the liberal people. I love how Congress always like, they want to decide like, oh, we want this special code, right?

But the Congress also is like, all these businesses want this Dick Durbin thing to go through too. And I'm looking online and there's no businesses talking about, yeah, let's do the, uh, right, exactly.

That's what I'm saying. Like, there's no people want, you know, people, yeah, we need some stricter gun laws, let's Everybody can agree that code isn't doing anything for that. The sick code is really, uh, is really a ruse for what the real thing is that they want to do. The real thing that they want to do is get this sick code implemented. First of all, to get this thing implemented is going to take— could take up over a year, okay? Because they got to get it programmed into the credit card system, then they got to get all every single one of these merchants reprogrammed. It's not like, oh, it's done, voilà, right? No, it's, it's a big job. It's a huge job. There's hundreds of thousands of merchants in the firearms business. And then companies who have, let's say, like a pawn shop—

and I guess pawn shops, that's got to be such a disaster.

But they also— but I'm saying they would then have to have two separate merchant accounts.

That's what I'm saying.

And all kinds of crazy stuff would go on.

So So like, how does that work for like a Walmart, right?

That's a—

they would have to have a separate merchant account so that when it rings up—

no, no, they would have to have a separate like cash register just for guns, right? Same thing.

Well, they kind of do though, though, right? I guess.

Yeah, they do. But I'm saying they would have to have like, you know, it'd have to be—

it would be its own standalone machine type of deal, right?

It'd be its own standalone merchant account. It wouldn't go in with all the groceries and everything. So the point is That's not why they want it. They want it so that then they can go to the card issuers and say, hey, Justin, you're the president of Wells Fargo Bank. Billy Bob, you're the president at Providian Bank or whatever. We want you to block the— you know, we want you to start blocking that code. So now when the cardholder goes into the gun shop, goes and runs a transaction, they're going to get declined, declined, declined, declined, declined, because they're going to go and try to pressure banks into blocking that SIC code. That's the real endgame.

But why would they want to block the—

because they want to stop gun sales, period. These crazy, crazy people. You know, we would talk about this.

We're speculating here.

Nothing— right, I'm speculating in that you can't— you have to read between the lines, okay? That's my point.

I get it. No, I mean, I actually— I mean, to stop people from purchasing firearms, right? That's what a better way— you introduce a the, the SIC code, the banks— the bank says, hey, we're not accepting this, right?

I mean, listen, there's people, they try to do a purchase all the time. We'll get a phone call, oh, there's a guy here in the nightclub, he's got a Visa card, it won't go through. Then we find out it's some kind of business card, a corporate card. Um, you know, they put a lot of times, like, let's say I want to give Justin a credit card. I could say, Justin, this credit card's only for gas. And it's only for— let's say Justin's going on a, on a business trip for me, right? You can pay for your hotel and your meals, and I can put a limit. Oh, because hotels can't go over $1,000, his meals, each one can't be more than $50, right? Right. So if Justin goes into the restaurant, decides, no, I'm going full out filet mignon, this, that, they go to run his card, it's going to be declined because he's got a $200 still limit. Yeah, right. And it's only a $50 limit. So people don't understand, like, you can do that. Or let's say Justin decides to go into the cigar store and buy a box of cigars with the credit card, it's going to say no, decline, because that SIC code's not enabled on the card. Companies use these cards all the time. They use cards. So it's very easy. The bank could just say We don't want people to buy guns, block the SIC code on a credit card.

Yeah, they get like on a debit card, they could block it too.

They have the controls. They could just go and say, oh, that SIC code, they're not gonna support it.

I'm sorry, but that's gonna piss off a lot of people, right?

And no, whatever, the gun stores will just take cash.

What's it gonna do, stop Bitcoin?

They'll take cash, Bitcoin, whatever. They'll take whatever they can take. You know, listen, there's a ton of, there's a ton of alternative payment methods coming into the market. All these wallets and all this stuff. There's someone's gonna fake— they're gonna figure it out. This isn't the way to— this is just some roundabout way to try to mess with people.

So when I was— when I—

why not just— why not just— okay, instead of like taking this, right, and then trying to do some roundabout workaround to stop gun sales, Why don't you just legislate for guns, actual gun reform, right? And have real tracking, make nationwide rules and all that. But instead they're trying to do this tricky thing here and then, you know, and then do all this social pressuring to the banks. So let's— that's it.

But Visa is very worried about this to the SIC code for guns. Okay, because it's not doing nothing. It's not doing anything.

It's not going to help. It's going to cause more problems.

I think. And then, I mean, at the end of the day, it would be good for companies like us, right? Because we're going to end up getting more merchants.

They'll say, hey, we want to put in an ATM machine, stuff like that, and get money.

Yeah, it's gonna work.

Hey, we need an alternative payment method.

But at the end of the day, it's not going to stop people from buying guns.

I'm sorry. So, you know, Zelle got in a whole big thing with these Zelle scams and there was a lawsuit and all that. So Zelle, they went and fixed everything because I had a problem. I couldn't send Zelle. I had to call the bank, talk to them, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Now I see when I add in a new person to my Zelle, it sends you a text message.

Yeah, I gotta accept it.

Yeah, you know, I'd be like, yeah, you gotta accept it. Yeah, I have to say, oh yes, I added Justin to my network or whatever it is, to my network. So I like that they did that. That's going to save a lot of—

I think that was like a really massive thing in the banking because my, my, my—

oh, they did it everywhere.

Yeah, yeah.

But I'm just saying the banks had a lot of problems. People got scammed with Zelle, PayPal, and Cash App, got scammed. A bunch of companies—

PayPal just sent my wife an invoice for $500 today. Not PayPal, but someone trying to pretend like it's, it's just—

yeah, they try to pretend like, oh, you owe us some money.

Yeah.

And you think, oh, it's some bill.

If I told you how many fake invoices I got, I I told my wife that. I said, you know, I've been getting these for so long, like, I don't even pay attention to them. And she was really freaking out.

No, but I'm just saying, like, I tell people, don't open those up.

Yeah, yeah, don't open it.

Just delete it. You don't know who it's from.

It's not a real PayPal email. You could tell because it's usually— it's like kind of— right, you have to have a good eye. If you haven't been in, like, paying attention to this type of stuff, you probably wouldn't be able to.

Don't open any attachments. We just did a We just did a whole thing about fraud, and then actually a guy emailed me and you. We have to— about that, he's liked that fraud episode and wanted to show us his fraud product. Yeah, I thought that was nice.

Check them out, maybe.

Yeah, so then, uh, you know, so Zelle, they're— they got double-digit, and, you know, they, they're growing because now people feel like it's safer because they took a bad rap there for a while.

Yeah, Zelle was getting They were getting pretty hard news, and they got— hey, Mom!

Hey, Miss Owings! He's going home, he's coming to see you soon. So buy now, pay later, that's all over the news. Oh, this morning I get an email, this one company that was in buy now, pay later called Quick Fee, boom, done, closing up shop. And then I see another, another article citing that Afterpay, Affirm, and Klarna I mean, when I saw how much money each of them posted as a loss, I was in shock.

Yeah, but how much are they made though?

I know, but they made a lot of money. But you can't lose $100 million. How do you lose $100 million and still be profitable? I mean, that's some crazy numbers.

That is— I didn't know it was that much.

Yeah, that's some crazy numbers.

Yeah, $100 million.

Yeah, billions. Yeah, they're posting losses of millions of dollars, laying off employees. And now the—

well, so before you— you know, I was on my way home, you know, I listened to NPR, right? And after, you know, buy now pay later is big in the news, right? Because— and they were saying how, as stupid as this sounds, people don't understand installments, right?

Yeah.

And beyond that, they see a number— like, it's unfortunate, but people can't read, right?

Well, they can't read, they ignore it.

Well, people can read, but I'm saying there is a huge population of people that do not know how to read very well.

Okay.

Okay. So they see this number, it says $25. They click done and then they think they're done, right? But there's really—

well, I think that some of the— some merchants might have some deceptive checkout processes for sure.

That too, right?

That's not correct.

I mean, anyway, on the radio it was just saying like how the younger generation is really getting— but also they're also losing because they're not— they're going to— they're shopping. The younger generation is shopping. But they're not paying the bill because they don't— they don't—

these companies are experiencing a ton of fraud too because people close the cards up. They have these, um, virtual cards. They close the credit card up. They call up the credit card company, cancel the card, and then the card's canceled. Then they can't collect. And then these companies now are starting to turn down deals because, you know, they're putting people on the poo-poo list. And then also they want to start checking people's credit so that on bigger purchases, so that they can— if the person doesn't make the payments, they can put it on their credit report, which they can't do now because they're not checking the credit.

So the decision, like, so this making the money thing, right? So the other day, uh, I bought a desk for my granddaughter, right? It was on Amazon, and somehow I ended up going through a firm.

Right.

I don't know how I did it. I must have like not been paying attention because—

well, there's like all these options. Yeah, checking out. Hey, you want it one time? You want it recurring? I mean, I don't know who's buying a recurring desk.

Yeah, right. No, exactly.

So it popped up on one of those little bullet points somewhere.

I must have clicked it, right? Okay. And it went through a firm and it's only charging me $10 a month to pay for this desk. That's weird that I'm saying, like, how can that company make any money? It's not making any money for me.

I don't get it. So the buy now pay later— I was in a meeting yesterday, they were like, they don't like the people I was talking to. They were like, we don't like it. They don't like it as a product. I think a product has a lot of problems. No, a payments company.

Oh, they don't like—

we're talking about adding it to their platform. They were like, they don't like it, they think that it's a big problem, and there's a lot of—

and I think they have to figure out fraud. I think they have to figure out the, you know, like the— it's like a credit card company now.

Like, a couple of them want people to get like the credit card, their credit card, like the— okay, right, right. You have to open an account with them, right, and then link your bank account up and all that, because that's kind of like how Sezzle is doing it, I think. A lot, a lot of them are switching over to a more credit-based model, and you have to, uh, like put your—

attach your checking account. Yeah, you're, you know, you got to put your account numbers, right?

And they're checking to make sure like it's not a fresh checking account.

Yeah, like you actually have a job, you know?

No, no, like it's not a fresh account, like you just opened it up. Yeah, because people can go online now. We talk about these neo banks.

I can make a bank for anyone in the world right now.

Right, you could open a bank account in 5 minutes. Like neobanks, I just saw in the news, it's $47 billion market and growing at 10% yearly or more. And it had a big jump like the last 2 or 3 years, it like doubled in size, the neobank. Yeah, and there's more and more neobanks coming onto the scene because banks on the corner are closing up because you have all these banks merging. So banks merge together, then that, you know, like SunTrust and BB&T merged to Truist. And then now you go around and a lot of the SunTrust branches are closed, right? The BB&Ts, I see most of them are open.

I was gonna say, not all of them, but over my house still open.

No, I'm saying some of the BB&Ts changed over to Truist. A couple of them I saw, one on my block, it was in this like office building, they closed it up, and across the street was a SunTrust in a nice like freestanding building. So they must have kept that, you know. They must pick and choose like which one had like more customers. Yeah, I was gonna say more foot traffic or whatever, more customers or whatever, a better location or whatever. But you know, that's— but you know what, but I see a lot of banks, period, like closed up banks all the time when I drive, when I'm driving around, you know. So it's just like a cra— it's just a crazy market.

Like we said, we should try to get into one of those and see if they'll let us shoot a podcast in there, both in an old and a closed up bank.

I have to call a realtor or something.

In the vault, inside the vault, inside the vault.

I asked the bank, they said, oh no, we can't allow anybody in the vault.

Really?

Yeah, across the street, to shoot a video. Yeah, my bank where I bank, they said no. They said no, we can't allow anyone to shoot a video in the vault or take a picture. Not allowed to do that.

That sucks.

Well, maybe we can find one that's closed up, call the realtor and say, oh, we want to We wanna— we're thinking about, uh, relocating our business and we want to come.

I mean, you said that that'd be cool to have a bank as an office.

Yeah, we thought about it a couple times. There's a couple of closed up banks and we tried to lease the business and I was like, yeah, we'll put the big sign up, NPS Bank, right? And we'll put an ATM out there and we'll get people going to the ATM. Maybe if it's in a good location.

No, it would definitely work, you know.

And but they wanted too much money for the— oh yeah, the rent was—

because they know, because it's a bank, right?

Well, I told them, I said, we're not a bank. But that didn't matter. They were not interested. Not interested in, uh, they want a lot of money.

That—

a couple of places are still empty. They're still for lease or for sale, you know. But You know, the banks— as the banks start to close up, it makes for a big opportunity for these neo banks. And also a lot of young people, you know, they look at it like— and I haven't talked to like my bank. I said, oh, I can open up a bank account online, right? I don't even need to go to the bank anymore. But that's only because they know me. If they don't know you, they don't let you do that. So then people that don't want to go to the bank, they're going to these neo banks, or they're just banking with companies like PayPal, Cash App. I mean, I, you know, I just advise everybody, make sure wherever you're keeping your money, it's like—

back in the day, do you remember the Rush card? The Russell Simmons card? Yeah, people still use that. Yeah, yeah, that's still around.

I know, that's FDIC insured, I believe.

Oh really? Yeah, a lot of cards, because he went through it too and he had to fix all that, right? Yeah, when he got in real big trouble.

Yeah, a lot of companies had to fix that, like Robinhood and uh, oh yeah, Coinbase and a lot of those companies holding people's money. That'll get like some— that'll get approval and all that to be doing like the savings accounts and all that. But listen, you know, you can go put your money on Robinhood, they're paying 2%. That's a lot more than a regular bank. I saw some other bank, online bank, paying like 3 or 4%. I just like never heard of them. I was like, I don't know. I mean And that's just on a regular account, not even on a CD.

Really?

Yeah. I mean, the banking business is getting interesting. Like, one of the things that we saw at the ATM convention and the speakers, they were talking about, you know, open banking is going to come, and then you'll be able to go, let's say, to the ATM machine, have a scan of your check on your phone, then go to the ATM, any ATM that accepts deposits. And basically deposit that check on the ATM, right? Even though it's not associated to your bank, but it's still going to go to your bank.

That's just nuts.

So, you know, we're going to see a lot of, a lot of stuff.

That stuff, the, the technology that they was showcasing at the, that, at NAC was—

yeah, some of the other stuff was pretty cool too. We saw these like cash recyclers a little bit expensive, but when you think about it, do you— if you eliminate, like, the— for a strip club, yeah, or any kind of nightclub where you have a lot of cash and you want to have— and you want to keep— you don't want to go to the bank and keep changing bills and all that. If you put the right procedures in place, you can control all the cash in your business, literally control all of the cash. Yeah, control the cash, and then And then, and then that way you wouldn't have to go to the bank ever because, I mean, you would just have— no, you would just have that amount of cash and it would just be flowing around in the business and you would just be recycling it and counting it and it'd be organized. And then when someone went to the ATM, they could get out money in multiple denominations. You wouldn't have to be giving people change, so there would be less cash handling and things like that. I mean, they invited me to, you know, Payment Alliance and Yosong invited me to come out to their facility.

They literally said, you got to come to Houston, to Dallas, to Dallas. Yeah, and we'll put this whole thing together.

They want to show me like how it actually works. So because I was like, yeah, I'm gonna have to make some kind of video and show it to a client and go, hey, do you want to put this in? Because it would be pretty awesome, you know.

I can see how it works for a major, you know, like dance adult entertainment Yeah, any kind of nightclub, really.

Any—

because I mean, clubs, they really spend cash.

Yeah, people spend cash in clubs.

I mean, I've spent so long, so I really don't know.

I'm not a lot, and I'm not a cash guy either though. Yeah, well, it just depends on the people. So, you know, we, we shot our first episode with guests, 3 guests. We're also looking at inviting a couple of them back for their own episode, and we, we're hoping to get this, uh John Rose from the House of Representatives, the Financial Committee. We're going to be calling him up soon and inviting him to come on the podcast and working on a couple.

So Dick Durbin as well.

We're hoping maybe if we get John Rose on, then he could help us get Dick Durbin on.

I mean, we'll see. Durbin, he's going live every day. He goes live every day, right?

Well, he can go, you know, he should talk to us.

He should.

We want to—

it's just an open dialect, right?

We want to explain dialogue, what he's trying to do, and explain to him what the real— what's really going on with the credit card business. Because we don't— I don't believe that he really understands how the business works, that there is actually competition in the business. And I, you know, explained that to, to John Rose anyway. We're— yeah, we're gonna take—

we're running out of time, trying to, trying to get it, trying to keep it under 30 minutes.

Yeah, we're trying to be 30 minutes today. So thank you for listening to the podcast. Follow us on shows, on social media, @B2BVault. We're everywhere— TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. We're all over the place. We're on all the podcast networks. Also on YouTube. You can also hit me and Justin up. We're both on Twitter. Can Twitter us, can ask us a question, can go visit the website b2bvault.info. You can request a picture of Rocky. He's on our, on our social media doing funny stuff.

He is.

So now he's sleeping, being a good boy. The last podcast he was barking. At the rain and the thunder.

Yes, he was.

So everybody have a great weekend. If you're in Florida, stay dry, stay dry. Yes, stay dry in Florida. Looks like crazy rainstorm, it's gonna be this weekend.

And terrible.

Watch for the future episodes coming out on B2B Vault. Thank you to all our followers. Peace out.

Peace.

You should get with some