McDonald's Opens New Fast-Food Chain, Amazon Drops Venmo & $10k Air Jordans Found in Donation Bin

Yo, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the Biz to Biz podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by this guy, the Zohan of payment processing himself, Allen Kopelman. And in today's podcast, we'll be talking about some payment technology, uh, payment tech, payment trends, technology trends, uh, some other interesting, uh, business news that we, uh found intriguing and thought we might want to share. Uh, anyway, how you doing, sir?

Doing good. Rainy day in South Florida today.

It's cold. I woke up, my house was like 56 degrees. I was freezing.

Yeah, it's raining and cold. Rocky hates it.

Yeah, I don't like it either.

Yeah, so it's crazy weather. We're supposed to have rain like the whole weekend.

I thought it was supposed to end today.

I don't know, they canceled a bunch of stuff over the weekend.

Ah, it looks like a hurricane.

That's not—

I mean, the outside, it looks like there's a hurricane. Oh yeah, like there's a hurricane coming. I said outside, like outside it literally looks like there's— it's just— yeah, it looks like, like hurricane season all over again.

Yeah, it looks like it on the map too. It's just one massive rain system.

Yeah, yeah, I haven't looked.

And it's in the Gulf, but it's—

I was on my way to work this morning and it said, uh, um there was a flood warning for Broward, and I thought to myself, oh, we're—

this is weird.

It's like December, this should be over. We shouldn't be getting flood warnings right now.

Yeah, it's crazy to have. And, you know, and it's not even raining that hard. It's just raining. Where's the water coming from? That's what I'm saying. It's just nuts.

Where's the flood? Yeah, it's not really raining, but that's what I'm— that's like I was, yeah, you know, they're talking about coastal areas obviously, but in my neighborhood, thank God, you know, it's been chill. Not a lot of flooding. So that's good. That's good.

It's a good thing. Yeah. Yeah. Not like, remember that, what was that, like a week ago when we were leaving work? It was probably about 5 feet deep out in front of the office.

Yeah. I was worried about my house when I, but when I got home it was all good.

Yeah. It was weird. It was just all, in this area.

Yeah.

Saw a bunch of cars stuck on the side of the road. Yeah. They tried to go through the, you know, the—

what people try to go through water like 2 miles an hour. It's not a good idea.

Yeah. But also it's very deep, like on the corners and by like where the road dips.

If you don't know how to drive, don't, don't drive in the rain.

Exactly.

Yeah. What else? People in South Florida don't know how to drive in rain.

They should. They need to learn.

They put on their flashers, dude. Like, I don't know. I get it because people are afraid of hydroplaning and stuff, you know. Like, yeah, but you know, you don't have to do 22 miles an hour like you're on ice. I don't know. Other than that, this week, uh, I've been doing a lot of stuff, uh, technical SEO work, I guess you could call it, on the site. I've been, um I've been really frustrated with, uh, our score for mobile when it comes to, um, page loads, PageSpeed Insights, uh, GTmetrix, etc. It's decent, it's just not like high 90s like I want it. So, um, there's a few elements that are out of my control that we use, specifically the form that, you know, I complain about constantly. So, uh, yeah, so there's that. I don't— there, there might, um, you know, I don't know how I can work around that. There's no other workaround that, so I might have to just be happy with where it's at. And, you know, that's okay. So that's been my week. I've been Yeah, there's just a lot of stuff that, you know, that you neglect, right? You neglect to take care of because there's other pressing things that need to be done. So I've been taking care of some technical housekeeping. Housekeeping, very much so, definitely.

And it's also crazy because like this week, all of a sudden, like my email is like completely overloaded with Oh, the new Google algorithm. Oh, the new LinkedIn algorithm. The new this, the new that. All of a sudden, every— at the end of the year, everybody became an SEO, website marketing, social media, and LinkedIn marketing expert.

Well, they're gearing up for the new year. I kind of would do the same thing. I would make a push at the end of the year, like making— being very active. It's just a, you know, that's an industry-specific thing that You know, around this time of year, people, one, we're broke. Two, we're looking for new business in the new year. So hopefully while people are looking around over the holidays, they have some time off, you know, they might notice something that you posted, etc. So I mean, that's a great marketing tactic. But yeah, man, I'm super tired of SEO people reaching out to me to do SEO, bro.

Like, I, oh, I get it too. I get like 20 a day on LinkedIn for SEO. Oh, I looked at your website, a new website, and sales.

Yeah, LinkedIn paid ads. It's like, yeah, I get it because they're doing what we're doing, you know. They're just trying to get business. Yeah, I get it. But speaking of Google, I'll hop into what I was going to talk about because we're kind of on Google's jockstrap right now. Uh, the first thing I heard about Google was that their new AI that they released, Gemini, beats ChatGPT, uh, 30 of the 32 tests.

Yeah, I saw that where they even said Bard is better than—

yeah, but the new one, Gemini, um, the, the release. But then I was reading online that Google faked the video, so Who knows what's really to believe about this whole AI and, uh, what they're really planning on releasing. Um, I think artificial intelligence is going to be great. And then kind of segueing into more AI, did you watch the video about with the guy from— what is his name— Sam Altman?

Which video? I saw a lot of videos.

No, the new one. He was talking about what happened and his—

no, I didn't see what happened.

Well, I didn't watch the whole thing. I just— I was reading a brief description about it. You know, he talked about it. He finally talked about it. Um, so, you know, that's something we should watch. Uh, then they were saying about how they're going away from the AGI model to the ASI model, which is super intelligence. And that's just really spooky to me. It gets really, you know, it turns in— I don't know if you're an '80s baby, you grew up watching The Terminator.

Oh, exactly. That's all I was gonna say, Terminator stuff.

You know, it's definitely Skylink, or, or I think that's what it was.

Yeah, yeah, took over the world.

And so like You know, the Sam Altman guy, when I was looking at him, I'm like, you know, he's a little scary. Little— he looks like the same guy that was running. Oh yeah, you know, like he's like a perfect, uh, puppet.

Well, think about other movies like Will Smith, I, Robot, right?

That was a good movie too.

Robots take over.

Did you see the new, uh, uh, robots from Tesla? Optimus.

Oh, they got a robot now?

Oh, they've always had—

Oh yeah, I've seen that.

Yes, a new one though.

No, I haven't seen that.

So I mean, you're, you're going into a bunch of juicy stuff, like you're just throwing out keywords and I'm catching them like, you know, Mickey Mantle would. Um, anyway, better yet, catching them like Yogi Berra. Um, so the, uh, the guy from Saw, we talked about that. What did you just say?

What did I just, about the robots? The robots. Optimus robot from Tesla, you said.

Ah, I had something I wanted to say about something else, man. You've just been getting a bunch of juicy things.

Well, there's a lot of stuff going on with that. And then, you know, Google's in a bunch of trouble with their, all of a sudden I read they're discontinuing Google Podcasts. And then they're in a major lawsuit over stuff going on in the Google Play Store.

They lost. Yeah, yeah, that's great for developers, for game, game, you know, people like game houses. I don't know what they call them anymore. Game Studios, right? Gamer Studio, like the people who are creating those games and, uh, apps and stuff like that. Because, uh, basically they were saying that Google had cornered the market and created a monopoly, and was people developing apps and, and games were having a really hard time getting, their stuff.

Yeah, not only that, people were cloning a lot of games too, and they weren't really doing much about it. And I think—

I know, I remember what I was going to say. Tesla also had to, uh, um, recall almost 2 million.

Oh yeah, I saw that, of his cars with the self-driving.

That guy's just— yeah, I don't know if he's being railroaded or whatever. It just sounds kind of coincidental that that's happening at the same time when he told everybody to go fuck the themselves. So I don't know, because they were also saying, because Joe Biden went, you know, they took his tax credits. We went over all that. But, you know, I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know the guy personally, if he's a good guy or not. I don't know what he does with his money.

Elon, come on the podcast.

I'd love to talk to Elon. It would be interesting. Um, I would love to hear his perspective and, and his stories. I have some questions about what it was like you know, like, right, how, you know, what his plan was in school. And like, you know, because, you know, it's a lot of stuff that I— and then my last thing that I had, that is more business-y related. Google will— is about to turn off third-party tracking for Chrome users. So like, They're basically trying to make it more private and secure, your brow— you know what you're looking at. And so I guess 1% of all of us are going to get, you know, will be like beta users. And then at the end, in the middle of 2024, they're going to launch it. I think it's going to— it's really going to benefit, you know, people who run ads, and it's going to clean up, uh, you know, what you want to see.

I see. Like, I got it.

You don't want to be browsing the internet and seeing a bunch of stuff that you don't— that's not— that doesn't equate to you, right? Like, you want to see stuff that's— you're always going to— oh yeah, I could use this, or, you know, this service, or this, this, and this. So, you know, hopefully that'll help straighten that out.

I noticed that they updated Chrome the other day. Did Did you get that?

Constantly, every day.

And then all of a sudden at the bottom of it, it's showing like, oh, you went and looked on these sites. Do you still want to buy all this stuff?

Oh, really?

Yeah, a whole— yeah, there's— yeah, I scrolled all the way down. It was like— I was like, wow, that's pretty wild.

Yeah, I know. They're trying to update the search bar in the left. If you have tabs, that's kind of— yeah, I like that. That's cool.

And the other thing that I like that they added was on the right-hand side, you could click bookmarks and then punch in a few letters and find, you know, easily find, like, if you have a lot of bookmarks like I do.

They have a search in the bookmarks now?

Yes, sir.

I didn't check that out.

Yeah, that's pretty good. I like it.

So like, Allen had a couple good ones, man. Uh, the first one that he's, you know, shout out to all the sneakerheads out there.

The sneakerhead? Yes. So somebody apparently was at a, uh Burnside Shelter, operated in Portland, Oregon by the Portland Rescue Mission. Some nice person walked in on—

on a volunteer—

was found— a volunteer found it, but somebody dropped it off.

Well, someone obviously donated it, but yeah, a volunteer working for the place, yeah, found the $10,000 gold Air Jordan sneakers that were worn by Spike Lee. Well, I don't know if those were specifically worn by Spike.

They only made 3 of them, right?

Because I seen a— I, I Googled the, the Grammys picture.

Yeah.

And that was the Grammys when Samuel L. Jackson like lifted him off the ground and he was like a little kid.

Yeah.

Because, you know, Spike's, you know, right, kind of short. But shout out to Spike Lee, man. Do the Right Thing, baby.

Good movie.

All these movies are good. I like them all. I've never watched a bad one.

But they said they only made 3 pair of these gold Shoes. And then somebody from, I guess, the shelter— the shelter found them. Then they called some guy who was an expert who came over, the guy who designed them, right? And he authenticated them.

Yeah, he gave them a— he gave them a new box.

Yeah, and a plaque. Yep. And a picture and a bunch of stuff. So that was pretty cool.

They said it's gonna probably sell for like $20 grand.

Yeah, it's gonna— Sotheby's auction.

That's cool.

Yeah, that's pretty cool.

What you got, man? What you got? What you got?

So, you know, I was trying to find something kind of funny, so I saw a thing about podcasts, and I guess these people were shooting a podcast, and the guy— one of these guys are in Australia, and while shooting the podcast, a snake appeared in the back I think it would have been more fun.

Like, for me, I didn't find it funny. I thought it would have been more— because right away I read the top, the, you know, it was the guy was in Australia.

Yeah, right.

So it's like anything big or slimy, slithery, bitey, sharky, like, I, you know, stuff that'll kill you. Yeah, I assume it's from Australia.

Oh, okay.

I mean, not assume, like, most of it, like, when you talk about stuff from Australia, like, that stuff is gonna It's very large, you know what I mean?

Well, I mean, they have kangaroos, panda bear, not panda bears, koala bears.

Well, other than that, everything else on that island will kill you.

I guess. Well, that guy was, you know, just randomly outside filming. He didn't care. Yeah, he didn't care for a minute. Then it got close and they go, ooh, and the guy apparently jumped up and got out of there.

You didn't watch the video?

Yeah, he didn't care at first. He jumped. He jumped when they said there was a snake.

Oh no, he didn't.

He didn't jump, he just sat there.

He literally sat there and he said, I don't have a name for him yet.

Oh, oh, I thought— well, there was another part of the video I saw, the guy like got— oh, I think he got a little shocked. Listen, my daughter's been on air before and then, you know, spiders drop down in the studio.

I believe it.

That'll scare you too.

Quick service restaurants doubling down on kiosks. What's that about?

So what that's about is, is like all of a sudden, like all these 3 large, 3 or 4 large Burger King franchisees are going all in on kiosks. So they're putting out, they're committed to putting out thousands of kiosks. Really? Burger Kings, there's a bunch. Like companies, you know, like there's companies and they own several fast food restaurants. So they— there was 3 of that, 3 different companies. One was doing Burger King, another one did Burger King and Shake Shack, and the third company had some Burger Kings and some KFCs. And then they polled people and asked them why they use the kiosk, and they said— customer said when they're in a rush to order, it's easier to use the kiosk.

Yeah, I mean, I get it. When I took my kids to, well, yeah, I guess it was, it was McDonald's.

It wasn't Burger King. McDonald's has had kiosks for a while.

Yeah, that's right. It wasn't Burger King. That was a long time ago too. 'Cause now none of my kids eat McDonald's.

And they said— Hands off. And they said other people said it was easy to use.

Unless it's the spicy chicken sandwich or something they have.

Spicy chicken, yeah, when they have a special item. Or they have, you know, people said they got to look at the menu options better 'cause they could see the pictures. And then talking about McDonald's, so there's this whole story going around about McDonald's coming out with a new concept called CosMc's.

Cosmics. Yeah, Cosmics. Yeah, I was talking to you guys about this. Yeah, um, my mother-in-law lives in, uh, Bolingbrook, Illinois, and they're about to open one, right?

So nobody knows where it's going to be, if it's going to be in Illinois. Now it's rumored in Dallas.

Well, I just told you, it's— they— I seen that. Yeah, it's going to be opening. There's one opening up in Bolingbrook, Illinois for sure. I don't know where else they're all opening up. But for sure there's one. They have the whole store.

Oh, that's cool. Yeah, so I was reading about it, and then if you go to the website cosmics, c-o-s-m-i-c-s.com, and the about page, it's pretty funny. They have like a fictional story about an alien committing corporate espionage. I don't know what it's like, very I guess they're going for some kind of, uh, alien theme.

Well, that's cool. And yeah, I mean, they're talking about this is going to be the Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts killer. That's what they kept saying.

Yeah, that's what—

yeah.

And then it— and then somebody else compared it in another article to some place called Dutch Brothers, which has drinks.

I've never been to Dutch Brothers.

Well, I looked it up. The closest one's 169 miles away from here.

So, Davenport, Florida.

I don't think we're gonna drive there to try a Dutch Brothers. No drink, but you know, it's interesting the kind of drinks that they're talking about, you know, frozen— looks like a lot of frozen concoctions and slushies and lattes with whipped cream and everything.

I mean, this is gonna be what every— I mean, I, I don't drink any of this stuff. Kids? No, like women and kids.

Yeah.

Women and kids. Yeah, yeah, I could see that. But this is, this is a great idea. I don't— I'm gonna have to look at, uh, what's the other one called? Dutch Bros. They say they have a similar— it says, is McDonald's just ripping off Dutch Bros? The answer is a firm no. Dutch Bros might have a strikingly similar concept and menu, but it doesn't have an over-the-top space theme, an elaborate fictional backstory about an alien committing corporate espionage. So nobody else is doing all that. Whatever. Maybe none of these drinks look at— like, for me, it all looks gross.

Yeah, nothing I want to drink.

I don't drink coffee and I don't drink slushies and I don't eat or drink fake fruit. So yeah, that'd be a big negatron.

It'll probably look cool because the pictures look cool, like it's outer space theme, alien theme.

Absolutely. I mean, I'll definitely have to try to, you know, maybe they have a stop—

maybe have a robot handing you the coffee.

Maybe they'll have like a cup of tea for someone that's actually like— that doesn't want to have diabetes after they leave.

It's like when I go into a coffee place, I go, I'll just have, you know, regular coffee.

They look at you like you're nuts.

You're like, oh, that's it? But, uh, well, last time I went into Starbucks for a business meeting, had to meet somebody out, you know. I don't like going to people's houses. Oh, there's a Starbucks near where you live, meet there.. And, you know, I got a regular coffee and bought that guy coffee. It was $9 for 2 regular coffees. It's crazy, man. I can buy a bag of coffee at the grocery store for that.

But you can get 2 bags of coffee for $10 sometimes.

Yeah, when they have a good BOGO.

This was interesting, the Amazon drops Venmo thing.

Yeah, and I didn't know— did you know that Venmo— PayPal bought Venmo?

I know that Venmo sucks.

Well, I'm just saying, I didn't even know that PayPal bought Venmo in 2020.

I don't know anyone who still is using Venmo, bro. Like, they make you— they keep your money for days.

I don't know. I don't— I've had people ask me, oh, can you—

that's not peer-to-peer.

I said, get some Zelle, man.

The Venmo doesn't— it's not immediate.

Oh, it's not? I don't know.

I don't know. I, I've never been like Venmo'd money and been able to get the money like when I need it.

No, somebody tried to Venmo me one time and I was like, what are you doing? They're like, oh, Venmoing you. I'm like, don't send me any Venmo. I said, I don't even know what that is. Put— get Zelle.

I just like literally had a shouting— I had to yell at someone about, you can't tell me how you're going to pay me.

Exactly.

Like, dude, I am doing a service. I sent you an invoice. The invoice has a link. Yeah, you use however payment method you want from that link, but you're not about to tell me that I need Venmo. So you— that's no, absolutely not. A major big stop, full stop, sir. Like, I'm not doing that. Like, pay the invoice, right? It's a simple thing. I don't know what to tell you.

Yeah, I don't know what all this— like, people—

are people able to like load credit card money onto their Venmo has a card because apparently it said with Amazon, Amazon's going to let people put their—

take their Venmo card and put it in Amazon so they can pay with Venmo still.

Oh wow.

So, but I don't know, this PayPal Pay in 4 keeps popping up when I check out on Amazon.

You have to have a PayPal account, a card, right?

I don't have that. I don't know either.

Yeah, it's just like On every e-commerce site, PayPal is like, I guarantee you they're just biting their fingernails trying to figure out how to keep up, right? Because these e-commerce people who run e-commerce sites are starting to figure out that they don't need PayPal, right? You know what I'm saying? Like, they don't have this like their only option. It's not the only thing out there, right? Especially people who are doing like big business, you know what I'm saying?

Like, yeah, they're starting to be like, oh, they're learning more about the business, how it works, fees, rates, etc., interchange, We were talking about that yesterday, you know, you know, people got to get off this flat rate thing and, you know, right?

And that's when they're learning about like PayPal and Square and Stripe and etc., all those, you know, the name, the big three, you know, you know.

And the other thing is, so how does this—

what do you—

but when you say Amazon drops Venmo, well, they had a direct way to check out with Venmo You could just pay with Venmo, so they took it off the page. No more Venmo.

But they're still able to use their— if they— if people— okay, so if people still have a Venmo card, right?

Because it's a Visa card or a MasterCard.

I just thought it was a digital thing. No, no, I didn't even know they have a physical—

yeah, they have a physical card.

Like PayPal started off and PayPal started—

okay, yeah, PayPal is a physical card too. It's a MasterCard, I think.

Why was people— why, what was the big incentive of Venmo, man?

People avoiding to pay taxes, you know, like, you know, now they have— so, you know, they changed that whole law, you know, with the $600. Now they're talking about they want to lower it to, to $300. Then they, they put— now they said for this year that all the companies, the Venmo, the Zelle, the blah blah blah, they have to report anybody who did $20,000, took $20,000 through those services or did 200 transactions. So, and then they want to lower it to $5,000, right? And $300 transactions.

Right.

And I don't know why they just, you know, they're just, and if you took personal money from people, like let's say one guy, You know, I sent to my brother, he had a, his family had a wedding, right? So everybody wanted to chip in 'cause they didn't have a lot of money to spend to make the wedding, right? So he got hundreds and hundreds of people that sent him money through PayPal or something. Now they issued him a 1099.

So now he's got to get, well, that was just a very, very dumb decision.

Right, so now he's got to get letters from all these people saying what the money was for, that it wasn't a business transaction, because he got a 10— he filed his taxes, then he got a bill saying, oh, well, you took $30 grand through PayPal. Well, you gotta pay tax on that. Absolutely. Right? So now he's got to get letters from all these people so that he can prove it.

He's still gonna end up having to pay taxes on some of that money.

I don't know how that's gonna work out.

Yeah, I don't think that's gonna work well for him.

But all this peer-to-peer money thing, the government's trying to kill it.

Well, they don't like it. It'll never happen, right? They'll never be able to kill it.

No, they're not going to be able to kill it. They're just going to tax it.

But how can you tax giving?

They're trying to say they can't do that.

It's— that's bullshit.

They're trying— I know, bro, you—

that isn't utter bullshit. I know that's gonna be when the Civil War movie comes to life.

Well, that's, you know, a whole nother story.

Yeah, this one made me— this is funny to me because for anybody who's out here giving your DNA to people—

carry on. Oh, so, so 23andMe had a data breach. Now, data breaches, you think about, oh, they got my credit card data, but it's much worse than that. There's been a whole mess of data breaches in the past year where Hospitals got breached, universities got breached, other companies got breached, and they're able to get like your name, your phone number, your email, your address. Well, now your blood type, and then they know who your relatives are too. Yeah. So that's kind of weird because sometimes when you apply for stuff, they want to know who's your closest relative. So now you can make a fake close relative. Yeah, right. I could say, oh, I'm I'm Billy Bob, whatever, Billy Bob Bing Bong, right? No, this is my relative, you know, Jimmy Jong Sing Song, right? And, and then give them that phone number and it's all verifiable and looks legit, but it's not legit. I mean, we got a fake application today. The guy was so— the corporation wasn't even active on Sunbiz. I was like, the guy spelled his own name wrong. The driver's license looked fake and the check looked super fake.

Yeah, man, I mean, I, I get people are— can want to know where they come from, and it's dope, like, like, for sure, like, I, I agree, you know, like, but I don't trust it. Can't trust it. I just hear Flavor Flav yelling at me, don't trust it.

No, but now, like, they're probably going to get sued. And they said originally it was only 14,000 people were affected, but somehow the hackers got through a back door into their system.

7 million. So probably everyone that's ever been—

yeah, tested by 23andMe.

I'm pretty sure my dad is in there.

That's crazy. I mean, that's just a crazy story.

There's a lot going on out here, man.

Yeah, there's a lot going on. There's a lot going on. And so one last thing, a business thing, is they got this new crazy law which I didn't did a video about, a solo video about the— if you have an LLC, if you have an LLC, you need to talk to your lawyer or talk to some legal professional because they want anybody who has an LLC to go to the FinCEN, F-I-N-C-E-N, which is the financial arm of the government that checks stuff out. And they want you to register your LLC there. Then they want you to— you have to list all the beneficial owners of the LLC. Okay. So they're trying to catch people who are doing shady stuff, you know, because they don't— when you have an LLC, the only person who really has to sign anything is whoever the managing members are. But now they want to know who all the owners are of these LLCs.