Monthly WrapUp December 2022 | FinTech | Small Business | Payment Processing | B2B Vault: The Payment Technology Podcast | Episode 136

Yo, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the payment technology podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by this guy, Allen Kopelman, and we'll be providing you educational information about fintech, small business payment processing and the technology businesses are using in the world today. And in today's podcast, it's our, uh, Payment Technology Monthly Wrap Up where we discuss all the different podcasts that we went over this month, uh, any, uh, news that may have came in that we didn't touch on and, uh, stuff like that. So let's hop right into it, man.

All right, what we got going? You know, we discussed a lot this month. You know, we were hopeful, like with the Safe Banking Act. You know, it looked like it was like going on, like going in to happen, and then they put the kibosh on it.

Of course they did.

So another kick the can down the road situation on that, which doesn't make any sense, uh, to anybody. At this point. And then at the same time, we have Visa sending out emails through all the banks saying that they're going to fine businesses up to $50,000 per machine on the cashless ATMs. And I heard about one, uh, place that got a $350,000 fine. Whoa.

And, uh, what were you waiting for? Huh, what were they waiting for?

Like, just— I mean, there's still places that are using these cashless ATMs, and it's just, it's basically just a matter of time. It's a ticking time bomb, and that's smart. So that was, that was kind of like one of the biggest stories going because everybody was pretty hopeful the SAFE Banking Act was going to pass, and that didn't. Yeah, a lot of people who checked out the podcast for that And then, uh, yeah, it's, you know, cannabis has been one of the one subject that everybody likes. I mean, and, you know, we talked a lot about cryptocurrency in 2022. Cryptocurrency was like a big roller coaster for a while.

I mean, last month especially, right?

But I'm saying the beginning of the year was a hot topic. People— oh yeah, accepting cryptocurrency. Crypto was at an all-time high, close to $50,000 to $70,000 a Bitcoin. These guys were— there was an article we talked about where these were young people that nobody ever heard of were showing up at nightclubs in Miami, right? Showing up at hotels, showing up renting yachts and boats and luxury cars with crypto, and all paying with crypto. And then it dried up. It went from millions of dollars to, you know, nothing.

To bankruptcy.

Yeah, dried up to nothing. You know, the Miami Arena was named that— was, uh, named with the FTX, you know. And then the whole FTX debacle, and who knows what's going to happen.

Yeah, maybe the Smash Bros might win.

Yeah, there was a few interesting, like, porn companies that proposed— two porn companies proposed the naming rights on the Miami Arena. They got the bread, they got the money to do it. Yeah, they definitely have the money to do it, but who knows if that's going to happen. And then, you know, we have, you know, a bill in Congress that's covering digital assets, and in that bill it talks—

you're going really fast.

Okay, I'm going too fast?

Yeah, yeah, no, no, I'm just saying, I mean, it's good, but we didn't really talk about We talked about FTX, we talked about crypto this month, but what do you think about— what do you think is going to happen to good old SBF or Sam Bankman-Fried?

Well, I mean, if it was up to me, they'd throw him in jail and throw away the key. But I think that there's going to be a serious audit. I mean, they already found billions of dollars hidden in bank accounts. They found billions of dollars in Japan. Yeah, it was interesting because I read about, uh, Japan and what they do. And then the other crazy thing that happened right after Bankman-Fried, they announced his arrest, the guy from Binance took all his US assets and moved it offshore.

So the thing that— I mean, I showed you that article about the Japan thing, right?

Right, that's what I'm talking about.

So in that article, what caught me by surprise right away is how come America wasn't doing the same?

That's what I said to myself. I'm like, why is it that. So I—

they literally figured out the answer, right?

So let me explain what they did. It says they put a law in place that because crypto exchange—

before—

buy 3—

so let— yeah, because there was 3 major companies that all went bankrupt and all these people lost all of their money.

Yeah, lost millions of dollars. It was into the multi-millions. So then they separated it and they basically said, oh, on the exchange, this is where you buy and sell your crypto, but the crypto could not be held at the exchange, whereas in the US all the crypto is held on the same place except for kind of Coinbase.

Coinbase has a very small difference.

Yeah, but they have that wallet, but that's still controlled by Coinbase.

Yes. And, you know, and they figured it out though, I think.

Sort of, I think. Well, we don't know anyway.

Keep going.

So the, so the thing is, is that they require in Japan for there to be a separate company and it's basically treated like a bank.

So like, I buy the crypto from you, it immediately separates the two, right? One, the company doesn't have the crypto anymore, and then it puts the cash in a totally different separate account that this person who's selling the crypto cannot touch, right?

Yeah, it's held like at a bank. Yeah, that's what they called it, like a bank, like secure, right? Secure was in like a bank. Like atmosphere.

Yes.

And I don't know, you know, when you see like solution like that, you say to yourself, how come like the US just does— just doesn't enact that?

I mean, I say that a lot of different things.

Well, no, it's like I just don't understand.

So yeah, man, but they're the only country that has that.

Nobody else has that.

I'm so—

and the other thing that I also read in that article, so was that, that like even if you took your coin that let's say you bought on Coinbase or you bought it on FTX and you moved it off of there, or you downloaded the serial numbers, right, of your coin onto a, let's say, an external drive, they're no good because the FTX still had the record.

No way.

Yeah, so those coins are no No good.

FTX has had so many shady things going on. Yeah, what I was going to ask you guys, I'm interested in hearing about Alameda though. I— it's like FTX was this big thing, right? Well, for it to be like, look at me, but over here, down below, down here— well, that was all his research company was doing all the other shady, shady stuff. And I want to see what's going on. Like that little— what's that woman's name?

Well, she turned state's evidence, her and another guy.

What does she know?

Well, she's the one that was running the books and everything, supposedly. We'll see what she knows. But they found— they found billions of dollars of Sam Bankman-Fried's money in one of those Japanese accounts.

Yeah, yeah. Which they're saying that might be enough to pay back some people in the American—

well, look at Mr. Wonderful, Kevin O'Leary, testified in front of Congress, and he just like you know, whatever. He just couldn't understand it.

That guy is the truth anyway.

Well, I'm just saying, it's, it's, it's kind of, you know, and then they're suing all these influencers. Now I agree, if the influencers were getting paid—

are you talking about the NFT guy?

No, no, I'm talking about the FTX influencers.

Oh, the FTX.

Yes, there you go. Influencers. There's a whole bunch of stuff going— everybody's getting sued with crypto. So the, the FTX influencers are getting sued, and then they tried to throw Shaq in there, and he's like, no, they just paid me to do a commercial, right? So he's like, I wasn't an influencer, you know, they paid me to do a commercial. But these influencers, they actually were getting like millions in stock. They were getting like stock and stuff to influence people to buy the coin, to buy the FTX token, which now is not worth any money. But, you know, there's, there's this digital— and then what was the other thing that you just mentioned?

No, we were talking about the Alameda.

Yeah, the Alameda. And then all the companies that bought 140 or 150 companies, right? And then ridiculous amount, right? But we also discussed how those companies, like that one company Celsius. Yeah, definitely has some kind of assets because they were loan— they were, they were taking money, they were staking crypto., right? And then they were letting people buy houses. So somebody owns all those houses. Ooh, I don't know. Like, if you— you know how it worked was, let's say you had 10 Bitcoins worth, right, $70 grand. So that's $700 grand. You wanted to buy a $500,000 house, they would loan you— they loaned you the $500 grand and they kept your crypto, and then you were making payments on it. But then the crypto went down to $20,000 So now your $700 is only worth $200 and you owe $500 on the house. So they just kept your crypto plus you owed another $300 grand.

That's insane.

So I don't know who owns all these houses, you know what I'm saying?

Yeah.

And that's, you know, there's going to be a whole mess to uncover because Sam Bankman-Fried, Alameda, FTX owned all these companies and all those companies like they bought that other company that was also staking crypto, Voyager. Was staking all that crypto and loaning money to Bitcoin miners. So there's property, you know, out there that they loaned money for, those Bitcoin. Remember when we went to the Bitcoin? Yeah, of course. And they had like those massive, like, uh, shipping containers full of those computers and everything with air conditioning and all that money. So who owns that if they didn't pay the money back? Somebody owns it. Whoever's controlling FTX, like, owns all that.

There's got to be so much equipment, equipment around New York right now. Can you imagine all the abandoned, like, warehouse loft apartments?

Well, why would they abandon it? They have the equipment. They don't have to make a payment to anybody until they figure out who they have to pay.

Well, they need to just find a big abandoned warehouse of mining equipment in New York because of the—

I wonder who belongs to. Yeah, well, New York did a crackdown on that. They started busting people for running the Bitcoin miners.

They found a couple of abandoned ones not too long ago, right? That's pretty cool.

But now they put all these— they have this bill, they're trying to put all this anti-money laundering, uh, requirements on all these crypto companies, which includes crypto exchanges, anybody that was processing cryptos and, you know, exchanging it for fiat. It includes Bitcoin ATM machines and all the companies involved with that. I wouldn't want to be dealing with that headache right now. Those companies are all scrambling around to get like audits done, nothing, things like that. Who knows if they're going to meet the deadline for the audit because it comes up by like February or March of next year. That's coming really quickly. So that could cause some of these crypto companies to go out of business if they can't get past the audit.

They're dropping like flies.

Right. Well, a lot of them are closing up now. They're saying, oh, we're bankrupt, you know. So it's going to be, it's going to be a big, you know, it's going to be a big, a big, big, big mess. I don't know, you know, but I still see a lot of— and then you talked about the NFT, right? Yeah. So then there was that whole thing, the Bored Ape Yacht Club, and then that guy bought CryptoPunks, and then the SEC came and said, oh, that's an investment because You were inducing people to buy these things and then they would multiply, therefore making it an investment. And now all the people are getting sued for that. So there's a whole list of celebrities. Justin Bieber, Snoop Dogg, Snoop Dogg's getting sued. Oh, I don't even know. There's a long list of celebrities between the FTX.

Yeah.

And that one's got Tom Brady and his future ex-wife on there. As, you know, probably on the top of the pile. Plus Mr. Wonderful, he was promoting it too.

Yeah, he said he lost like, what, half a billion?

Yeah, so like— no, like 5—

like $125 million.

Yeah, some crazy number. I was like, oh, that's insane.

It's a lot of money to be playing around with.

Yeah, that's a lot of money to play around with. And, uh, well, you know, listen, supposedly he's totally loaded, but, you know, we don't know the whole thing. Another— so that's just all crazy.

That was just in what, December we talked about all that?

Yeah, all of that basically hit the fan.

Like, I mean, last week I meant not—

yeah, but I'm saying like all of that basically hit the fan like in the last 30 days for sure, you know, just like boom, just dropped the bomb.

What is the CFPB?

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Oh, you had—

and they're supposed— yeah, and they're supposed to be protecting consumers, you know. And it's a whole thing going on because the courts are saying that they don't have the power because it was created out of thin air and it's not really funded by Congress. So who knows what's going to happen with that, if they have power or they don't have power.

They should not have power. They're not—

it's just a bunch of people, right? But I'm saying they're like self-appointed, like it's like it's some agency that was just created out of thin air.

Sorry, Ladies and gentlemen, that's not how this works.

But I don't think that the, the, the Congress, you know, the financial committees in Congress, House and the Senate, which we will invite anybody from that, those committees, everyone that's on the Democratic Party, you should have been receiving an email from Justin at MPS Bank around, uh, 1:30 Eastern Time. Please take a look. We invite you to all come on the show. Come on the show.

Yes, we do.

We'll talk about credit card processing, crypto, whatever you guys want to talk about. We have suggestions. Can I say something? Yes.

Thank you guys for being so accessible. I really appreciate it. It was very easy to email all the Democrats on that list, and the Republicans, you guys did not make it easy. Um, unfortunately, I cannot contact you because I do not have an area code or a personal PIN Yeah, I know.

I don't like that on some— it's on, it's not—

it's on every Republican's website that I went to. It's not on any Democrat's website.

That's weird. I don't know.

Yeah, I'm sure it's probably the company that they chose. Like, the Democrats chose this company to build their website, and they, you know, so that's just—

I've seen it on a few—

a little layer of security. They don't bother me. That's really messed up though. I mean, because you can't send that person an email.

That's not right.

It's not.

It's wrong.

It's terrible. But whatever, carry on.

Yeah, I've seen it on other congresspeople that I've reached out to of both parties that have that. If you don't have the— if you don't have a zip code in their area and their security code, yeah, and they— and you have to have some kind of like neighborhood code. Yeah, yeah, some kind of code that they send you so you can't get on there.

And then, um, The Giving Project, that was cool.

Yeah, so we had a lot of fun with our Giving Project. We got— went out, visited a bunch of charities, and we made them all happy. So that was, that was a cool podcast. Save the Sea Turtle Foundation, the sea turtles, the Equine, which is a group that, that has veterans and Special needs, special needs children come out and they get horse therapy.

Or people with special needs, right? Not just children.

No, not just children. And veterans.

And veterans.

And they serve a lot of people in the Broward County, South Florida area.

And what was it?

And then we went to the Chabad of— in Chai Center in Coral Springs. We helped the Chabad in North Miami. We helped to— or Yov and Pal in North Miami, where every year, um, and we've participated in that a few times. This year we participated in a big way because each child gets a $100 gift card at TJ Maxx and then goes in and gets to buy clothing.

That was really cool.

So we helped 50 kids.

Nice.

So that was nice that we got to do that. Participate and go out and visit the charities, talk to the people that run it, run those charities, and, you know, help them with all their— all the things that they get to do. And we're looking forward to participating in some cool stuff this year, like going out to the equine and spending the day with them.

I would like to do that from afar. Terrified of horses.

Well, we can clean like the trail. Definitely not cleaning Well, we can help them like clear off— they clear off like the brush.

I'll help someone get out of their car.

Okay, like we'll take you to— you keep going. Why don't you go make cotton candy for all the kids at the kabod? How's that?

As long as it's vegan.

It's vegan cotton candy, sugar. That's all it is, spun sugar. And then, uh, joking. And then we're gonna go hopefully see some sea turtles.

Hatch next season, this season coming up, whenever that is.

Right. And then we talked about— this is a really good, you know, I thought this was an informative podcast, but how to thrive during a recession. And I kind of related it back to things that happened during the time that I've owned this business. 2001, we had bad economic times. 2008, 2009, we had bad economic time. And then the beginning of, you know, the COVID which was like 2019 or 20—

2019.

2019, you know, and how we, how we ended up surviving. I'm true—

I'm 99% sure that I caught COVID in 2019.

Oh, I had it at the very beginning.

Yeah, I know for sure.

And we talked about, you know, you know, it's not—

it's not before it was COVID though. That's right.

That's what I'm saying. They didn't know what it was. Yeah, you had the bad flu.

Yeah. So I was hallucinating. I'll never forget that. That was like one of the worst. I've never been that sick in my life. I was so like, so fever, so bad.

Like, I was not pleasant. Went through the office then. And, uh, you know, start thriving during a recession. We talked about, you know, it's time to take bold action. You can't just—

what would be considered bold action to you? What would be something someone could do right now to shake up their business and the, you know, their industry?

Um, definitely look— well, we talked about, you know, being aggressive with, with, you know, buying product that you think you can sell. Like I said, like, let's say you owned a store and, you know, the— everybody's suffering up and down your supply chain. Right. So let's say—

what does that mean though? What is he— what do you mean by that? Did they suffer?

Right. So I'm saying like the guy who makes these bottles needs to sell the bottles, right?

But why is he suffering right now?

Well, because the economy slowed down, right? But maybe there's an opportunity in that. The opportunity could be that this company is willing to do a deal, right? You're gonna buy 10,000.

Allen's got 10,000 water bottles, right? And he's usually— he sells them at $10 apiece, right? But I don't want to buy all 10,000. But it's a recession, right? So he's sitting on these 10,000 water bottles.

Maybe I have them for too long and I have more coming from China.

And he's like, what am I gonna do? I got no room to put this stuff. So he's got to— what? He's got to chop the price in half, right? So now you can get that same 10,000 bottles at, let's just say, $5 apiece or $6 or $6. So it'll be in your— you know, if you sell a lot of these in your shop right? That's a great opportunity for you to double up your, your, you know, your profits, right?

Take advantage of it. You know, like, we had a client and I was telling them, like, they buy half a pallet of water bottles, right? So I said to the guy, you should buy a full pallet. The company selling the water is offering a discount on the other, you know, if you get the full pallet, it's only going to cost you a couple hundred dollars to get double the water. They're gonna say, I don't have room for for it. I mean, I would make—

put it in my garage. I would do— I don't know, I don't know.

I would get creative and where to pile it all up. But yeah, I'm just saying, it's, uh, you know, because—

and those are two really vague ways, right? I mean, that's just for—

yeah, but it could be anything. It could be anything you're doing. Maybe, you know, maybe there's a trade show and the trade show is not selling the, the booths out. Maybe there's a deal for the booth You know, maybe it's time. Okay, we haven't done a show in a couple years. Let's spend some money and do a show. Let's do, you know, let's do whatever. Maybe you've been holding off on hiring employees. Okay, let's hire. We need to hire somebody.

Redesign the site. Redesign your website.

Your website, that's a big deal. Up your, you know, up your technology game. Like, oh, we just had, you know, maybe we need to do, try some different types of marketing, text message marketing, email marketing, whatever it is that you haven't done, you know, you got to try to do that.

Thinking outside of the box right now is really important, right?

And the other thing is, and I think every business should do this, if you have a business, you have a retail store, and you don't have a website where you're selling, even if you're only selling one partial, you know, part of your products, right? Yeah, you need to have a website that has your products on it. You need to be selling it online. You need to have the— you need to have in-store pickup, curbside pickup, and a way for someone to get it shipped to them, because all the big stores are doing it. So if you're not doing that, they're going to go somewhere else where they can get it. It's the same thing with restaurants, right? Restaurants need to get curbside more. Yeah, they need to have curbside pickup. You know, all I would tell you is like delivery, like I don't do— I'm not a delivery— I don't like to do delivery because— and use like a third party, that's terrible. And a lot of even places, like my son got a pizza recently and like he goes, oh, I just get pizza from Domino's because all these other places they don't have enough delivery guys, so the pizza comes and it's always cold. Because the guy goes out to make like 10, 10 other times, 10 deliveries. Not, you know, I always—

I mean, for me, like, deliver third-party delivery, if, if the restaurant didn't have delivery, right, then the food shouldn't be delivered in the first place. Like, it's not going to travel well, right?

Well, they need to make sure that they take items off the menu that won't travel.

You would hope that's what the restaurant would do, but they don't do that.

No, they should, you know, they should figure it out. And also, like, I saw a restaurant recently that's near my mom's house. So they built this restaurant and then it's surrounded with apartments. So the guy took a few tables out and then he has meals that where it's, it's like already in like packages. Yeah, but it's packaged up for you to like put it in your freezer or bake it right away, bake it in the oven.

That's smart.

Or some of it's even raw.

That's really smart.

Like, the steak is raw, then you can cook the steak and how you want it, but it comes with like all the veggies, all the fixings, right? So you can buy—

I like it.

And you can order it in advance.

That's just super smart.

And they have it in the fridge and you just come get your box out. Oh, here's my box. I ordered 2 steaks, I ordered potato, I've ordered this, and then you just go get it out of the fridge. And he got rid of a bunch of tables and put that in Allen Kopelman. And it's doing good. Yeah, it's doing pretty well because people live in those apartments and they need to get— they need to eat, they need to eat, they need food. So it's a way for them, it's something different, you know. And it's walking, you know, it's like a walking area. They made it so you like walking there, right? There's no grocery stores in walking distance, so that guy's sort of like the, you know, like neighborhood meal. And you want to prepare it yourself, or you want to go throw a few things in the freezer.

I saw right away, right away, while you stay and all that, I just see an opportunity for him to set up like a small farmer's market area in this place where he could probably make some—

no, he has that too. Like, they have vegetables and everything.

Like, that's— yeah, he's smart, that guy's— he's trying to win.

Yeah. And I saw another restaurant that I go to, and they offer— they call it frozen TV dinners. And they have frozen dinners. And then you can buy, like, if you get 10, you get a discount. And that's good too, because, you know, someone's busy, they can get something. Single parent. Yeah, single parent. Or you got extra meals for your kids.

Someone's meal prepping, right? There's one— you're talking about the take-home thing— there's a pizza spot over in Oakland Park called Times Square Pizza. Guys from New York. He makes baked nastagioli. That you can take home, and I really suggest you go try it.

Okay, well, we should get food from there one day.

It's far.

Oh, does it do a pick?

It doesn't pick up, but it's gonna be a little chilly, a little— I don't know how that's gonna travel. Okay, so you'd have to go and sit down. Okay, well, you could definitely go do that.

We could make a field trip.

You would, you would catch me eating pizza.

So then the other thing we— so, you know, technology is the great equalizer. It can make a small business seem much bigger. Yes. I can't— I can tell you, like, I'm gonna tell you a crazy story. So I had a friend of mine, Tom, okay? And Tom called me up one day and he's like, oh, you know, because I'm gonna sell these blades, these round blades that spin around. And I go meet him at his house. And he's got like a 2-bedroom apartment and he's got all the blades piled up in his bedroom. What do they do? They cut like tile and—

oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And they just spin around like for miter saws, right? So, so he's selling these blades right out of his house. He made this like really cool website and he's in there, he's just selling stuff. And the guy was doing like, you know, he started doing, you know, a few thousand dollars a month, and before long it was 50 grand a month, it was 100 grand a month. He had to move into a warehouse.

But who was he getting these saw blades from?

He was buying this stuff from like China. No, not from China, from some other country. I don't remember which country, like South Korea or something.

And they just had an excess of saw blades.

Yeah, he was buying them in bulk and then he would— and then, and then he would sell it with the, with the device.

I have so many questions.

What made him decide to sell saw blades? He just thought it was like a niche market. Nichemarket. It was underserved, like people needed— how did he come about this conclusion? He was— he saw somebody that was doing the bit. He saw— he heard about somebody doing the business, and then it's hard to get these blades. They're like really super expensive at Home Depot. So he found this way to import them and then sell the same blades they were selling at Home Depot that were like $25, $30 a piece. He could sell like 5 of them for that price because he was buying so many of them. It was crazy.

Is he still doing that?

No, he did that for quite a few years though. It's a crazy business.

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

And then we talked about how much do you really pay for merchant services, and we're working on like a little worksheet that people are going to be able to download, and then you'll be able to fill it out, and then you can find out what do you really pay for merchant services. So that was another hot topic. You know, people always ask me, oh, how do I figure it out? I try to tell them, it's just one easy formula. You just take what you paid and divide by your sales, and then that percentage is what you paid for merchant services.

Pretty simple equation to me, right?

It's pretty simple, but people don't understand because they look at their statement, they don't know how to read it, they don't know how to derive that— what did they actually pay? Because Not every merchant processor gives you extremely transparent statement to read where you can decipher it. I believe me, I've gotten in fights with plenty of people on the phone. They send me a statement and I go, no, that's not what you paid. You paid way more than what you're looking at. You need to add up this column, then you need to add up all of this. That's the total, then divide it. And then they find out that they're paying 5, 6, 7%. Credit card processing, and then they're mad at me because—

so what's the equation?

Divide how much you paid divided by sales.

So on the bottom of your sheet, there's about a total of what you paid for that month, right?

Right. Well, you have to check because let's say you're on daily discount, they take money out daily. Well, you got to add that up, and then all the— so you have to look at all the expense columns on the statement.

And add all your expenses up, right? Divide by sales, divide by your total amount of sales, and that'll give you the answer to how much you actually paid for merchant services, right?

And then you also— and then the worksheet that we're going to make is you also have, uh, junk fees. Junk fees, you need to know what those are, what the junk fees are, and add those up too, because, you know, there's ways to get rid of that stuff. Stuff, right? So you need to know what's going on with that. And then another, you know, topic we talked about, which was pretty cool, was we talked what the eff is a merchant account. And we basically explained what that was. And we talked about— we made a little TikTok, and Justin said, oh, what's the difference between a merchant account and a bank account, right? So a bank account, that's where you, you get your deposits, and you need a separate bank account for your business. And then the merchant account—

why, why do they need a separate bank account?

So that you can set— you don't commingle your funds like Sam Bankman-Fried. I don't want to laugh.

I mean, I was commingling funds for many years and I didn't understand what I was doing.

And then you overpaid taxes too because you didn't have a way to deduct your expenses.

Absolutely, I overpaid taxes.

No, because you were paying on the top line not the profit, right? And if you have separate bank account, then your expenses can be accounted for. Therefore, you say, oh, I made $50,000, I had $20,000 of expenses, my profit was $30,000. Now you're only paying on $30,000. You're commingling, you're paying on top line, right? Because you have no way to prove your expenses because you commingled.

Don't be coming—

don't commingle your funds. And then the merchant account is where— that's how you process your payments. And then they deposit the money into your actual bank account. So it's not— it is a bank account in a way because it has a number. You know, you have a merchant number, but the money is only sitting there for, you know, minutes, hours a day, you know, depending on your deposit schedule. But, you know, so they have to have somewhere to put it. And then it goes right— as soon as it's ready, it sends the money right to your bank account. It's just traveling through there.

When this is done, I have a question about the, uh, invoicing software, how that works as well.

Okay, so basically that's what we talked about. What's the difference between a bank account and a merchant account? So we explain that and we go in, you know, we talk about, you know, it's the merchant account is your conduit to get paid. And then you wanted to talk about how does invoicing work as far as—

well, okay, no, I was talking about specifically for our platform, right? So, so after I've sent the email invoice, right, now what?

Oh, the person has to click on it and make the payment, right?

And then they make the payment, then what?

Then the money goes in your bank account the next day immediately.

I don't have to do anything else?

No, you don't have to do it. It's all automated. You just have to make sure on the invoice you wrote in there what they paid for. You always want to include what did they pay for.

I mean, like the items, right?

Yeah, whatever it is, the item or the service or whatever specific, not just a blank invoice. Hey, you owe me $1,000. Hey, Ken, right? I'm just saying, because I don't know if I'd be happy receiving that invoice. No, but I'm saying like the rest of the thing that's good about using invoicing on our platform is the risk department has access to the platform so they can see if Justin sends an invoice out and he writes in there, oh, this is for website maintenance, blah blah blah. They know what Justin's charging them for. If Justin wrote something in there, oh yeah, by the way, dude, you owe me money for whatever, some illicit thing, they're gonna go, uh, no, no, no, we're not doing that.

We're not paying for that.

We're not paying for that, right?

We're gonna take that off of here.

We're not going to let it process, right? Right. They're going to return the funds. So it's important, but it's important because like we have— and the other thing that's good about the invoicing is you can also message the person back once they pay. You can drop in like your Google review link or whatever you're using, Trustpilot.

How much does— how much do we take from—

it's 2.9%. Out of the invoice.

So when you receive, you get a net— you get a net payment, and then minus 2.9%, right?

But you'll be able to see it because when you see the— that the person paid, you'll see it, the settlement, and then you'll see in the payout section, it'll show you how much fees you paid. And then at the end of the year, you can run a report, how much fees did you pay for the year, and deduct that from your taxes. Because you did pay the fees, you know.

It's like 30 bucks. Like, what is it? What's 3% on $100?

$3. Yeah, $3. So I said $30 on $3,000, but it's—

but it's—

but it's very— huh? That's $30 on $3,000. Is my math right? $9. Why am I adding the extra 3 times 3? Oh yeah, no, so that it's very efficient because then you can also message with the customer and say, oh, thank you for paying in the message.

Can they pay with a credit card? Yeah, like an actual credit card.

It doesn't have to be a debit card.

No, it's like PayPal, you know, you can't take credit card.

Well, some accounts can, some can, right?

But the majority is not. They're not allowing you to take credit card, right?

So you can pay with a credit card or debit card, but you can also communicate back and forth. So if you're doing invoices, let's say you want the person to leave you a review, you put the link in there. Hey, thank you for paying. Would you mind leaving me a review? Then they could leave you a review.

So, and now their invoicing stuff is really nice. I've been— I've sent my first invoice. All right, yesterday.

Congratulations on that platform. So it makes it— but it makes it easy for you to have communication with your customers.

And I killed my PayPal indefinitely.

So, Rafferty, PayPal, you're dead. You're dead to me, bro. And then we also talked about this past month about digitizing your business for 2023 and what does that entail.

So we talked about, you know, you kind of mentioned that a little bit, right?

We talked a little bit about technology, but this was specifically about social media, Google, having a Google My Business page, getting reviews for that page, update your website, which we talked about, tech update, you know, marketing. So we're always looking at different stuff. Like, we were just experimenting before with looking at a couple of different platforms where you can scan this code, looks like a QR code, but it's an augmented reality code., and then you scan— the person can scan the code, and then let's say they have to— then they have to point their camera like at your business card, and then it can make a video play.

It's pretty cool. When R2-D2 broadcasted Princess Leia and telling them to come and save me, right?

So that's pretty cool. That's a pretty cool thing. So we're looking at a couple platforms and seeing how we can incorporate incorporate that into our marketing.

I'm excited to see how, um, augmented reality, um, comes into the fold. You know, it's still rather young. Um, people aren't adapt—

you know, that adaptive to it yet.

Um, there's not a lot of ways that we've been able to—

we're trying to get—

use it, right?

We're trying to get— use this because we're trying to get attention to our platform, right? So let's say we hand out a postcard and we say, hey, put a little instruction on there. Find out more about our product, scan this code and watch the video. They'll be able to scan a code, they won't have to go to YouTube, they can watch a video about the product. So it's that— that's pretty cool. I mean, you know, and it's not that expensive. And we're looking at a couple platforms to see which one would work, you know, which one of those best— well, which one is going to be the most cost efficient, bang for your buck. Get the most bang for your buck. I always say whenever you want to buy something and you're not sure what vendor to use, check 3 vendors minimum, and then that way you can learn about a product that you never bought before. It's good advice. Yeah, when I was a chef, I learned that. Like, oh, you're gonna buy— my boss said to me one day, oh, we have to buy— you need a new oven. So I don't know what— uh, you know, there's a lot of—

start—

well, no, I was like, I never bought an oven before. Right? So gonna spend like $20 grand on this, you know, fancy oven, these 4 big ovens, right, for the kitchen. It's like $20— I remember it was like $20 or $30 grand, right? Wow. These 4 massive convection ovens. So I was like, oh, you know, how do you figure out what— which oven to get? So, you know, we sub— called 3 different companies, had the sales rep come out Oh, which, which brand of oven do you carry? What are the, the features of the oven, right? What are the features? They're all basically the same. Then it came down to like what, what we really wanted was we wanted to make sure— well, a lot of, you know, when you put stuff in a kitchen, you know, you don't necessarily want to put stuff that you can't move, right? So because there's a lot of stuff in the kitchen that you can't move, then it makes it hard to clean or whatever. So we wanted to make sure that these oven— these ovens had wheels, wheels on them. And not all the ovens came with wheels. They're big wheels because, you know, obviously they lock in place. But, you know, sometimes you got to clean the kitchen or whatever you're gonna do, or maybe you're gonna rearrange the kitchen. I won't be able to move these things without getting a forklift. This is not something that you can move. Now, some items are really, really big, like a steam kettle, right?

Yeah.

Okay, well, that's got to be bolted down. There's steam, there's— it's actually, you don't— and what's used to surprise me is like, you don't see those in a lot of kitchens anymore, these steam kettles. It's actually really, really super efficient because—

what did you— what would you use that for?

Oh, to make like soup. So, so instead of a steam kettle, what's really crazy is instead of using like electricity or gas, was really efficient. You turn this thing on and it was hooked up to the water, and the water heated the pot up, right? So super hot.

I know exactly what you're talking about, right?

And, and it was way more efficient even though you're using gas to heat the— you know, to— you know, you're using the, the water is going into the, the, into the inner—

yeah, but you're already using that steam for some anyway, most likely. That steam is hooked up to your— right, it's hooked up to the—

it's hooked up in the building. Yeah, but it's very, very efficient, you know, and our bills were very low.

Melt your face right off too.

Oh yeah, so what I'm going to tell you, it was incredible. So the ovens, we wanted the oven that also had steam capability too because we had all that steam in that kitchen. That particular kitchen had a lot of steam equipment in it. Got it. So it was very, very efficient to use the steam kettle. And then we also answered questions from listeners. So people wanted us to ask, can you explain exactly what—

I'm just waving to listeners.

They wanted us to explain exactly what is a chargeback. So we got into the whole process of what is a chargeback. Somebody wants to get— doesn't want to pay. And we talked about different types of chargebacks where there's out-and-out fraud, where there's friendly fraud, and that friendly fraud is happening in both e-commerce and key-entered and card-present transactions. And, you know, I read an article that said that only— that merchants in the card-present were only winning 40% of their chargebacks. You guys got to talk to me because you have to really hone in on the— on writing the rebuttal to these chargebacks so that people can't win these chargebacks.

That might be a good download to offer.

What, how to win a chargeback? The letter for them? Well, the letter is going to be different. You just have to—

you can make a template though, couldn't you?

Not really, because you have to address what the person's complaining about.

Sorry, they can be— uh-oh.

And they could be complaining about 20 or 30 things, you know what I'm saying? And that's kind of a problem. Yeah, no. So you have to just look at what they're complaining about and address it specifically. The other thing is, question was asked, oh, I'm swiping cards because they don't have an EMV reader and they keep getting chargebacks and losing them. Well, you need to upgrade to the EMV. That happened October 2015. And without EMV, you're going to get fallback chargebacks, and then you can't win those. And then we also got a question about why are we getting chargebacks when people leave over a 20% tip. And that's because the credit card— their credit card issuer is not honoring those tips. They're not contacting the cardholder to get an okay, and there's only a threshold. So the only way around that— and I wrote an article recently in an industry publication talking about that— you, you've got to do tip at the time of the sale, the green sheet. So you gotta— it's the only way to avoid that is tip at the time of the sale, especially where the holiday season, you know, you go in, you want to tip your favorite waitress, and, you know, $150 tip that waits on you all the time if you go to the same place. And then they might not get the money if they're not doing tip at the time of the sale. We did a whole podcast about that, and we also, you know, did that on a FinTech Friday. It was very informative for me where we answered, you know, a lot of questions. And then basically we talked about, you know, how does cash discount work? And why are so many businesses using that. And we have a website, nationwidecashdiscount.com. It's on nationwidepaymentsystems.com. Explain a little bit about cash discount. There's two prices. One's the cash price, and then if you don't want to pay for cash, then the business is adding on, let's say, anywhere from 2 to 4%. So if your bill's $100, they're adding on 4%, your bill's $104. If you pay cash, you just pay the $100. 100.

I love it.

So, but many businesses are switching to that, and, you know, gas stations have been doing it for years. The government's been doing it for years. Education's been doing it for years. And the amount of businesses doing that is growing all the time. I would say—

absolutely—

I would say more than at least 50% of the people who sign up with us are doing that program, at least 50%. That. And then we talked about subscriptions for businesses, you know, having subscriptions. Although I would say that the commercials on TV right now are at all-time high of every single company that says they'll look in your bank account and notify you about what subscriptions you have so you can cancel them.

Yeah, I had one that was called like Rocket something, but they, they were bought by another company, so I can't remember what it was, but it was really, it was Yeah, Rocket bought the other company.

Rocket Mortgage bought that company. Yeah, but it was called something else before, right? Now it's called Rocket.

Now that's what it's called.

Yeah.

Well, yeah, I mean, I forget what— anyway, it was a very efficient service.

And it also would tell you, like, maybe let's say you're paying like a high plan for Netflix.

Yep.

And then you could dial the plan back.

Yeah.

And they have a way to contact those companies too, right?

Yeah, they would literally do unsubscribe from the service for you. Right. I was— or it's funny that you brought this up because I literally just cleaned my personal email out this morning.

Yeah.

Well, yesterday morning anyway. And there was a huge block of automated emails from myself and I'm like, what is this? So I open it up and it's that service unsubscribing me from whatever, you know, subscription that I was in. Yeah, I love that. That was great.

One thing I'm totally sick of, and I don't know how— I've got to make some time one morning to call Comcast, you know, or one night to call them up. But I'm totally sick, like, every single channel that you want to watch different stuff on is a pay channel. You want to watch Star Trek, you got to pay for CBS. Guess. You want to watch some— you want to watch the new Maverick movie, you got to subscribe to Paramount.

You get used to that. You want to watch something else, there's not going to be any more networks anymore.

It's on Hulu. Yeah, that's how it's going to be.

I don't know, did you ever see that graph? Like, I don't know, I feel like it's at least 10 years ago where it's— it showed you all of your subscriptions.

Yeah.

And then like the individual companies that own them companies.

Yeah.

And basically, it's like it's going from one company to now it's all these other separate companies to now it's just, you're gonna be buying Disney, Netflix, Hulu, blah, blah, blah, Showtime, Starz, HBO, and you got to buy each one individually.

I know, it's crazy.

That's how it is. But that's, for me, I'm not surprised. I've been watching it happening.

I know, it's nuts. I think Comcast needs to change how you buy, like, there's like no dashboard, like, but there's no bundle either.

It's like, okay, so if I want Starz, HBO Max, and Disney, there's no bundle for that, right?

That's what I'm saying, like, they need to have— yeah, but there's a— there's also, like, in their dashboard, they don't have a way to control it. You know, that's just totally— it's totally messed up.

The TV network, cable network, is trash. It's done. It's what they're trying to— what, what they're doing now. I feel like they're just trying to recoup before they finally—

I mean, I'm like ready to think. I was thinking the other day, I said, you know what, I should just call up. I say, okay, I'm just gonna get basic cable.

You're not gonna save shit. Excuse my French.

Not gonna save anything.

Because that's what I got at home. I have the highest internet package, right? And the lowest basic television package, right? And I'm like, well, how much am I paying a month for my TV? She's like, I don't know, it's like $6. I said, so I'm not gonna save— that's what she's like, no, you actually will end up paying more because you got— there's no— I'm not bundled.

I know, it's so messed up.

So I, so I have this huge, you know, like the craziest internet package that you can have through Xfinity, right? Which I love. Shout out, thank you, since you've fixed you're in my neighborhood, you know, that's great. But no one watches TV in our house. Not one person. Like, the TV in my living room hasn't been turned on in I don't even know how long.

Yeah, everybody's watching on their devices. Yes.

And then streaming it on their own TV, right?

That's what I'm saying. It's totally messed up. Like, the whole cable television— there should be a way to like bundle it all up. Like, oh, go on Comcast, go, oh, what do you want? Oh, I want this.

I want no commercials. I want the ESPN, CNN.

Yeah, that's the problem. If you want ESPN, you got to get an upper pack. Yeah, you want the SEC Network, you need the sports package. You want— and also news, I am not paying. Okay, this is one thing I am not paying for. I am not paying for NFL package to watch NFL on YouTube. NFL, okay, you know that thing, jump the shark, okay, that's just out of control. Like, YouTube, I love you, but I am not paying for YouTube to watch the NFL next year. So NFL, if you're on—

I don't like the transition that YouTube is going into as far as like the video platform for creators into this television network. I'm just not a fan of that.

It is very weird.

I don't know what exactly the endgame or what the approach is for that, but I mean, as far as creators go, like, yeah, YouTube was the place for us to put stuff at and no one would take— you couldn't take it down, right? You know, it could— it would live there forever, right? And over the past couple years, that is slowly—

yeah, they're like a TV channel. I mean, I just don't know what to do about TV.

I mean, It is like a TV network that where you can upload your own shows to, right? But it's not as free as it used to be, you know, I mean, free as, as in, like, unregulated.

No, but I'm saying it's like they have regular TV now.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

You can watch whatever, like, I don't just watch— see, the whole TV thing is just— the whole TV thing is just—

you remember that movie, don't you?

That City Slickers, one of my favorites. I know I tell you guys about some of my movies and you guys are like, what? I don't know. Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

That me, I do remember Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

You know what's funny is there's a show on— I didn't even know there was a show on Hulu because there's like this skit that I keep seeing on the reels, and this teacher walks in the room and he's like, hey, A-Rod, hey, Have you seen that?

Is Jordan— is Peele from Jordan Peele, right?

I never— I didn't know that.

Was it Jordan?

I can't remember. There's some show. I thought it was just some skit, like some YouTube skit, like some, you know, some guy doing a skit. Then my friend goes, no, that's a real TV show. So I sent it to this friend of mine named Aaron, and he's like, uh, you think that you're the first person? He goes, that's a TV show. I said, oh, LOL. Hey Aaron, Yeah, that—

he was butchering everyone's name.

Yeah, D-Nice. Don't tell me, don't tell me.

Yeah, it was ridiculous. That was ridiculous. But that guy's hilarious.

Yeah, he's funny. But I'm just saying, like, I want to watch that show. Oh, you got to subscribe to Hulu. Like, oh, another thing. Like, I don't even know how to find my TV shows. Listen, I just go home, I want to relax, put on some Law Order. You know, Law and Order. Yeah, I want to see like Ice-T like bust somebody.

I heard Ice-T doesn't have any like words anymore.

No, he does. They feature him now because they got rid of like— everybody's gone. So now Ice-T is like the main— he's like the main guy on SVU.

Shout out to Ice-T, man.

Because, you know, now the lady Olivia Benson, she's the captain, she's in charge.

The detective lady?

Yeah, she's in charge now. Oh wow, she's the boss of the— of all the detectives.

You know what's crazy is I never watched this show in my life. Yeah, but all of my kids love this show, right? I love that show. Law Order: Special Victims Unit, they know them all.

Criminal Intent, they know them all.

And I'm like, dude, I've never sat— how did—

where 'Where did you guys like this?' 'Grandma.' No. So now, like, the lady Olivia, she's the, the captain or the sergeant or whatever in charge. And now Ice-T is like the one— the main— he's like the seasoned main detective guy.

Since we're watching, talking about TV, I've just finished the first season of The Recruit on Netflix.

How's that? It's pretty good.

It took about 6 episodes for me to be like if am I gonna really watch this the next season if it comes out. But then 6, 7—

did you watch Wednesday?

I'm gonna wait till my granddaughter gets here.

Oh, I watched that. It was actually really good.

Allen did the dance.

I didn't do the dance yet. Nobody filmed me doing it. I cannot do that. I'm not a dancer, so forget it.

So I didn't— but the reference from that in that show was from the original Addams Family. Yeah, she danced the same way.

Morticia did? No, the little girl. The little girl did?

Yeah, she danced the same way in, in an episode of The Addams Family. Of The Addams Family.

Interesting.

Black and white version.

Okay, that's— it's a very interesting show. I actually— I was— I saw it on Netflix and I was like, oh, I gotta watch that. But this—

I told you that. Is it true they killed Thing?

No, I can't tell you that, dude.

If they killed the Thing, bro, I'm not gonna kill the thing.

All right, they tried to, but they didn't kill— you can't kill the thing. Uncle Fester hooked the thing.

Uncle Fester is the man.

But, uh, the other show that I watched on Netflix which was really good was this Emily the Criminal. Of course, I know you got to watch it because it's about credit card fraud, so it got me hooked. Yeah, I'll have to watch this. So it got me hooked, but it was back to the swiping days, uh, You know, but it was like, I watched that and I was like, it was a brutal show. Like, to why? It was just crazy stuff going on. It's Emily the Criminal. So that's the monthly wrap-up for 2022, December, December 2022. And we're gonna have some upcoming episodes. We're going to talk about predictions for where the future of credit card processing is going to lie. We're going to talk about what kind of things we thought were going to happen in 2022 and what happened to those things.

We're talking about Friday, right?

Yeah, Friday, on FinTech Friday, we're going to talk about that. And then we're gonna, you know, we're gonna delve into some other subjects. And, uh, we got all new things whole new batch of episodes.

Before we forget to let everyone know, over the next couple weeks, we're gonna be taking a break from posting new episodes. So you'll be seeing some recaps of older episodes, maybe some new clips and shorts of some new stuff. But we're just doing that so that we can keep, keep up with the content for you guys for 2022. 2023. We don't want to miss any, uh, posts any, any days.

Yeah, we're gonna have some new, some, some new types of, uh, content for everybody to consume. So you'll see us posting some of the most popular episodes of 2022 over the next couple of weeks.

And then every Friday we will be going live.

Yep, live on FinTech Friday, where you can get— you can ask questions and get answers. Peace out, have a happy New Year.

I hope everyone had a happy New Year's and all that stuff.

Happy holiday, hopefully everybody enjoyed, and have— and we're looking forward to 2023 and hitting 200 episodes of B2B Ball. Woo!

Okay.