MPC Digital Commerce Event 2022 | Atlanta, GA | FinTech | B2B Vault: The Payment Technology Podcast Episode 104

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 business payments, fintech, decentralized finance, and the technology businesses use in today's world. And in today's podcast, we'll be discussing the MPC Digital Commerce event in Atlanta, Georgia. I was not in attendance. I had to stay home with my lovely children and wife. Although next year, I'd love to go. But Allen, he was there. He was on the panel. He spoke. He was there for 3 days. There was also a blockchain event later that day, um, that he also attended. And, uh, I mean, a crypto event, that event that he attended.

We'll talk about tomorrow.

We'll talk about that in the FinTech Fridays. But yeah, man, what, what was going on in, uh, ATL, baby?

So big shout out to the MPC, this, the staff. We had, uh, Shiloh was organizing, Marla puts on the event. Marlo— Marla Ellerman and Dale, who was helping. Oh, Dale, shout out to Dale and Marla and Shiloh and, um, there's all the staff that helped them with everything. So it was a really interesting event. So I've never been to that event before, and I was invited to speak on a panel. So my panel discussion was about point of sale and payments and how consumers and businesses interact with when they make a payment.

Okay.

So that's what that was about. But we'll get back to that. You know, we'll come back to that at the, at the end, you know, so, you know, and basically what we'll talk about a little, and I had a table at the event. So I met people who were of all sorts, like, so they were business owners, their service providers, people like we do business with. That's awesome, you know, companies, companies that we work with. I saw a client, I met with a couple of clients while I was up in Atlanta, um, and then some companies we could possibly do business with. There were banks there, neobanks. There's fraud products for the, for the internet. Everything seems to be focused on fraud on the internet. Meanwhile, there's like nothing focused on stopping fraud at the point of sale, you know, in a face-to-face environment. And that's— I talked to a lot of companies about that, and I was like, just, I don't understand, you know, there's just a real big uptick in chargebacks at the, at the, at the point, you know, in face-to-face environment— restaurants, nightclubs, retail stores. It's on an uptick, and I don't think personally, you know, I don't think the card brands should allow those chargebacks because they can clearly see somebody used their phone, you know, and did a tap-to-phone. Someone tapped their card, right? So there was just a lot of talk about— these panels were really, really, really interesting. There was a lot of panels the first day that were all about banking you know, all about— it was all about banking and real-time RTP, which is real-time payments, and how that's working. But that doesn't seem to be— it seems to be more for like large businesses and enterprises than for the SMB, small business, small-medium-sized businesses. That I don't think it's reached down that far down the, down the chain.

Got it.

You know, So here we'll talk about some of the— so there was a lot of buzzwords that we heard. You know, when you're there at a conference for a few days, you start to hear the same buzzwords over and over again. So fintech was discussed a lot. The, the whole— one of the biggest buzzwords was almost every presentation they were talking about frictionless payments, frictionless payments.

Describe that for the listeners.

So they're just talking about frictionless means Somebody wants to pay, they don't want to jump through a bunch of hoops. So frictionless payment is, hey, I walk up to the point-of-sale device, I can tap my card, tap my phone, and they're just talking about that. You know, I can stick my EMV chip in there, right? The peripheral— peripheralization of— it's a big word— peripheralization, how it became more popular. And even though it's been out there for a while, during the pandemic, everybody had the cooties, right? Cooties, cooties. Everybody had the cooties. They want anybody touching their stuff, right? So everybody was using all of a sudden technology that's been around since 2015, maybe a little bit before that, right? The Apple Pay and all that. All of a sudden that's going big time. You know how that— how that's increased and, you know, increased in popularity. And, and, and also, you know, they're coming— everybody gets these cards now. You just tap your card.

Keep that phone out of here.

You use that to tap the card?

Uh, I tap my card. I don't tap my phone.

Yeah, like one day I left my wallet at home and I was like, man, I need gas. I was like, shit, I hope this Apple— whoa, I hope that Apple— I hope the Apple Pay works at the gas station. Sure enough, I got out of the car and Apple paid my Nice. Apple paid for gas. So frictionless was— and I think— and I look at frictionless from the standpoint of, you know, how can we do a better job as a merchant service provider, right? So we launched a new system, right? It's in soft launch mode now until we get the whole— the everything up on the website.

Launch mode.

Yeah, soft launch mode, meaning you, you can contact us, we'll send you the link.

Textbook. To 954-827-9818, and you might get a—

yeah, we'll send you the link. We'll call, we'll ask you what you want to apply for, and then we'll send you a link. But soon you'll be able to do it off of the website, answer 10 questions, connect your bank account, pay your first month with your credit card, and then you'll have your merchant account in 15 minutes. As long as— and if they can't verify your identity, you get another email and they ask you to send a few items, uh, driver's license and maybe something about your business.

There's a one-time fee.

Yeah, there's a one-time fee you pay on the way out the door. The reason we do that is to cut down on setting up fraudulent accounts.

All you fakers out there.

Well, we have to prevent fraud. That was another topic of discussion.

There wasn't any security, like—

oh yeah, they're talking about security and security of payments. And one of the things that was a big discussion was, um, wallets. There was a whole discussion about— and I didn't realize this—

tired of this wallet.

So let me just tell you, so in like other countries, not here, right? And, and it's starting to get popular in Europe, is to pay through a wallet. So an example of actually paying with a wallet would be, so every once in a while I see a product, oh, I want to buy that, and then I go to the website and then it turns out they're on Shopify., right? Okay. So when you go to Shopify, if you've already paid once on Shopify, they have your credit card, they have everything, and they have all your info. They just send you a text to your phone and you authenticate yourself. So that's an example. That's actually a wallet, okay, of a sort. It's a wallet. But there were other— there was other companies there talking about how there's all these wallets all over the world Yeah, ShopPay is essentially a wallet. So they're talking about all these other, uh, countries that they have all these wallets. These countries have wallets, and then how you can make these payments all over the world.

What are these wallets connected to?

Your credit card's in the wallet. Yeah, your bank account, your credit card, your debit card, whatever it is, the local form of payment in that country is connected into that wallet. But it was interesting, so there was a company there We're going to try to see if we can partner with them because it was a very interesting concept. So the concept was, is that—

Duderino, shut your phone.

Okay, let me kill the phone. I thought it was off. Okay, so the concept of this wallet was you go to the checkout page on the website, okay, and then it says pay with whatever this is called, right? I don't want to give the name away because We don't know if this is a live— they say, you know, you see demos, right? You got to make sure it's a live product. But I like the idea. So you have this checkout, like, just like you can check out on some websites with Amazon, PayPal. Essentially, those are all wallets, right? Shop Pay, right? So you can check out with that. So you can check out with this wallet. And then if you have that wallet, right, you register for it and you have it. So merchants could kind of push their clients to say, hey, get this wallet, we need you to get this wallet to buy from us. Let's say you're a high-risk merchant account and you want to control chargebacks. You can make people— force your clientele to register for the wallet, then have them check out using the wallet, right? So when they're using the wallet, they're already authenticated because they're authentic.

Sounds like it'd be useful for subscription services.

Yep, subscribe. I like it for subscription services, high-risk merchant services, all kinds of stuff. And then you can just— and then the customer— I just want to figure out, like, how do they make money? Because it didn't— I've got to know before I promote something what's going on.

He ain't doing nothing for free over here, buddy.

Well, it's not that. Who's making money?

How does it work for me?

How does it protect— how does it protect the merchant, you know? Yeah. What do the card brands say about it from a protection standpoint on chargebacks? You gotta do your research. But I like the idea of it. So now you have the— so then it authenticates the person because they click it. They're already authenticated on their phone or their computer. Oh, Rocky, come on. It's just a delivery. Come on, somebody's bringing bones for Rocky. And so it authenticates the user, authenticates their credit card. Oh, stop. Rocky didn't like that. So it authenticates them.

Nice.

Then there were some other guys there that had other authentication, but a lot of that had to do more with like opening bank accounts because there's a lot of fraud. You know, you have this increased amount of neo banks. There was actually a vendor there and they supplied software to people who want to set up neo banks, which are these banks that have no physical location, right? So they had solutions for—

good job, by the way. I didn't have to ask you to explain a neobank, right? Good job.

So they had— well, I like when you ask me questions.

I know, but further, but you know, so they had fraud. They should be able to explain it without me, right?

So they had a fraud thing where you're actually using the face as a biometric, which we are using in our 10-question thing. So if somebody can't be identified through like the AI that we're grabbing, like their name, address, their federal tax ID, their Social, right? That's not enough. Then they have to send a driver's license in and then they get a little thing and they have to— you have to do like you do on Apple Pay. You have to do like a selfie and move your head around, right? And then fill the circle. Yeah, right. So that's a biometric, right? So that's— it's really cool. And then they biometrically identify you because they can take your picture match it to the driver's license and match it to the DMV.

It's cool. And I— and this is, you know, I have a lot of—

but I think we've had—

we've had this talk a lot.

Like, it's a lot of Big Brother. Big Brother.

Yes. Who is handling that data? Where does it go?

And that's another—

who's the owner of it, right?

Well, that's a whole bit.

What can they do with it, right?

So that was a whole nother discussion at the conference about how the government is going after all the payment companies and all the buy now pay later companies and PayPal, Stripe, Square, Shopify, Amazon, down the road. What are they doing? They have an enormous amount of people's personal private information, right? Right. PII, they called it. So they, you know, what do they do with this information? And do they disclose that information to any third parties? And then I was talking to a guy from a car dealer association that we're working with, and he was explaining to me that now car dealers are required— when you come in to buy a car, you— they're required to disclose to you who they're sharing your personal information with. Like, if they're going to send your information to 10 banks, right, they have to They have to disclose that to you with a piece of paper or they can get sued.

No kidding.

Yeah, and there's been some car dealerships that have been sued for millions of dollars for running people's credit without, one, getting permission, and two, telling them how many banks they're sending it to, right?

Because that every time they send it to a bank, that bank's gonna ding, right?

They're getting their credit report dinged multiple times. Now that's a huge, huge issue.

That's not good.

So wallets this whole like wallet discussion was crazy, but apparently all over the world they're using wallets, except we're not using it very much in the US.

When you say over the world, you mean like Asia, Europe has their own wallet? Like the government of Europe has a wallet?

I'm not sure who— that's why I'm researching now, like, okay, who, who runs all these wallets, right? Are they— are there banks? Is this like run by the country?

I mean, there's so many crypto wallets and it's just That's why I say I get, you know, it's a little overwhelming for—

and they were also talking about, dude, there's a lot of discussion. There was a bunch of panels about crypto, you— bunch of panels. There was a legal panel on crypto. We're going to get into that. Well, I mean, I can go down the list. Mobile payments was talked about, how to do mobile payments. Uh, crypto, there was a legal panel, like what's going on with crypto, how is the government gonna handle crypto. They were talking about how they— the thing, the article we talked about before where the government says, uh, block, uh, um, Bitcoin and, and Ethereum are going to be commodities. And what is that going to do? How's that going to work? What's, what's going to happen to crypto?

Is the government happy about it?

Is the government doing that? Because their theory was— which I don't disagree with this theory— so the theory they had was theory one of the couple on these panels, they— we— this question was asked to about 3 or 4 panels. Okay, so they're— they were— they were— they're— they're in— they're guessing. Okay, okay, they're taking a guess, right? Right. So they're guessing that instead of the government trying to figure out how to work with Bitcoin and Ethereum and all these altcoins and they don't know what to do about it. They're taking the approach of, well, we're just gonna do something that's gonna basically like crush it, to crush the value of it.

I don't know. So I don't know, there's a lot of people—

well, the value's going—

there's guys shooting billions of dollars into the crypto industry right now.

Yeah, well, that's the other thing that we're talking about is is, would blockchain— could blockchain be used for other purposes? So they were talking about like, well, you know, now you're doing a bunch of legal documents, maybe instead of doing a— using paper and all that and a DocuSign, right, you could just use a smart contract.

Well, of course, I mean, smart contracts and blockchain could be utilized for a lot of things, right?

That's what they were talking about, especially in office settings, like in, you know, business Right, that's what they were talking about, business contracts and things like that. But they were talking, you know, they were talking about—

I still don't believe that the whole point of creating crypto, yeah, was to get away from the bank, right? Well, obviously, regardless, no matter what, no matter what the government or the banks do, right, that's not going to stop developers or people from creating their own currency, bro.

Well, I understand that.

So like, at the end of the day, they could keep doing whatever they want to, but it's not going to stop us from creating a way to trade amongst peer-to-peer without having tons of money in, you know.

But they were just talking about how they're crushing the value of it.

I mean, they've been trying to do that since it started, right?

But now they've actually been successful. Bitcoin was at $70,000 And then Ethereum was up as high as $4,000 or $5,000. Now Bitcoin's around $20,000 and Ethereum's down to around a grand. So they basically sucked the life out of— by doing that, they sucked the life.

There's a lot of different things that happen with that though. There's a lot of different things that were involved into why the crypto went down. Of course, not to mention the amount of like people who were selling, people who burned. Right, people who just, you know, right, there's a lot.

They were just talking about how NFTs went, got crushed, and then a lot of altcoins. Who did that though?

Who crushed the NFTs?

Because the price of Ethereum went down, so that made the value of NFTs go down 70%.

The whole NFT craze, once people started understanding what really what NFT was, yeah, that's what slowed down.

And well, that's— but I'm saying the price of Ethereum beyond—

of course, on top of that, right?

That's what I'm—

NFTs were gonna go— we're slowing down before the, the crypto.

Oh yeah, I mean, I just think it's, it's just crazy, you know. You just— we just have to wait and see like what the government's going to do. Europe is trying to enact stuff, Australia, China, they're all trying to combat. They don't like it. The banks don't like it. The banks, the banks own the government.

One of the Americas, one of the countries in the Americas, or Venezuela, I think it was.

It's like Guatemala or somebody.

I don't—

they, they're, they're gonna use Bitcoin for everything.

They merged the whole— there is no local currency anymore, right? They're using crypto, right?

They're using crypto.

So when we say the government, we're talking about the United States of America.

Yeah.

And so like right then and there, the other— the U.S. is going to get so much pressure from these other countries Yeah, to be like, why aren't you taking Bitcoin? We have $700 trillion in Bitcoin. We want to pay our debt in Bitcoin. Or so the US is going to get on board.

That's what they're talking about, right? They're like, what, what's the timetable on that? Is it going to be 5 years, 10 years, 15 years?

I'll say another 10.

So that's what they were talking about.

But, and then within them 10 years, I still think that crypto is going to create a bunch of millionaires. I think that—

well, I think that it's gonna—

I think people are gonna still be very, very valuable. Um, M&M's just signed a deal with the Bathing Ape Yacht— Bored Ape Yacht Club, right, to use the NFTs on the M&M's, bro. Yeah. So for everyone out there listening who still is like 'Oh, there's no reason for NFTs,' or 'My business doesn't need one.' You are out of your freaking mind, bro. Like, the company Mars, who creates all of our favorite delicious candies, just signed an exclusive deal with the creators of the Bored Ape Yacht Club to use their NFTs on the products. And that means Mars isn't even creating their own NFT. They're so behind, or so like, they're not, they're not, they're not creative enough. It doesn't matter, they don't hire somebody, right? But this, my point is, is like, yo, you got other companies, major companies that are, are, yeah, investing into an NFT that they didn't even create to use on their products. So with that being said, All the companies out there, you need to really hire your niece or your nephew or your grandson or someone that's creative who likes to draw anything, you know, and tell them to put together a, a brand package for you.

For—

it's pretty—

one of the things I think people need to figure out with NFTs is this: I think they need to figure out how someone can pay for an NFT with a credit card.

There's ways.

No, no, this is— there's another part to it. And keep the smart contract in place. That's what one of the— somebody, some developer out there that's doing— that's, you know, putting up an NFT marketplace needs to figure that out.

What do you mean though?

Okay, so right now let's say I go to XYZ website to buy an NFT and they accept credit cards. So they get the credit card. Now I take— I have the NFT. There's no smart contract because there's no Ethereum. There's no Ethereum or coin or coin attached to that. And then the person who—

I thought crypto— I thought crypto.com was working on that to where—

well, that's not— you can buy, but there destroys the smart contract from what I've heard. I haven't heard anybody—

I've asked to try it. No, no, I am saying we should buy one.

I did. I bought one.

And you don't have a smart contract?

No, there's no—

that was a long time ago when we bought that.

I know, but we have to— I'm just telling you, I asked the question to a few of the companies. I sent an email, I got it back. The answer was, we haven't figured that out yet.

You need to figure that out. But I think a smart contract goes—

no, but I think that that's important. But But I think if some NFTs are very important, I think if somebody figures that out, that they'll have a big business. If they figure out how to take fiat—

what I think you and I are talking in two different ways. So I'm not talking about the NFT. No, no, I mean there's still a utility to sell, to like, for it to be exclusively sold, right? Like, of course that's a, that's a huge opportunity that people can, you know, take advantage of, but As far as a company or a business, you know, with the Web3, in the way that the, the internet is changing, you know, you can utilize these NFTs to market your brand, right? Exactly. You don't have to sell the NFT, you know, right?

They could just have the design, the avatar. Everybody's partnering now. If you go look like on LinkedIn, every day there's a new post, this company partnered with Ready Player Me, me. This company partnered with Ready Player Me. This company, this company, this company. That guy, everybody. So everybody's going in there. Well, it's free, so it doesn't cost any money. I don't know how they're making money from it.

I don't know how that guy is either, but that guy is rich.

Okay, but so all these companies are creating their own— we did it, we, we made our own Ready Player Three people, right? But they're creating them, but they're creating company avatars now. With Ready Player Me. Not just them, it's the company's—

Adidas, right?

So they're creating their own—

Moët Hennessy, Louis Vuitton.

Next, watch out for the B2B vault, nationwide payment systems. We made some NFTs.

We made— then we named the Rocky.

We made the Rocky NFT, right? So that's— he's our mascot.

Yeah.

So here's some other things real quick before you finish up.

We get right into it, man. Be sure to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. There you go. @B2BVault.

Check us out on YouTube.

And YouTube. Don't forget to subscribe to us on YouTube. Don't just watch. Yes, like and subscribe. Always do the same on Facebook to the community page, please subscribe there, you know, sign up to the newsletter, we shoot out special information every once, once a month, describing the products that we offer. If you're interested into getting on a call with Allen or myself, text the word book, B-O-O-K, to 954-827-9818. 8. We'll get back to you as soon as possible. Head over to b2bvault.info, catch up on past episodes. There's forms there for you to get in contact with us. If you don't want to message us, you can shoot us an email. Sponsoring inquiry— inquiries you could do there. And if you're looking for merchant account, there is a beautiful button on top that says Apply Now. You click that, it sends you to the link. 10 minutes later, you're set up and running. Making, uh, collecting money. And when you're filling out that form, there is a one-time fee, and that is to avoid all the scammers and the fake people out there that's trying to screw us over. So on top of that, uh, it's our fraud prevention. Yes, fraud prevention tools. You got to pay some money to make it. You got to pay money to make money. It's the oldest saying in the book. And Allen just got back from the NPC conference So super cool stuff going on.

So let me just go over quick, because I don't want to make the podcast too long.

But I think one last thing before myself, I have this really cool thing. It's called The Best Self Self Journal.

Yeah.

And it's a 13-week, you know, it's, it's a 13-week structure. So within 13 weeks, you can smash your goals. And so I have a few things that I'm, you know, working on. And one of those goals is to write my book. Okay, and so I'm gonna utilize this right here, the Best Self Self Journal. Okay, shout out to Daymond John, the guy from FUBU. That's his name, right?

Yeah, he was on Shark Tank too.

Yeah, he was on Shark Tank, the owner.

I think he's still on Shark Tank.

Yeah, he's still on Shark Tank. But yeah, I've seen a video of his over the weekend and he said that he— I don't know if he really uses it.

It could have been— well, maybe he's a sponsor.

Yeah, he probably sponsored it. But, uh, I've been journaling You know, like I said, awesome. And, uh, so then I, I didn't like the, the format, you know, like it's a whole page, and, and me being a writer, it's like I feel obligated to write the whole page, right? And that's, that's not cool, right? Like, you don't—

that could be hard, right?

So I grabbed this over the weekend, and I feel like I'm gonna put it to the test. So within these next 13 weeks, I'll check back, and then I'll give you guys updates into where I am with writing my book.

So, so one of the, the other thing, like you were talking about NFTs, is the utility. So using—

that's the cool part of it—

the membership and different things.

I don't think anyone understands that, the, the— because I think the, the general perception of NFT is like an art.

That's it, art, or some picture or something. But we'll talk more about NFTs, you know, right? We can talk for hours on NFTs.

NFTs are cool.

We could talk for hours. But they, they also talked about like the metaverse, what's going on with the metaverse, how are people going to use the metaverse, and Web3. And how long that's going to take before that actually becomes popular.

So what are they saying?

No, they just think it's going to be— it's going to be later, not sooner. There's— they think that things like games are going to be more popular. I mean, there's already anything else.

Yeah, I mean, because you can already play games right now, right?

Right. But I'm just saying they think that the gaming industry is gonna be huge, it's gonna be— that's gonna be the first big hit with the metaverse and Web3.

What about learning? I thought— yeah, well, they said learning and education is going to be huge with Web3.

They just think that the first thing is going to be like the gaming aspect, right? And maybe concerts, like you might see concerts. I don't know, but I'm just saying, like, I'm not— entertainment.

I think it's cool with the holograms of like artists that have passed away. Like they had the Tupac hologram, they had the old Dirty Bastard.

Oh, it's just, you know, That's kind of cool. The other thing that I saw at the show, which this was interesting because I always like when I see like a payment company and then they take a product that they had that they weren't sure what the hell to do with, and then they'd find another use for that technology. Okay, so this one company— we'll find out more information about how much this costs, but this thing was really cool. So as a way where you use encryption keys, which we use encryption keys in payments to to put in the machine. So the machine is encrypted for that merchant with their merchant number for their transactions, and it's tied back to the, the acquiring bank, which is the bank that funds the money, right? So they use these encryption keys in there. And obviously your EMV card, the chip has encryptions in it, so they're using encryption. So they took that a step further and they developed an encryption email product. So I could send Justin an email, say, hey Justin, I need your 6 months bank statements, 6 months merchant statements, because maybe Justin's high risk. I need your 2 years tax returns, uh, your P&L, your balance sheet, and all that. Justin's like, you know, I don't want to email that to you. Like, how can I do that? You know, the old way is—

that's funny, I just said that to someone yesterday, password doing that.

Yeah, password protect all the files, and then you got to send passwords to the person and all this stuff and how secure, you know. So this was really cool. So it encrypt— the person could upload all the files and send any email address, or—

well, no, you got to use this service.

I could send you an email. You have to use this service. I sent you an email. I have like a device on my desk and I swiped my card and now it creates this encrypted message and I could email it to you and then you could add the files to that, send it back to me. I I'm the only one that can open it up because I have the encryption key. Then let's say I said—

I like that.

Then let's say I want to send you the file.

It's a little spooky because I— my— I'm a little twisted, so I think of things a little—

no, no, but you can't— on— you can't—

the person on the other end, they— who? You have it.

Yeah, but I have it, but I sent you the encrypted file, so you added your stuff to it. Now I'm— me and you are the only two people that can see it.

Yeah.

And then let's say I want to send it to the bank because they need to look at it. So I can send it to them, and then I send them a key, and then they can, uh, they can use the key to open up the file.

All I'm saying is this just sounds like it's opening the door for a lot of—

well, I don't know. Apparently you can't break this key. I gotta find out.

I'm saying like the way you could use it. Well, the way you could use it is, can I send an encrypted like video and imagery?

Yeah, you could— whatever you can attach. 30 megabytes.

All right, 30, whatever.

30 megabytes, whatever. No, no, 30 KBs, whatever it is. Like, what's the biggest— when you send the email attachment, terabyte? No, like when you send email, it's usually the biggest file is 20 or 30, depending. Yeah, right. Like, I think like my— with our email, I think we can receive only 20.

I'm not saying it's so like, say, hey, I got this picture, right, of whatever, whatever. We don't want to see that picture, right? But I send you an email.

Yeah, but I'm the only— if you don't send me the encryption key, I can't open it, right? That's the point.

Send me the key, then I can send you some money, and then I can send you the email. Right, and then you could view it, right?

It's pretty cool. So I like that. Might be something we—

sounds like it'd be really big for the stripper industry.

No, I think it would be really good for, um, only for sending emails.

OnlyFans.

I don't know about that. I think it has— I don't know if— well, you could send a link to a payment with the email so the person could pay and see, maybe trigger open the encryption key. Hey, OnlyFans, call us. Okay, so, so that was pretty cool, you know. So we'll— it's that the pricing, it's their proposed— they told me the proposed pricing. It's not in black and white yet. The proposed pricing— no, it's not— was what they were proposing wasn't expensive.

Is it per email or—

no, it was actually like $100 a month is what they're proposing. It's not bad for a whole company.

Oh yeah, I mean, they should— they need to they should probably think of it like in a tier, maybe like small, medium, 100.

I asked them how many, how many emails can you send? They said unlimited for $100.

I was like, but that's my point. I mean, some people might not—

that's a little expensive for a small business. No, but I'm saying like if you were dealing with sensitive documents, oh yeah, mortgage, then it's worth it and all that. Like for sure, $100 is nothing. True. So that was this, that was pretty cool. Then there was a lot, few companies there that I didn't even know this existed. Payments out for like employees and gig workers. Now there was—

what is it?

Okay, so let's say you had a restaurant and now you want to give your employees money daily. There's these, these companies that had apps where you could actually send the money to your employees at the end of the shift. We talked about that in the podcast before. Well, we talked about—

we talked about because it was for tipping. It was the way that one company was settling the tipping. You said you looked into.

Yeah, we were looking into how does that link— how can that be linked out? How could it be linked up to payroll and stuff like that? But that was discussed, a lot of stuff about paying out money faster than creating more—

like, daily pay is nuts.

Yeah, daily pay for like gig workers. And they were like starting to get into the restaurant. When you say gig workers, Amazon drivers, you— now Uber has a new thing, Uber Freight. And all this to get those drivers paid faster. Like, Uber already has that daily payout, but the tip part— they get paid for the rides, but they don't get the tip money all right away. Apparently they have to wait for the tips or something. I don't know how that all—

I hear Uber is just a disaster, man.

I took an Uber in Atlanta. Oh man, I heard that. So based on the time— okay, so I took an Uber, and then my brother took an Uber basically to the same, almost the same area. I paid around $50. My brother paid over $80, and he's like, oh, it goes by the time of the day. So my brother was like, when you're going to the airport, he goes, leave an hour earlier than you thought you were going to leave, because otherwise your airport ride could cost you like over $100 easily in Atlanta because of the traffic.

It's like that all over though.

It's, it's got—

it doesn't really—

the Uber that— and then they added on that one morning I caught it Uber here.

Yeah, it cost me $35.

No, and then, and then listen to this, they add on a fuel surcharge, taxes, airport fees, this, that was crazy. So that was what I'm just saying though. So there was a lot of talk about that. I asked a couple of the companies about taxes, so I have to do a little research because that's something we could offer to restaurants, this kind of thing, so they could get their workers paid every day, keep their workers happy. I think it's a great idea.

I was going to ask you about the taxes. Is it They got it.

Well, no, because they were— no, well, one company said they didn't— weren't worried about it. The other company said they have it figured out because I was like worried about it because I thought they're leaving the employee up to the employee. That's what I said. I said the employee is going to get a check that's basically going to be a minus check at the end of the week or the end of 2 weeks. They're gonna have a big minus because they're gonna owe taxes. And he's like, well, then the waiter is going to file their taxes at the end of the year. And they're gonna have to pay a bunch of taxes. I was like, that's not good because they might not have the money saved for the tax. That is—

that is—

I didn't really like—

waiters don't have sitting around like, yeah, you know, I can pay $1,400.

No, but I'm just saying, like, I didn't really like that solution. Another guy said that he could link his to a payroll company, so we'll see. We're gonna reach out to them and get more information. That's what I always do. I find You know, these tech companies, you wanted to mention these guys. And the other thing was, is that— no, that's in another podcast.

Oh, we're going to talk about that tomorrow.

Yeah. All right. So the other— so the other company said they could integrate with a payroll company and take care of the taxes. So we're going to talk to people and talk, you know, open banking was discussed, neobanks was discussed, real-time payments, which we talked about. There was a guy there who was telling us about a sustainable project he had and he was trying to raise get a merchant account for this sustainable project. And the guy is raising money so that he can basically— he takes, he takes bugs and puts it— if he— people were gonna like buy gift cards to donate to his thing or make donations on his website, and then he raises money, enough money to get, I guess, some kind of bug. I gotta find out more information. And then the bug— they take the bugs out to a land— you know, they partner with like a particular landfill and they take these bugs and put them in the landfill. And then based on what's in the landfill, the bugs will like eat up what's in the landfill. I've heard of a huge landfill like over by Pompano, not far from the office, right? And sometimes it's really smelly, but my daughter had to do a report on it, I think in high school or middle school., and it's got layers inside of it, and then somehow the weight from the top pushes down, and then at some point in time they release the gas out. Yeah, smells really bad. Yeah. And then they're able to pile more stuff into this garbage mountain over there. Yeah.

Now I've heard about these bugs. There's like— there's a worm that they actually found, or I don't know if it was a worm.

Well, this guy was telling us about—

I think a fungus that actually eats plastic, right?

That's what they do. They find out what's in the landfill and then they put these different bugs in there and they can reduce the size of the landfill. I think it's a great project. I don't know, the guy's trying a great idea to me.

If it's not going to be so stinky, he's just trying to find that methane gas. I mean, you think that we would have found a way to use—

they were from Orlando, so we're going to try to figure out how to work with them and help them to get awareness for their project and see how it can be marketed. And how they can help, you know, get merchant account or gift cards to raise money for this. You know, there's also talk about PayFac and ISVs, which we just did a whole podcast about.

What's an ISV?

An independent software vendor.

I don't know why I always ask you.

So it's just a vendor that makes software, like, oh, this is a software for Dennis. And then the problem they have now is each person has to go sign up for a merchant account. So they're going towards the trend of trying to partner with people who have like a boarding system, like we're in Soft Launch for, where you answer 10 questions and get your account, and then it's integrated to that product automatically. So there's a lot of talk about companies, more and more companies trying to do that. Uh, merchant people signing— what are the— they were talking about how people don't sign up for a merchant account anymore and go to a platform like PayPal, Stripe, which we're trying to develop our own, you know, and we're going to get it launched, you know, soon. Get it— it's already launched, but we're going to get it into real launch mode very soon. And then that's gonna, you know, and how that's be— how that's getting more popular and more popular. And that's also with like banks. The big banks are kind of worried because people are going to these other banks where they can get signed up online, right, for the bank account. But those banks are having an issue in how they authenticate the people that are getting the bank account.

Was the Greenwood Bank at the—

no, there was a bunch of different— there was only a few banks there.

There was one, so that's owned by some—

and there was a lot of— there was a few banks.

Shout out Killer Mike.

But there was a company there who worked with those banks and there was another— I was telling you, then there was a couple of biometric companies.

Oh, right, right.

That work with those banks to get better authentication so that they're not opening up scam bank accounts. So there was a lot of— you, you know, listen to a lot of different perspectives from banks, payment companies, processors, fintechs. Another big thing that was talked about a lot was how these fintech in general, any type of fintech company. So all of these, you know, I saw a ton— I talked to probably, I don't know, 100 fintech companies, right? I was at a table and they all came over, talking to them, you know, meeting people after their panel and this and that. So, you know, you— I got to listen to different perspectives, you know. What's the perspective from the bank, a big bank, a neobank? Perspectives from the fraud companies, perspectives from the companies who are creating these neobanks, perspective from the credit card processors and the different people there, like about the ecosystem. One of the things everybody talks about is how, you know, we talk about this a bunch of times and we've heard Congress say the same thing, right, that innovation is outpacing regulation, you know, and it's just, it's not going to stop. The fintech companies are going to keep going boom boom boom boom boom. But one of the things they talked about on the legal panel is now the government's saying, hey, uh, you know, if you're sending money around, you need to make sure you're compliant, you know. So they're going at— they're watching these companies and going after people that are not compliant, like making sure you're doing KYC, KYB, know your business, know your, you know, know who— know the customer, your AML, anti-money laundering policies. And all of those. So those, you know, when we talk to these different fintechs, we ask them, are you registered with FinCEN? You're sending money out, are you, you know, compliant with AML? You have your licenses? And this— we don't want to work with unlicensed companies. And the same thing with crypto is going on with that too. You know, these companies have to be, you know, you have to have a light— you have to be licensed, AML, SOC 2 compliant, and all that. And then the last thing that was talked about a ton during the whole conference besides frictionless, frictionless, frictionless was partnerships. How partnerships are important, how companies can make a good partnership and a bad partnership. What makes it, you know, you know, you have to make sure everything's a good fit. Like, oh, this ISV is a good fit for our PayFac, and they're, you know, they can handle the customer service portion of their software and we can handle it. Them sucking in, you know, 1,000 people at one time and getting them merchant accounts, right?

Right.

But can they handle getting all those people up and running? So you got to make sure that's like a good marriage of everything that you have going on when you do a partnership. And the other thing that was discussed quite a bit was the omnichannel, omnichannel, omnichannel, omnichannel.

And I've discussed an omnichannel, sir.

The ability for business— big businesses are doing it great. It's the ability we're creating omnichannel for the SMB, small to medium-sized business, so they can accomplish the same thing business— big businesses are accomplishing, which is the— have the ability to have— they have access to a dashboard where they can send an invoice, they can collect all their customer data, they can see our email receipt. It's a CRM. They can see all their reporting, they can link it to a website and see all the sales coming from a terminal, a virtual terminal, set up recurring billing, subscription. Uh, yeah, the list goes on.

You can connect QuickBooks so that you could do your accounting. Um, yeah, you can link in, set up—

you can put your catalog in.

You could set up resellers underneath you to make— so that you're making money, man. This thing that we're pushing is really—

yeah, we're looking to—

amazing.

Yeah, we're looking to partner with community banks on it. So that they can give this to their customers. Because the people I talked to that were from these small community banks, they're just— they're like, oh, all our customers don't get a merchant account. Most of them are PayPal, Stripe, and Square.

Well, this is the perfect product to partner on because the bank makes money too. And well, no, they're giving the—

they're giving their client what they want. Yep, frictionless sign up for a merchant account.

I don't like it.

Huh?

I don't like it.

You don't like the word? It's a little too long. Frictionless just sounds, you know, but it basically sounds dirty. So, you know, it's the same thing. We always got to find what do businesses want, what do consumers want. Businesses want to, want to get set up with a merchant account as quick as possible. We're accomplishing that. What do consumers want? Ways to make quick payments, wallets, tap and go, EMV. Get a text email receipt, get a text or an email with a link to make a payment. That's what, that's what consumers want.

That's a great blog article, by the way.

What, what consumers want?

What, what—

then the other thing, what else do consumers want? Get their— get whatever they're ordering delivered, whether it's food delivered, a product delivered, right? So Walmart and Amazon is doing it. Your store needs to to do it, you know, order from the website. When they order from the website, oh, is there an option for pickup in store, pickup curbside, right? Local delivery maybe is an option for some companies, right?

I know a lot of local, like, companies that do delivery, right?

You know, it depends what it is, if it's worth it. So the— that's what's important, you know. Businesses, you know, businesses need to deliver what the consumer wants. And with omnichannel, you can do all all that. And then the other thing is Payments with a Purpose— frictionless, smart, flexible, secure. What's Payments with a Purpose? Well, that the payment option that they choose has the purpose for the business. It's frictionless— we're doing that quick sign up. Smart— it has tons of features.

In my mind, when you said pick Payments with a Purpose, means that you're donating to a cause.

Well, it could be that too. Maybe you're donating to a cause, maybe. But I'm just saying that the payment process, that there's a purpose to the, to the product, right? The product has a purpose, right? It's frictionless, easy sign up, smart, tons of features, loyalty programs, all kinds of stuff. It's flexible because you have all these options that you can do. It's secure, PCI compliant.

Boom.

Bang, that's it. So, you know, that's the, that's the podcast for today. It's very, it's a kind of long one, but we talked about it. Again, again, big shout out to— learned a lot at the MPC Digital Commerce event. We'll give another shout out again. We'll tag Marla Ellerman and Shiloh and Dale. They all did a great job at the conference. Enjoyed meeting everybody, met tons of people. You guys want to reach out to me, we're going to be tech— we'll, we'll get this up. And everybody enjoy your day. Maybe you listen to this, if something resonated with you and you want to talk about it, text BOOK to 954-827-9818, or go to the website b2bvault.info and fill out a form, and we can set up an appointment. And that's it for today. B2B Vault, carpe diem. Peace out, everybody. Have a great day.