NAC 2022 | PocketBook | Hyosung | PAI | ATM, Kiosk, & Vending Managed Services | B2B Vault: The Payment Technology Podcast Episode 110

Hey, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from NAC 2022 with your host Allen Kopelman, and we're going to be talking about the stuff that we see in the, uh, convention. There's a lot of new technology regarding ATMs and, uh Allen has a few guests that we're going to be interviewing for the show for the first time, so that's cool. Um, first time on the road with the podcast, so that's really awesome. Uh, had to set up, you know, take the stuff on the road, get everything turned out pretty easily. No, uh, no big hiccups at all. Um, took a quick tour around the convention center.

Yeah, some interesting stuff that we saw on the floor. We're gonna go shoot a little bit of, uh, A little video out there.

Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

And we have 3 guests coming up. We have the CEO of Pocketbook, which is this really cool app that can interface with kiosks and ATMs, and you'll learn about that. We'll also talk to the platinum sponsor Hyosung, which makes my favorite ATM machines. They're going to talk about the new technology they have. And new services that are coming to the ATM. And then we also spoke with Brian Haynes, the VP of PAI, Payment Alliance International, and we talked about ATMs and how they can help businesses and how technology can level the playing field. And that's kind of the theme of today is how consumers can benefit from these technologies and how businesses can benefit from all these new technologies that are coming out. And then the next, you know, 5 to 10 years, we're going to see a really transformation of what the ATM can do.

I mean, you're already seeing it, right? I mean, like, I'm sure people who are listening, you know, you go to the— your bodega, your local bodega, your corner store, and all of a sudden you can buy Bitcoin, right? Yeah. You know, so along the way, these big— the ATMs have definitely changed, especially, you know, I mean, we've seen some stuff here, like soon you're going to be able to pay bills, you're going to be able to cash a check from the ATM. Um, send money to someone, get money out from your apps that you use on your phone, QR codes. Yeah, so like the technology that is evolving, and it's, uh, been really interesting to, to learn about over, you know, walking around. And, uh, yeah, man, so look forward to, uh, hearing some more, uh, interesting things from the, from the people that we're, uh, going to interview. So There you go, man.

All right, enjoy the show. Hey everybody, Allen Kopelman here with B2B Vault, and today we're at the NAC 2022 in Hollywood, Florida. And today my guest on the show is Brian Crumpler with a company called Pocketbook. So the theme of the show is we want to hear like how Pocketbook helps consumers and how Pocketbook helps businesses, because our podcast is educational for businesses so they know like, hey, this is a great product for a business.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, Pocketbook.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for, uh, thank you for having me on. Pretty cool concept you guys have. Being a fintech guy for a while, so it's, it's nice to see some fintech nerds talking about some cool things. Yeah, so, uh, so Pocketbook is the on-ramp and off-ramp for digital wallets and, you know, into and out of the cash world. So what does that mean? Uh, you know, we as a society of payments, uh, consumer society, have gotten used to this thing called ACH transfers, right? Uh, and people nowadays don't want to wait for ACHs, and they don't necessarily want to pay for a wire. And so what you have is a lot of people interacting with what we're calling digital wallets, but it's much bigger than just the PayPal and the Venmos and the Cash Apps. It's any website, any service that holds your money online, right? And so what's— I kind of think about it as a wall almost.

So what kind of other companies, right? Exactly.

Yeah. So we've identified 8 to 10 verticals. You have rebate sites where you aggregate dollars by shopping online and they start crediting your account. You have government subsidy benefits like stimulus checks that went out for COVID. You have crypto wallets. You have the DraftKings and the FanDuel of fantasy. You have sports skill gaming.

All—

there's all of these websites, even like something like Robinhood.

Robinhood could be—

yeah, that's obviously a crypto or an equities, but it's a situation where you put money over this wall that I think about and it's kind of stuck there.

Well, unless you have an ACH back out, like a lot of companies like Robinhood and even Coinbase and like Betterment, Acorns, right? You can have money over there, just cash, right, on those accounts.

That's right. But then when you want to get it back out, you're forced to go back the antiquated way where it takes 1 to 3 days or you pay a really high fee. So what Pocketbook is, is a non-Visa, non-MasterCard, new proprietary network where we are allowing for the facilitation of the extraction or the addition of funds to these digital wallets in real time. So what does that mean? We have a network where you can literally request money to be dispersed from your digital wallet provider. An OTP is issued, or a one-time password. The participant comes up, enters the one-time password on that terminal, and the money comes out. Same thing with money in. If you want to fund a wallet, uh, a crypto wallet necessarily to buy crypto on your app later, you put money in the slot for a kiosk, it credits that money to your wallet immediately. And that's the other thing, is it's immediately available to the consumer.

And then they can take money out on an ATM. Money out. So Pocketbook is the cardless transaction.

Cardless. Cardless transactions in real time. We settle on the back end, but the consumer gets the access to the capital or access to their funding, to their funds immediately, whether it's cash in or cash out.

I think we're going to see a lot more of these wallets come into play even at the point of sale and retail.

Absolutely.

Down the road.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we feel like, we feel like first getting the ecosystem really strong on the ATMs. Obviously being at NAC at the show, we want to talk about the ATMs and the kiosk network. We kind of feel like it was a chicken and the egg conundrum where do we go after all the wallets first or do we get a really large extensive network of terminals? And I kind of made the decision like, look, the chicken came first and that's the coverage, right? Because when we go to these wallet companies and they say, well, this is a cool idea, probably save us money on card issuance and things like that, but how many places can I actually get it? Well, so the chicken came first and that is this massive nationwide coverage network of kiosks and ATMs.

Yeah, it's awesome. I love the product.

I appreciate it. Yeah, we're excited. Gotta, gotta, uh, BD call here in a minute to try and close the deal with the first crypto wallet. So we're excited.

Awesome.

Yeah, well, thank you for coming on the show. Maybe we'll have you on again.

I'd love to talk more.

Yes, I would really be interested into having you guys on.

That would be awesome.

Tech Friday.

I love it.

Yeah, we can do a FinTech Friday. We do it live, so it's pretty cool. Very good. Goes out over Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, YouTube, all live. Very good. Like an announcement before.

So I'd love to get the invitation.

You guys, all right, thank you. Thank you so much.

Thanks, Justin. All right, yeah, see you guys.

Yep. Hey everybody, we have our next guest on our podcast at NAC 2022 in Hollywood, Florida. And we have Brad Nolan, the Chief Marketing Officer at Tiosang. I found out I'm saying the name wrong. Tiosang. And today we're going to learn about what's the future of ATMs.

Yeah. So thanks for having me here. Look, one of our major messages here at the conference is there's a lot of change underway in the retail ATM space. Hyosung, back in 1998, virtually invented the cash dispense business here in the US with a small form factor, cost-efficient device that was easy to service. It really enabled a lot of the operators to deploy these things at scale. Our mission now is to help the industry reinvent the retail ATM business. So what exactly does that mean? Well, there's a lot going on right now as you look at the payments and the banking space and everything else. We all know that the banks have been aggressive about closing branches, reducing costs, trying to push their, their customers to lower-cost channels away from the teller line to digital, to mobile, to ATMs, and so forth. So you've got a lot of that going on, and they'd love to push their customers to use retail ATMs, right, so that they can still be convenient to their customers. But in order to push them there, the ATMs need to do more.

Exactly right.

And, and so now you look at the other side of the equation. Historically, independent operators haven't deployed full-function cash-in cash-out devices, right? Well, why is that? Well, A, traditionally they were designed for banks, so they were too gosh darn big, right? And retailers won't let you in with a big machine.

They're massive machines.

You got it, you got it.

In and out.

And then, and then it they were cost prohibitive, right? And at the end of the day, if you bought one and you plugged it in, you really couldn't do anything with it other than continue to spit out withdrawals and do balance inquiries. And that's because, as we heard from Visa earlier today, right, there is no open deposit network here in the US.

Right.

So any of us can go to an ATM and use it for a withdrawal, but you can only use your own bank's ATMs for a cash deposit.

Yeah.

Well, you know, open banking, which is something we've talked about on the podcast before, for, you know, it's growing and it's going to come to the US.

No, absolutely. So, so again, what we're trying to do is enable a few things. First of all, we finally got the equipment down to a point where it's actually no bigger than a traditional cash dispense ATM, but with it you get cash in and cash out. The price point is not much more than deployers have traditionally paid for legacy cash dispensers, right? And we even give them an upgrade path, meaning if you already have one of our cash dispensers out there in the field, instead of replacing that whole device, we'll just give you a Cash Inside card to attach to it.

Yeah, we saw that in the show. Yes, great. The new product Tango with all the different things people can do at the ATM is what's really needed. And we heard the speech from John Rose, the House of Representatives, talking about how you know, the ATM deployers and businesses who have ATMs, or sometimes the bank in local communities because there are no banks there, as banks are disappearing.

You got it. Everywhere. I'm glad you brought up Tango because that's another core piece of bringing this together, right? Step 1 was, well, we need upgrade paths from a hardware perspective. We need smaller form factor cash-in, cash-out devices. But again, now once we plug it in, we need to be able to do something with it. So with our new software platform and with the TangoNet network, that's how we're enabling deployers to do more. So think about it this way, right? If you pick up your cell phone today, you can go to your Android App Store or your Apple App Store and download any number of apps on your phone, right? You don't have to say, oh, I would love to have an Amazon app. Let me go establish a relationship with Amazon, right? And then build it.

Bespoke.

So what we're doing is we're building out this app store of services to make it easy for the deployers to pick and choose which services they want to expose on their ATMs. And we've already done all the heavy lifting in terms of the contracts and building the pipes and plumbing back to these money remittance providers and bill pay providers and so forth.

Good.

Bill pay is definitely something that's needed when you go into the, you know, disadvantaged communities or communities where there's no banks or people are unbanked, you know, cashing the check, right?

No, absolutely. So we, we're talking to a few parties about that, that capability. Um, one of the things that, uh, we're pushing for is more of a leveraging the mobile app to capture the image and transmit that, and then allowing the, the connection to the ATM to do the withdrawal of the funds. Reason being is, look, the vast number of retail ATMs out there run a WEMCE platform, right? And so they don't have enough horsepower to transmit the imagery of the checks and that type of stuff. So why not use the phone that's already in the consumer's pocket?

Yeah, the phone is like the most powerful thing. You think about it, computers used to be like the size of this whole room, and now The power of your phone is more than these computers that were around years and years ago.

Yeah.

And the phone is a very popular way to move money with apps and things like that. So it's only natural to hook them up to the ATM machine.

Well, and I think more and more the ATM is just going to be an extension of that mobile phone. Right. And so customers are going to tee up what they want to do. Via the mobile app. And, and then really it's a matter of, okay, I need to drop off cash. I walk up, I scan my barcode, the door opens up, I put the cash in, and I'm away, right? Or I'm picking up cash that you sent me, I generate a mobile code on my— a QR code on my phone, walk up, scan the code, spits out the cash, making it just super quick, super easy. It's an extension, again, a pickup and a drop-off point, uh, for that physical to digital.

Then there's probably some opportunity out there for the ATM companies to partner with the local banks, you know, to get to— for them to maybe sponsor some of these machines.

Yes.

And local communities where they want to be.

So, well, and, and so, you know, you talked before about, you know, who and how is this benefiting. I think everybody wins across the board, right? Because most importantly, the consumers benefit. Because we as an industry continue to provide critical infrastructure and convenient cash access points, even as some of those bank branches start to disappear and whatnot. Obviously the banks benefit because they're able to serve their customers through a lower cost channel than even inside of their own branches. The retailers benefit because now that's added foot traffic in their stores and new transaction revenues. And then obviously the operators benefit because the more transactions you put through that device, uh, the more revenues you can put in your pocket.

Yeah, it's great for the retailer because, you know, we're trying to educate retailers on how you can, you know, put devices into your business and use technology to grow your business. What we talk about all the time on the podcast, me and Justin talk about it all the time, and, uh, you know, technology can level the playing field.

Absolutely.

You know, so you— doesn't matter whether you're 7-Eleven, you could be Allen's grocery store on the corner, you could level the playing field by having this great device in there that can service your community.

Absolutely.

All right, well, thank you for coming on the show today.

Absolutely, it's great. Glad to have you guys here down at NAC. It's, it's been a fantastic event so far and looking forward to the rest of it.

All right, well, thank you very much for being on the show and Peace out, everybody. One more guest coming up. Okay, we're back and we have our next guest, Brian Haynes, who I know for years from Payment Alliance International. And we're going to talk a little bit about what Payment Alliance does to help businesses and consumers in today's world and how the ATM business is changing. For in the future.

Absolutely. And thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. Um, like you said, my name is Brian Haynes. I work for a company named Payment Alliance International, or PAI, and we are, in short, ATM processors. But like we were just talking about, there's, there's so much more that can be tied into that. So I'm happy to be able to talk to you about that today.

All right, so let's hear about the new things that are happening.

Yeah, absolutely.

So I would imagine if, uh, you're listening to the podcast or have a store, have a business where you support ATMs, um, you know, that's valuable space inside of a store. And what's the most that you can do to maximize the income that that space is building for you, right? And so I think you've seen probably over the last few years processors and ISOs like my company PAI come to the table with new software, new programs, things that enable your customers to actually do more at the ATM. A good example, one that's real easy to understand, is Bitcoin sales, right? Different, different providers do actually sell Bitcoin right at the ATM. You know, what that does is, uh, it really can impact your business in more than one way. Not only are you selling Bitcoin now, but you also have this new group of customers that's coming to your store. You know, so many of these, um, you know, Bitcoin sales companies, uh, that are using our terminals, they'll have what's called a locator file. So their customers are able to push a button on their app, see where the store is, say, hey, I'm going to go to this shop, I'm going to go buy my Bitcoin there. And And you know, hey, 9 times out of 10, if you've got them in your store, yeah, they're gonna buy something, they're gonna buy something else.

That's the whole point of having the ATM, and so people can get money. And you know, there's all kinds of great services on the ATM.

Exactly.

You know, that businesses can use— MasterCard money pickup, Allpoint, where people did, you know, that bank at certain days, and they can drive traffic into those locations that accept those different types of 100%.

And there's more than just that. There are a bunch of different services, services that can increase the number of transactions. You may have a, a balance inquiry software that allows your customers using your machine to actually check all of their accounts at once. And something that really a lot of those folks like, it increases your transaction volume and makes you more money, making your customers a little happier. So, you know, just a couple of examples of some easy-to-install value-added software. The coolest thing about that really is that this is constantly evolving. There are more and more programs every single year, and companies like PAI, we employ a team of people to come up with those things. So it's important for both, you know, people in the financial industry, financial services industry, as well as merchants to know They always ought to be looking and asking that question. You know, what makes my location the most tech— you know, is this— is the level field? Yeah, are you level for 7-Eleven and all these other big stores that you didn't have the same technology? Yeah, like they have, like you were saying earlier.

Yeah, like different, you know, in PAI being independent, you're not taught— like EOSOM, right, it's coming out with a new sidecar, putting a bunch of different financial services on there, bill pay, depositing money to your bank account. You know, that will get bigger as open banking becomes a thing in the United States. We interviewed also Pocketbook earlier, where people can get money out of their different financial services by using their wallet and then getting cash out of the ATM. I mean, you know, technology is moving at a really fast rate. Me and Justin talk about this on the podcast all the time. Now, innovation Sure, it's basically outpacing regulation when it comes to— really is, you know, government regulation. Innovation is moving really fast, and we always talk about how technology can level the playing field for any business if you accept it, right?

Like, the business owner has to be willing, sure, to, to, to change with the times.

And a lot of times what, you know, I— we see like You know, I've been an entrepreneur for over a decade. And so like the pushback that you get from the business owner when it comes to technology, and it's even more of a pushback when the age group is different, right?

100%. Yeah, you hit the nail on the head. And I would say, you know, change is hard. Change is hard for everybody. You know, we are operating in a financial services industry where we're really regulated. And so change is necessary. You know, if you really, if you really want to increase revenue, which I think probably anybody listening here would, would be interested in increasing revenue, it's, it's important to embrace technology. Yeah.

And push the ATM is going to become more of than just the thing that dispenses cash.

Absolutely.

It's going to do a lot more. I mean, even PAI has some really cool technology. We work with PAI, and then one of the favorite technologies that we like is the RMS, remote monitoring on the ATM, and that way, you know, cuts down on service calls to the ATM. You can see what's going on on your ATM.

So can you real quick for the listeners explain what RMS is?

Yeah, so RMS is remote monitoring software. Yeah, yeah. So you can monitor what's going on. We get a customer that calls us up and says, hey, this guy's trying to get money out of the ATM, it's not working. We go and look, yeah, it's working. Somebody's not putting in their PIN number, right? Or this guy just tried a Nordstrom card.

You know what they should call it though is remote management. Yeah, right, because it's more than just monitoring. You can also actually interact with the machine. So, you know, if you have a machine in your store or you manage a machine, um, you know, you have the ability while you're not actually physically in front of the store to power cycle that machine. That means to turn it off, turn it back on, which would clear a bill jam.

For example, right?

Um, so I mean, pretty amazing technology. I'm sure some people could relate if they've got a—

or they loaded the machine and they forgot that they put the wrong amount in, right? You don't have to run to the machine, maybe you left, absolutely change that. You can do tons of different graphics, advertisements, yeah, different things like that.

Yeah, I mean, there's a, there's a whole bunch you can do without actually being right there in front of the machine.

Pretty, pretty cool stuff. I think from a technology standpoint, I think ATMs and also the kiosks that are going to go next to the ATM or even replace the ATM, be an ATM and a kiosk together. I think like in the next, you know, 5 to 10 years, this is going to be a huge upside for many businesses, you know, in disadvantaged communities, communities where there's not a lot of banks.

Right.

And it's going to help people get the financial services that they need in their business.

Right. And what are we really seeing when it comes to banks and bank branches? They're not expanding out into the community, they're contracting, right? They're, they're getting a lot smaller. So having these machines in your locations is just becoming more and more important. It's an ATM plus all the services. This is expected in a place like a convenience store as a freezer full of soda.

Yeah. And it's hard a lot of times for the— for a convenience store to get to do like check cashing. The banks don't want them to do that.

And being able to do those kind and bill pay.

And then that's also another difficult service for businesses to provide now. And being that it'll be on an ATM, it's going to be much easier for them to provide those services at an affordable cost and help the people in their community.

Absolutely.

Yeah, it's a big game changer. And new things are coming to the world of ATMs. Yeah, technology. And your business technology can level the playing field. You can make your small business look like a big business.

Let the technology do the heavy lifting for you.

Exactly.

Absolutely. So I want to thank Brian Haynes, a longtime friend. Thanks, guys, for coming on the podcast. Sure appreciate it. And, uh, everybody have a great day. We're enjoying NAC 2022 in Hollywood, Florida. And a shout out to Bruce from NAC for letting us come out here and, uh, shoot a podcast episode for B2B Vault. Peace out from Allen and Justin.

Hey, what's up everybody? It's Justin and Allen back at the B2B Vault headquarters. Just got back from the National ATM Council 2022 from Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Florida, powered by the platinum sponsor Hyosung.

Yes, I want to have a— say a big thank you to Bruce Renard and his wife Susan, who are the heads of NAC, National ATM Council. Shout out to Dale, who helped us get this— the interviews and everything arranged so we could do the podcast at the convention. And thank you to the people who were interviewed on the podcast: Brian Crumpler from Pocketbook, a really cool fintech company.

Shout out, Brian.

Brian Haynes from Payment Alliance International.

Mr. Haynes.

Yeah, who I've known for years. And, um, also Brad Nolan from Heosong. We thank you guys. We thank you guys for all coming on the podcast. We really enjoyed it. And everybody, peace out. You want to follow B2B Vault? B2BVault.info and @B2BVault. On all social platforms—

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and we're on every podcast network. So wherever you listen to podcasts, whether it's on YouTube or on a podcast app, just look up B2B Vault, the payment technology podcast, and check us out.

Thank you.