OnlyFans For Smoke Shops, B2B Tips & New Payment Trends | Biz To Biz Podcast

Yo, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the Biz to Biz podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by this guy, the Stan Musial of payment processing himself, Allen Kopelman. And we'll be providing you educational information about fintech, payment processing, small business, and the technology businesses are using in the world today. And in today's podcast, we'll be talking about payment trends for July 2023. A lot of interesting things happened. I went on vacation, one of those things. But yeah, and so we thought we would catch you guys up with the trends and stuff.

Yeah, and we made a little change to the tagline.

Oh yeah, we are definitely making some changes. Very subtle things, like you won't even know. This probably. Uh, well, we decided because payment technology— the Payment Technology Podcast is very limited and we don't just talk about payment technology. So Allen and I discussed, uh, discussed it, been going back and forth for a couple of weeks now— months rather— and, uh, decided to switch it up. You know, it's B2B Vault, it's the podcast, nothing really changes. No, just It's just, it's just the content on it. The content is not just focused on payment technology. So we want to hit all the, you know, cover all the bases.

Yeah. So now it's Biz to Biz, the Biz to Biz podcast.

Yeah.

So it makes more sense for increasing the amount of subjects that we can cover now. Yeah, right.

So other than that, yeah, I mean, nothing else changes. It's B2BVault. The handles are B2BVault. Nothing changes, so don't worry about it. No big deal, ladies and gentlemen. How are you doing, sir?

I'm doing good. How was that vacay?

My vacation was awesome.

You're wearing the Milwaukee in honor of the Milwaukee.

Um, uh, yeah, so I was in Milwaukee for like a week. That's my hometown. It was good to, um, it was good to see the people that I saw. Um, it was a little sad to see the state of the city.

That's crazy.

Um, Milwaukee's a lot like Detroit, you know, the— everything's abandoned, burnt houses, streets are raggedy in, in the city, you know what I mean? But you go to other parts and it's really nice. So I mean, it's just really messed up, man, how they're doing the inner city.

You hit a ball game?

I did hit the ball game with my brothers, uh, Tone and Gideon. Um, it was awesome. We watched the Reds play. Um, we decided to leave in like the 8th inning because the Brewers was down 3-1, and of course, in true Brewers fashion, they pull out the win with a walk-off in the 9th inning. Wow. So yeah, I mean, it was, it was fine though because we ended up getting some electric scooters, you know.

Yeah. Oh, those electric scooters, that's cool.

Scooters back from, I mean, it's County Stadium to me, but we rode this. I've been saying County Stadium and everybody's like, what are you talking about? And then I said Miller Park and they're like, what are you talking— American Family Insurance Field.

That's like here, I called I hate saying like Dolphins State, you know, like the Dolphins Stadium. Before, the Dolphins played at the Orange Bowl. Then when they built the new stadium, they called it Joe Robbie, right, after the owner. And now it's called something— it was Dolphins Stadium, now it's called something else.

Exactly, who could keep up? So that was cool. And I spent most of the time with my mom, you know. And then Wednesday we went down to Chicago to visit with my wife's side of the family. They had like a couple family reunions going on. They have a really big family, so nice. Chicago is a big place, so it's hard to get everyone from one side of the town to the other side of the town. You know how families are.

Yep.

So yeah, so, uh, we, we did our rounds, we did our thing on Wednesday. I hit up some dispensaries. That was insane.

Everyone is doing, uh You know, what's the cashless ATMs, the ones that are illegal? And then, you know, last week MasterCard came out and basically announced that they're attacking that network and they're going to find out who's operating machines on there and they're going to shut down the ability for those machines to take MasterCard.

The way that you do the—

oh, CanaPay, where you have to transfer money out of your bank account.

CanaPay was the, the only thing I saw. Everywhere, everywhere I went, it was Canopy.

Yeah, you have to take your— you have to get an account on Canopy, transfer your funds from your bank account to the Canopy app, and then you transfer from the Canopy app to the dispensary. So in essence, Canopy is paying the dispensary and not you, and the bank's not touching the transaction. Yeah, it's complicated and expensive. Sounds complicated, expensive, because the consumer gets charged to transfer for the money, and then the business gets charged. The only one making money is Canopy.

Yeah, man. So, you know, Wednesday I was in Chicago. On the rest of the time I was there, I was, you know, I was trying to, you know, be as productive as possible. Um, cleaned out the— well, I didn't clean anything out, but we got the storage unit cleaned, and I didn't send you any emails saying emergency 911. Super happy about that. Um, yeah, I was trying to— I went to do some, you know, just some networking to let people know like what I've been up to and stuff like that, and A bunch of businesses are gone, man. COVID really hit Milwaukee hard. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what to say. Milwaukee needs some help, man. The Brewers and the Bucks can't hold it down forever. But my trip in, you know, all in all was, I had an excellent trip. Of course, me and my daughter got into it one night, but.

Family.

I told her, she never listens to me. I'm sorry. I love you, JJ. You do listen. You are one of the children that always listen. You are right. I was wrong. Whatever. I love you. Uh, yeah, but other than that, man, mom seems straight. I went to go see my grandmother's, uh, what is that, resting place? Yeah, spent some time with her. Seen one of my, my other daughter Kenya. I got a new tattoo.

Oh, okay.

Got a new tattoo. Um, I did all kinds of stuff. My therapist told me I needed to do everything like it was the first time.

Okay.

So that's what I'm doing it through, like, everything that I'm doing from—

like, did a tour, did it like a tourist.

Yeah, literally, like I've never been there, you know. I went to go get the Middle Eastern food.

Yeah, closed. Uh-oh, that's not good.

The Jamaican spot I did not get to hit up. Um, I did go to Outpost and get Mama's Chili, which is my favorite. Glorioso's. No one was really in the mood for pizza, but we did end up having pizza from Ned's Pizza, which is a Milwaukee staple. Like, I forgot all about that when you asked me about which you should go get. Ned's Pizza is one of those places. Okay. But yeah, and then we left Saturday morning and I did not get home until Sunday morning. Wow.

Um, the flight thing is crazy.

Flying right now, nuts, is nuts. On the way there wasn't that bad, but on the way back, the, the delays and the, the weather, you know, it is what it is. My bags, a bunch of stuff got ruined. It got soaking wet. But I mean, all in all, I don't even care. Like, none of that matters to me. I had a great time. Um, my wife had an emotional trip, but It is what it is.

All right, well, let's dive in.

Thanks, man, for letting me do the Milwaukee recap. All right, so this month, Allen was, uh, we were talking about how to, you know, what's up, you know. So we were like, let's shake it up, or let's, you know, figure out a different way to present payment trends. So Allen thought the idea of possible to talk about what types of businesses we onboarded this month.

Yeah, what kind of businesses have been calling us up, and you know, some we were able to help, some that we can't help because of rules and regulations. But we're getting a lot of phone calls from CBD stores because—

why though?

So what's happening is a lot of the payment processors have been combining You know, one company buying out another company. And then also on a lot of those companies change the acquiring bank. And that to explain it, which is the bank that basically holds the money and then for like 2 seconds and then sends it to the merchant's bank account. And then those banks have been— I don't, I don't want to name any banks, but couple of those banks have been going through their portfolio, the portfolios of what the new customers they have, right? And then they're going, oh, we don't want this guy, we don't want that guy, drop that person. And they're sending out, you know, 30-day and 10-day letters, you have to go.

That's crazy.

And so we got some—

I don't think that should be legal, but I, you know, I get it.

I think they should give them at least 30 days. I think 10 days is not fair.

Especially they shouldn't be doing what they're doing.

Like to say, well, I'm just saying they're processing that. One guy's processing transactions for 3 years, right? And they go, okay, bye, in 10 days.

Right.

And he was on vacation.

Right.

So then, you know, what are you going to do? He's right now without services. We're trying to get the account approved. And so, so, you know, we've had some smoke shops call us.

And smoke shops are kind of going through the same thing too, right?

Right.

Yeah. Not the same thing about getting kicked off, but they're just getting their fees jacked.

Well, they're getting their fees jacked from some companies. They're also getting shut off because maybe they sell CBD or they sell bongs or they, or they sell kratom or they sell— you're not supposed to sell kratom. It's on the DEA list or they sell THC Zero or they saw it on a Facebook post. They're not supposed to be selling that either.

I don't know what THC Zero is.

THC Zero is supposedly lab-made cannabis.

That's exactly it. Some guy in a laboratory grew some weed and they're calling it THC. Oh, and I highly suggest that no one smokes that or take the edibles.

So, so that's been, that's been going around. And, you know, and then also like Clover shut off the smoke shop loyalty program. Yep. So then a lot of smoke shops are upset about that. They want a loyalty program, so they're looking for a new point of sale, of which we have one that will give them a loyalty program. We did that— this one guy, I don't know if we're going to be able to help him or not, but he wants to have a streaming site like an OnlyFans but for people who's smoking CBD, hemp, and cannabis. And then be able to promote their brands without selling it through the streaming site.

Why not?

Well, there's some compliance, you know, you got to have these streaming—

smoking is weird. Yeah, yes, you can't post those types of videos on like LinkedIn and Facebook, right?

So like that. So, so yeah, so you have to have KYC, know your customer. There's a lot of different— there's a— they, they really need to put their—

there's really a market for people to watch each other smoke weed.

I get this guy's trying to make one. And where's it from? From the U.S. No, I know. Um, I don't remember where he's from, but he was—

got to be a legal state, right?

Yeah. And then we found out in the, you know, in doing— going through the compliance with him that there's a few states that he would not be allowed to have people streaming, watching, or participating. Like as a— they couldn't because there's a few states where it's illegal to do it online, to smoke online. Yeah, some weird— yeah, there's some few. There's like 3 or 4, there's like 3 or 4 states where it's like completely illegal.

Wisconsin is one of them states.

I don't remember, but it was getting— it got really complicated. And the guys to work on is he's got to get some— he's got to work on his plan together. He's got to work on his compliance of how he's going to control all of that. And then we're going to circle back in a couple of months with him. And we got a couple of new strip clubs that opened up. We got a couple of new restaurants. We had a guy open up a dispensary with a smoking lounge, and we installed ATMs in there dispensing real cash. And that's pretty cool. We got a couple of auto repair clients. B2B is— get— people are wanting to get set up with, you know, automated invoicing with our no-code payment portal. So you don't need anybody to do any code. Just get— we produce the code in the backend. You just take that link and post it on your website. Boom, you have a payment portal. So that's pretty cool. And we got a couple of new nonprofits. Talking to a few different independent software vendors about our hybrid PayFac program. Which is pretty cool.

It's interesting.

We can't, you know, it's, you know, it's a growing industry where independent software vendors want to, um, you know, get linked into services where people can answer 10 or 12 questions, get an instant merchant account, and then for them to make some of the money off credit card processing the same way Toast, Shopify, and everybody else is doing it without spending hundreds of thousands millions of dollars building out a system, we have a way to do that. And then in the news, so the 3 big news stories that came out was the MasterCard cracking down on debit cards being used on cashless ATMs, of which Visa is also cracking down on. MasterCard is going crazy. Then you got the own— the CEO of Visa going bonkers about surcharging. You got Dick Durbin trying to stuff the— stuff his bill inside some other bills. That never works.

Yeah, how come they always try to— so this is a little bit off subject, but I was doing a little history lesson, right, about the propaganda thing. Yeah, that passed in 2013.

Yes.

Why was that the same type of like Homeland Security bill bullcrap? That's the same type of crap that how they passed that bill, how Dick Durbin is trying to pull.

Yeah, listen, Dick Durbin's bill, the first one, got stuffed inside the Dodd-Frank Act. That's what I'm saying. I just don't agree with that type of thing in our government. I think there should be one— they have a law that's gotta stand on its own and they gotta vote on it. And none of this loading up the bills with all this pork spending and that they call it, you know, these spending packages and all that. I mean, listen, I don't know. We need a real over— they need to, they don't follow the rules in the House of Representatives or the Senate because the one thing that upsets me, I talk to young people and I go, do you realize it says in the rules that every bill was supposed to pass with a two-thirds vote, but instead they have this nuclear option thing where they can say, oh, there's no agreeing. So instead of them trying to iron everything out, they can do this filibuster thing and then declare nuclear option, and then it go— then they can pass stuff with a 51% vote. I don't agree with that. They've been using this 51% vote thing back since 2000, and I think it's '12, non-stop, and it needs to stop. You know, it needs to really stop. I'm not happy with it. Let's not get political.

That was weird.

And then the other thing in the news is this whole thing. All of a sudden, the SEC wanted to put Coinbase basically out of business and say, Coinbase, you can only sell Bitcoin.

Coinbase said, get out of here.

Coinbase told them to go pound sand, blah blah blah. And that's still a fight. But I mean, we did a podcast on How the government destroyed Bitcoin in a year, destroyed the cryptocurrency in a year. And it's true, they're just taking it out, you know, that all the rules, the taxes—

Shiba is worth anymore.

Oh no, my— none of my coin is worth hardly anything anymore. I mean, I've got lucky, I bailed out of a bunch and then I bought some more, and none of it, you know, and that just makes those coins go down because people just, you know, eventually just say, well, it's not going to make any money. I only have a little bit sitting there, so I just let it sit there. The sad part is, is you have to pay tax on your holdings at the end of the year, whether you made money on it or not. And that's just really sucky. The, the tax laws need to change. And also, free Ross. Free Ross. That was the other thing we were telling the guy from the weed side is you don't want to— you need— he needs to go look at what happened to Ross Ehrlich., right? Oh yeah, because is he going to be facilitating the sale of marijuana on his site or other drugs, right? I told him, I said, there's a guy, Ross Ehrlich. He didn't even know who that was. I said, you need to go research that, talk to your lawyers, because you don't want to end up— that guy's doing this? No, he's trying to start it. It's a startup. It hasn't started yet. But he's trying to get it started. I just— I was— one of the things I told him about is you don't want to end up like Ross. Ross is doing— the guy said, what happened to Ross? He's doing life. So you're a young guy. Ross was young. Don't get yourself in trouble. You need to look at whatever went wrong over there. Talk to your legal team. The other thing that's in the news nonstop is all this stuff, FedNow, RTP, which is the Real-Time Payments Network, and ACH. So I just, I've been working on a blog to explain what those services are, and we'll put out a blog on that. But FedNow basically is in its infancy, so it's going to take time for that to be like working. And also there's only like a dozen or so banks that are part of the FedNow network, and that's got to increase. Where the real-time payments network, there's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of banks on the real-time payment network, right? And that never really— it caught, it caught, um, traction with things like Uber, like Uber drivers, right? They drive, right? And then in the app it says, oh, today you made $147.82, and you hit the button and then Uber works with a particular bank, Cross River, and then the money gets sent right to the person's bank account or to a debit card, right? That's the real-time payment network. Okay. But it's working for like bigger type companies like that. It doesn't, it doesn't have an application for the SMB market, small, medium-sized businesses, which make up most of the businesses in the United States.

Right.

Okay. Because when you're driving down the street, you're driving and driving, driving. Yeah, you pass one Walmart and you pass a Target store, but in between all that, you passed hundreds of businesses, you know, either in—

where in other countries they're using, like in India, the real-time payments, they're going up to like grocery stores and it's just going from—

no, they're using, they're basically using like something more like Zelle. Where it's bank account to bank account, but it creates—

what's it called? Alipay, right?

Uh, oh no, that's in— they don't use— Alipay is in, uh, is in China. China, yeah, they use Alipay, they use WeChat, right? Yeah, but it's bank-to-bank payments, and there's, you know, obviously they have a little bit more control because there's one bank, the Bank of China, right? Everybody banks at the same bank.

I forgot about that, yeah.

So it's a whole different thing. It's not like there's—

'Cause I'm trying to figure out how this could even work in America.

No, but I'm just saying it's the same thing. Like if you went into a store and they said, "Oh, you have to Zelle us," they're gonna end up getting like 300 deposits 'cause each transaction gets deposited separately. That's why they need fintech companies to come in, code to FedNow or real-time payments, and then initiate these things. But you're gonna come into the same problem where Zelle, now has a ton of security measures. Like for me to go Zelle somebody, let's say I never Zelled Justin before. I gotta log into my bank app, I gotta add Justin to the bank app. Then I get a text said, oh, did you add Justin? Yes or no? Yes. Okay, now you can send Justin money. I go to send Justin money, then I get a 6-digit code from the bank. Then I gotta put it in there. Then I can send Justin the money. No one, if you had to stand in line at Publix and do all that, to pay with FedNow, the line would be taken forever, right? How long would that take for someone to go? You know, can you imagine my mom trying to pay like that? She's not going to— she's going to be like, no, my mom has a hard—

you know, no, I'm just saying, hard time. But like, she's— I can only imagine.

Credit cards are successful because it's fast. Boom, you walk up, you swipe your card, you stuck the chip in the thing, you tap and pay. You whip out, you know, the cool people whip out their phone and do an Apple Pay thingy, right? And boom, it's quick. Boom, you're in and out of the store. You know, if you have to do all of that stuff, oh, I've never been to Publix before. Sorry, I have to add you to my bank app. That it's not going to work. No. And then what about the fraud? There's no, there's no, there's no other way to dispute those transactions. So let's say you bought a pair of sneakers and you use this FedNow, and then the sneakers came and they were not the sneakers you ordered. There's no getting your money back. Like, if someone doesn't pay— if I got a situation, I paid a vendor, then the vendor was supposed to do something, they didn't do it, then I go, are you going to do it or not do it? They didn't call me back for like a week. Then I said, no, I'm doing a chargeback. Guess what? I got my money back on my credit card. That's it, over and done with. But there's no— there's no system set up for that with like FedNow.

I thought you were talking about Manny for a second. I was like, dang, man, you did a chargeback on Manny, bro.

Who's Manny?

The ATM guy.

What ATM guy? You mean Byron? Byron?

Yeah, Byron, not Manny.

No, but I'm saying you can't get— I'm saying when you send somebody Zelle, you can't just a week later go, oh, the guy didn't do what he's supposed to do, I want my money back. There's no getting your money back. There's no— there's no mechanism for that. You have to ask them for the money back, and if the person's nice, they can give it to you. If they're not nice, they don't have to give it to you.

That's true.

There's no one to complain to. There's no chargeback department. And that's what makes credit— you know, people complain about Visa and MasterCard, but they, they don't understand that, you know, the system—

because they've spent too much money.

No, but what I'm saying is, is this— that they developed— you have to hand it to them— they developed a system that enables people to get credit use credit and have consumer protection.

And businesses.

And businesses get paid too. And it's not that costly. When I think about it, right, when my dad, I remember as a little boy, my dad took credit cards, back then they called them charge cards. A bank, I can't even remember the name of it, but you would come in with your card. My dad would have to look in the book. Then you'd have to do a manual imprint, and I think it cost my dad like 5%. But I said to my dad, that's a lot of money, 5%. He goes, yeah, but the people coming in using that plastic are spending way more money than the people with cash. The guy comes with cash, he only can spend what he has in his wallet. This guy can spend way more than he has in his wallet. So the people coming in with that, they were buying, you know, 10 shirts, you know, they were buying plenty of a lot more clothing. Yeah, they're buying a lot more clothing than the guy rolling in with— now, some people did walk in with a wad of cash, but that doesn't exist anymore. And, um, you know, ATMs is— the business is still growing. People are taking money out of ATMs. In fact, they did a study recently and they were asking the, uh, whatever— what are the young people called? Millennials? The young people?

Generation Z?

Whatever, but they were asking the younger people, like the people under like 30, if they use cash. So some of them said they prefer to use cash because they stick to their budget better.

I don't know, we had a whole— but I know I gotta— what are the new generations called?

I think it's the millennials.

I thought I'm a millennial. I don't know, I don't know.

I'm a baby boomer.

Generation Alpha.

Generation— I can't even keep up with all the, all the acronyms of everything. No, but there's, you know, so there's a lot of stuff going on in the, in the world of payments. And we also got some interesting podcast topics coming up soon that we made a list for. I'm looking forward to a couple of those, and we're working on some interesting guests to possibly come on the podcast also, which sounds—

I had a interesting conversation before I left on vacation. And I get back and I check the message, and apparently that was— she didn't understand what I was asking. Uh-oh.

Okay.

I'm like, I don't know how I could be any more clear, but whatever.

Okay, well, we'll figure that out. Yeah. So, you know, so the business is good. I see, you know, I think we're headed for some high gas prices in the next 30, 60, 90 days because every time I go to the pump today, the pump was not kind to me.

Yeah, I mean, on top of the, the weather that we're supposed to be getting over the next couple weeks is going to be— it's like a perfect storm for the gas prices.

Yes, it's a perfect storm for gas prices. So that's the—

I'm talking— don't even go there.

So if You need some, so let's just go. So if you need some payment processing, you know, we do customized solutions so we can get you set up with a flat rate, a custom rate.

Whatever you need, we got it, pal.

0%, high risk, whatever you need for payment processing, we can get it set up.

How do you want it? We got what you need.

Oh, we got a new theme song for the podcast? I don't know. So, you know, so we enjoy helping business owners. That's why I started my business, to help business owners navigate payments and navigate point of sale, navigate whatever they need to do with their business in order to make it run better. So that's what I enjoy about business. What do you enjoy about that? You like helping business owners, right? Of course.

That's why I started Digital 1380 when I started my company was to help the small guys stake their claim on the internet. Yeah, so, so, well, yeah, man, I like helping small, you know, the, the underdog, the, the mom-and-pop shops, the competitors to Walmart, you know. Those are the real people that are out here making the country go.

Yeah, people need to buy local, buy from your local companies. Don't go to Amazon for everything.

Oh, you know, real quick, I'm just gonna say something.

Okay.

I was reading, you know, I went to this restaurant. It's a Black-owned restaurant back in Milwaukee.

Okay.

It's a small restaurant, doesn't have a lot of staff.

Okay.

But the city is supporting this restaurant.

Okay.

The city— I'm sorry, but you guys can't get upset, man, that this place is busy. Like, They're busy, so you gotta wait for your food just like you would anywhere else. So you can't get online and bash this business because, you know, the Cheesecake Factory is bringing out your food like this. It's a total different environment situation, and I really get tired of of like, you know, like a business. Like, I owned my own business, right? You owned your own business.

Yes.

So like, there's a lot of work in that.

Yeah, there's a lot of work, and there's also risk. And you know that.

Yeah, the reward is slim. Yes, the reward is not always, you know, it's not this copious amount of money where you're swimming in. Not everybody's a million—

not everyone's a millionaire that owns a business, right? People are making a living.

Yes.

So yeah, be kind to the business owner.

And that's all I have to say.

And if you want to write a review, you know, like if, like if you like a business, write a positive review because people, people don't know this. I learned this when I was in the hotel business when I was younger. If people have a bad experience, they'll tell 10 people, right? If people have a good experience, they'll tell one person.

Exactly.

So when you have a good experience, go on the business's website or go to their Google page or their Facebook page or whatever. Leave them a nice review, give them a compliment, post a picture of the food that you enjoyed, and give some, you know, share the love. Yes, please share the love.

So love, but Allen, we're out.

Peace out. Carpe diem. Seize the day.