Payment Processing During Hurricanes Before & After The Storm | B2B Vault - The Payment Technology Podcast | Episode 113

Hey, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the payment technology podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems with your host Allen Kopelman, and we'll be providing you educational information about small business fintech, payment processing, and the technology businesses use in today's world. And in today's podcast, we'll be talking about what businesses should be doing before and after a hurricane or tropical storm. We're down in South Florida, sunny Fort Lauderdale. And fortunately, we were blessed and did not get much weather from Hurricane Ian. But other parts of Fort Lauderdale are in some serious trouble.

And Florida—

in Florida, sorry, they're in some very, very sad state. Fort Myers, Tampa, Naples, pretty much the whole West Coast, Sarasota. Yeah, every major city along the West Coast kind of felt the wrath of Hurricane Ian, unfortunately. We feel, you know, I don't know, the pictures are like horrific.

My daughter's a terrifierologist. Yeah, you know, and I follow a lot of storm chasers and they were posting video and pictures, and I've seen pictures of some of my, uh, friends that live on that side, houses. I mean, your house can be replaced.

So positive vibes to everyone who's been affected. Um, yeah, our prayers, our condolences to anybody who has lost any family members in the storm. Um, again, you know, I don't— you know, you can't really prepare for these types of things. In a sense you can, but you know, like, water is water, and Mother Nature is going to do what it does. So, you know, uh, heads, you know, yeah, I don't even know what to say. I'm at a loss for words. No, listen, they had a natural disaster.

They made the evacuation zones much larger. Yeah, this year. And so, you know, people, even though they evacuated, or most of the people evacuated, You know, then even though you're not in the evacuation zone or your business is not in the evacuation zone, you know, you, you're dealing with the power outages, the internet outage. I mean, I want to hand it to the state of Florida. This morning I was watching TV, uh, the governor Ron DeSantis got on there. They got helicopters into the areas right away. Yeah, to go look for people to deal with there was like some 3 or 4 barrier islands where the bridges totally are out, so, you know, only accessible by boat or helicopter. Um, there was also, um, they brought in Starlink over there, so, um, that's another really cool thing. Big shout out to Elon Musk, um, because I was also listening, they were talking about setting up, uh, Starlink and giving people access to Starlink. And also they were bringing in special mobile cell towers into the, into the affected areas so they could restore cell service very quickly, you know, by bringing in these special equipment. And I guess they must have strategically mapped it out, like, right, where they're going to put it to bring back cell service, because definitely, um, that you— I can already tell that they've done that in some areas because some people are posting, you know, right? So that's the only— because they wouldn't be able to post otherwise unless that's some kind of like satellite connection. But, you know, being in payment processing for over 20 years, we've been through where we have— because we don't just have merchants in Florida, we have merchants all over the United States. So we faced all types of different, you know, disasters. I remember one year there was a snowstorm that hit the Northeast, and I remember seeing pictures where the snow was like 20 feet high.

Mm-hmm.

And we had stores that were in the malls there up in New York at the time. We had a client that stores all over the Northeast, and those stores were all basically out. And then they got the stores open, but then there was no, uh, there was the— couldn't get the credit card machines working because the internet wasn't working in the stores in the mall, right? There's a lot of malls supply like the internet to the whole mall. So we told them to go get a, um, hotspot, and they got a hotspot, and then we— they got a, you know, a tablet and a little swiper, and we got them up and running. So there's creative ways, you know. But, you know, one thing businesses should think about when you have to evacuate, you know, is, you know, get— you know, I mean, you can replace everything, but I mean, if you need your data and all that, I mean, get your computers out of there.

I mean, if I was— if I had— if I had a small business and, you know, there was a hurricane coming, regardless of what type of insurance I had. I mean, as long as I had the amount of time, I would definitely remove, you know, the, the important stuff, you know, your cash register if you got time.

Um, yeah, but at least get it unplugged.

At least get it unplugged. Move your ATM, you know, to high ground if you can, right? I mean, some you can.

Yeah, some of them get the money out at least.

Yeah, try to get the money out.

Um, I mean, there's definitely going to be like destroyed. There's going to be— I saw this morning, I went by the bank and there was a guy out there fixing the ATM and he said, oh, it rained so hard. And it was a newer, a brand new ATM and it got shorted out.

There you go.

So from the rain. So that's just from the rain, you know. It was a brand new ATM at the bank. But yeah, you have to make, you know, you got to protect your electronic equipment, your electronic, your records. You know, it's important. That's why, like, now, like, having your payment processing or your point of sale up in the cloud, you know, God forbid anything happens like that, you're, you know, you're protected.

You can pull it.

Yeah, you can access the, access the information, um, you know. So, you know, before the storm, it's important make sure that you're, you know, protecting your place of business, protecting your equipment, protect your investment, the the best way you can. A lot of times there's no way to do that. I mean, there's just no way.

I mean, I mean, you can't predict the weather, right? Right. You can try and you can, you know, make certain steps so that you're not caught, you know, with your pants down.

And we had merchants that were in a whole bunch of different storms. The one that was in— that one that had Pensacola, the one that had New Orleans, the one that— the one where everything got messed up in Houston. They had the big flood there, you know, other storms that hit Florida. So we've dealt with, you know, hurricanes before. And, you know, we've had merchants contact us and they're like, hey, what can we do? And then we discuss, you know, what are the possible solutions. Um, sometimes they're not even clients of ours and they say, hey, what do you— what, what kind of technology do you guys have access to that we can use, you know, for our business, you know, and get it up and running right away, right? Because, you know, who know— we don't know, is FedEx, UPS delivering into the area? Um, how can we get it dropped off?

Amazon was, right?

No, but I'm just saying, like, how can we get things, you know, sent to a merchant or send them somewhere where they can go pick up whatever it is that they need. But, you know, there's definitely ways to get your business up and running, you know, get a virtual terminal. But some of the other things that, you know, I didn't hear them mention on TV is, you know, be very careful about the people who show up at your business or your house and they say, oh, I want to help you fix stuff, you know. Don't give people money. Make sure You know, because this is when all the scams start happening. You know, you want to make sure that the contractor is licensed. Get somebody that you know or somebody knows. It's very, very important. You know, if you need a contact, take pictures. Even though they were talking about that on the news today, take pictures so you— of the walls, so they know where the water line was.

Makes sense.

I mean, it was— I mean, we saw down— I don't know if you saw the videos of downtown Fort fires in Naples. I mean, there was some serious, you know, I mean, there was cars underwater. Yeah, I literally don't—

high school friend of mine lives in Tampa.

Yeah, Tampa got—

he's all right though.

Yeah, there was a little bit there, but not as much as they've said there was going to be.

The water got pretty bad on the coast, but other than that, where he's at, he's pretty far in, in the coast.

So there's definitely ways to get your to get merchant services up and running quickly, even if we have to get you like a virtual terminal. So we've done that. We can get a merchant account set up in 30 minutes. Get a— you get a phone app on your phone.

For those who don't know, what's a virtual terminal?

Oh, the virtual terminal is so that you can either text somebody or email them an amount of money you want to pay them, or key enter it on your telephone. So that enables you to do that kind of functionality and we can get that set up, have you approved in like half an hour.

It is also the OnTheGo option too, right?

Yeah. Well, you'd have to get some equipment set up. The mobile one, right? You get the OnTheGo option equipment that has either Wi-Fi or 4G. That way you can do a card-present transaction. But if you needed to get something so you could take credit cards right away, you could take— be taking credit cards and a half.

But you can run that device off your phone, can't you?

Um, you could. Yeah, you can run it off your phone or a hotspot. That's what I mean. Yeah, the Wi-Fi version. I mean, it's, you know, it's very important because a lot of places, you know, they're— they might have power and then they don't have telephones, right? Or they don't have internet. Then you need wireless internet, right? You know, so it's very important to be able to have like the options to get your business up and running. I remember during one really bad hurricane here, we had a couple of clients and they called us on the phone, and then we were able to get some— uh, called up a vendor, got them some, uh, equipment so they had wireless, you know, 4G internet on a little box so they could hooked the credit card. We hooked the credit— we had it back in those days, it was before the, uh, you know, Wi-Fi credit card machines. So you ran a, uh, you know, uh, Ethernet cord to— from the credit card machine over to the— actually a phone, that, or a phone line onto the, onto the little router, right? And then the router was using the Ford, the, you know, the the wireless internet from the cell phones. So sometimes the phones aren't working, but the, but the, uh, the cellular data is working, you know. One network is off, the other one is on. So it's important to be able to— that's why we call, you know, this is the Payment Technology Podcast. It's important to understand what technology you could use in your business to get your business, you know, back running quick or running before, regardless. Yeah, running before. A lot of times people don't have a plan, like for the hurricane, they didn't think about it, you know, and they don't have a virtual terminal set up.

Or even during the hurricane, and like if you're a contractor, uh, you know, how are you getting paid? You know, there's way you can simply send a text to the owner of the home that you're working at and you know, he can just input his debit or credit card right there or through his mobile device and then pay you on the spot, you know.

So, right, because they might not have access to go to the bank to get cash. Probably don't. I mean, you might not be able to—

what bank is open in Fort Myers right now? Pretty sure probably not many, right? You know, so yeah, and I wouldn't be taking a check during this type of situation. I mean, you know, I not to be mean or anything, but hey, you know, I— my kids got to eat too.

Well, it's not that. You might not have access to go to the bank to deposit the check. Just—

there's a lot of different reasons.

Yeah, exactly.

So, so before we get back into the next step, uh, segment of the show, we want to say thank you to all of our followers, the subscribers, the people in the community on the B2B Vault page. Thank you so much. Thank you to the sponsors, Nationwide Payment Systems and MPS Printer. If you If you need some printing, npsprinter.com, they can hook you up. Text book to 954-827-9818 to get in touch with Allen. Uh, he could talk to you about how to get your business, uh, back up and running through the storm. Um, please follow us on YouTube, B2B Vault. Subscribe to the channel. We need to get those, uh, numbers up so we could start making some moolah, baby. Listen to the podcast on Spotify, Apple, iHeartRadio, Stitcher, Pandora, Amazon, whichever one that you want to listen to the podcast on. We're there. Head over to B2BVault.info. There's a form there if you'd like to get in touch with Allen Kopelman and/or myself in regards to the show, any questions, comments, concerns. Uh, maybe you want to be a guest on the show, fill out the form. It's ready right there for you to go ahead. And if you are looking for a merchant account, there's a button that says Apply Now on the top of that page of b2bvault.info. You click that and you can hit the ground running.

All right, perfect. Yeah, so, you know, it's important to figure out, you know, technology and what you can use during these times. Because this kind— these kind of events happen all over the United States where things can happen and you get your power knocked out.

It's going to become more common, in my opinion.

Okay, well, we don't— it's definitely becoming and something that's happening every couple of years for some, you know, for climate change is real.

So I mean, I don't know, I don't want to talk about science on the podcast anyway. Uh, but yeah, what else can they do before— or I mean, or after? What should they do after the storm?

I mean, after the storm, definitely if you're going to process payments, you need to get in touch with your payment processor so they don't think that there's fraudulent transactions running through your account. Because you might have access to a virtual terminal now, or maybe, uh, you're key-entering some transactions for whatever reason. Like, we had a merchant— I'll tell you the story— they got a contract with FP&L after one of the big storms here, and they were key-entering like a card for like $20 grand twice a day, feeding all these FP&L workers.

Wow.

At their restaurant, right? Because they were the only restaurant open because they got a generator, right? So many businesses all over Florida put in generators, like the gas stations were all required to put in generators so that people could get gas after a storm. And even the grocery stores put in generators because after the one storm we had here, Wilma, I think it was, the grocery stores had like no food. All the food went bad.

Yeah.

And they had no refrigerated food, no frozen food, no vegetables.

Terrible.

It was, it was horrible.

I mean, I mean, grocery stores right now are bare.

Well, people, people went crazy before the storm buying stuff.

People need to stop.

No, I mean, listen, in, in Florida, I tell all my friends, when hurricane season starts, you got to go out, you got to buy some food, put it in a box and hide it, you know, in your house. And whatever it is, canned tuna, canned whatever that you want to eat.

And they say you should have at least a 7 to 10 day supply. I think that's a lot, but I mean, 7 to 10 days, that you know, get yourself some good canned goods. You got some kidney beans, some tuna. Yeah, some, uh, I don't know, I don't eat canned corn, but Chef Boyardee, if you really want— you know, you get yourself some, uh, what are those things called? SpaghettiOs. Uh-oh, SpaghettiOs. No, but you can get some protein bars, get some stuff like that, you know, trail mix, nuts, some stuff that doesn't expire right away, you know. And then I have a bug-out bag, you know. I don't— it's not a bug-out bag in a sense, but like it's a bag full of that type of stuff. Yeah, I mean, a first aid kit, um, some nutri— nutritional items.

Yeah, I've been happy. I have like a radio that has bottles of water that has a crank on it.

Yeah, yeah, I know it has the one where you shake.

Yeah, you shake it or a crank. And make sure you have flashlights, batteries, lanterns, candles. You know, a grill.

I've seen a really good idea online too, um, besides this one for— I've seen one for him. If you got a doggo, buy a kiddie pool and go out to your backyard or wherever and dig up a nice section of your grass and throw it in a kiddie pool, put it in your garage so your dog doesn't have to go outside. That was a great idea. The other idea was a woman said go to Family Dollar and get a bunch of those garden lights that are solar powered. Yeah. And then instead of using candles in your house, charge them outside, obviously, you know, right? And then you could use that inside of your house to light up your house. And it was— she took a picture of it, it was just like— it was way brighter than what a candle was.

Yeah, I definitely— I have, um, some lanterns, and then you could charge them up outside. I mean, we had a hurricane a few years ago, and all— everybody was laughing at me at my house. They were like, oh, what are you going to do now? The power went out. So I had the generator had gas, uh, fired up my generator, ran extension cord into the house, hooked up the refrigerator so all my food stayed good. And then I took— but if you don't have a generator, one thing you can do before the storm is buy a cooler. Is— well, you could buy a cooler with ice, but the other thing is like get your— get water bottles, put them in your freezer.

Yeah.

Or get Tupperwares and fill them up with water, put them in the freezer. Then when the power goes out, take some of those, put them in the fridge or water bottles, put them in the refrigerator. Somebody even said put a quarter on top of a cup in the freezer and then put it in your refrigerator if the power goes out. And then let's say you had to leave and come back, so— or if it's in the freezer and then as the quarter stayed on the top, you know your food stayed frozen. If it was all the way in the bottom, you just toss everything out.

Makes sense.

You know, that was a— I thought that was a pretty good idea. But I've been through storms since 1960. I try not to—

like, when this hurricane comes, I mean, I don't know if this is a logical thing, but I try to like not shop for a bunch of stuff that's gonna perish, right? Yeah. Eat all of the crap that I have in the refrigerator and freezer. Like, so I don't know, 3 weeks ago, Hurricane Ian— well, not just Hurricane Ian, the one before that was sitting over there.

Hermes.

Yeah, whatever. And I was like, yeah, we should probably be careful about stocking this fridge, right? Like, let's not— because 2 years ago, the, the big hurricane came to Fort Lauderdale, we were, we were SOL for days. I had to send my wife and kids, uh, to a hotel, right? We didn't have water. I mean, it was terrible. Um, but yeah, man, you know, I try to like get all that stuff out of the refrigerator, one So I don't have to deal with it too. I don't have to deal with the anxiety of like losing all of that food.

It's $300-$400 worth of food.

Yeah. So I don't know, those are just some things. And obviously you have to have your canned goods, man. Like, some people don't have like the handheld can openers, you know what I mean? People depend on technology. Of course, this is the Payment Technology Podcast.

But yeah, well, sometimes you got to go back to basics.

You got to go back to the basics, Man, food, clothing, and shelter, you know, basic necessities.

Yeah, and have like propane, you know, propane for your grill, or charcoal for your grill, or little butane stoves, you know, like Coleman, like camping stuff, you know, that kind of stuff can, you know, you just buy it one time, you have it stored in your house, you check your stock. Yeah, you know, once, like I do it all the time before hurricane season, I go around, I go, okay, there's batteries I check all my flashlights, right? I mean, I buy lanterns. I try not to buy this stuff during the storm because don't try to buy it during the storm. No, that stuff's going to be priced through the roof.

That, and you aren't going to find it.

Yeah, buy it during the, during the regular part of the year.

And I mean, I'm, I'm an advocate of having your water delivered, you know. I mean, if you're a water drinker like myself, I have an account through Crystal Springs. You know, they— I get 7 5-gallon bottles delivered to my house. I still had— well, we just— when the hurricane started, we had 5 fives. So that's 25 gallons of water, right? That's— I would suspect that would be plus the other bottles that we have in our house and stuff like that. We would have definitely—

yeah, a couple things that I also do during the storm is I'll have empty of those 5 empty 5-gallon bottles of water. And if the storm— if I feel like it's really coming, I'm gonna fill those up. The other thing I'm gonna do, I'm gonna fill up the tub.

Yeah.

And the reason you want to fill the tub up, especially— it just depends where you live, but if the power is out for a few days, you might not be able to flush the toilet.

And you will not.

Well, you don't want to waste your water on the toilet. Yeah, so, you know, even fill up like a kiddie pool outside in your yard, fill it up with a hose so that— because you might not be able to get water out of the hose because the, the water—

they shut the water off.

Yeah, sometimes they shut the water off. And I remember one time during one of the hurricanes, I was like, oh, the— my son came, he's like, oh, the toilet wouldn't flush. So I was like, oh, thank goodness we had a pool. Pool. So I said, just go. I went outside, got a bucket of water out of the pool and poured it into the back of the toilet so you could flush the toilet, then filled it back up again. But you know, you gotta definitely— you know, you got to definitely think about these things, about getting like empty 5-gallon water things so you don't have to go out like all of a sudden Costco's out of water. Don't worry about it, people drink water from the tap every day.

Public had no water like yesterday.

No, there was no water, but I'm saying like you could fill up those 5 I think I was looking for water. I just—

I mean, I was looking for water to see if there was.

And I also— I didn't need anyone. And I also have like those tablets like to put in water, and that's just, just in case. Like, people take them. My daughter does like a lot of camping.

Yeah, man, water purification tablets. I mean, like, I, I'm just— I have a bug out, like I said. I can't say it enough, man.

Like, if you can't— you It—

I would just say get prepared a little bit. Everyone in the world, like, even if you don't live in a place where there's hurricanes, I mean, you don't know what's going on. And just a little preparedness for your—

look what happened in Texas last year. They had that crazy— that two crazy things. One was like a winter storm that came out of nowhere, and then all the electricity went out. I mean, that was horrible. People were not prepared for that. And then they had another storm where it was like in the summertime and all the windmills or something— electricity went out again, the electricity went out again.

And so then there was no air conditioning.

Yeah, no air conditioning. It was like 100 degrees. It was very, very bad. And they weren't prepared to like tell the public, hey, leave your air— you know, don't run your air conditioning, like try not to run it all night, man.

Yeah, it's wild.

California, they go through that all the time. But you know, if you have a problem and you know, or you want to figure out like a disaster plan for your business, I even tell businesses all the time. We had a— I'll tell you a story. So you know, one of the things I tell businesses, like you have this big point of sale system in your restaurant and you depend on the internet, and if the internet goes out, what are you going to do? You can't It's not like, you know, you, you can't process. So I tell them, you know, you get a router that has a 4G prepaid card in it, and you have that in there. You'll never know if the thing went off or not unless you get a notice that you ran out of data. You know, you ran out of data and you got to put some more money on it, right? You just do the prepaid so you're not paying every month. You buy a prepaid, you put $40, $50 on it, and you're good to go. And, you know, one time I was told this, you know, we put that in one of the businesses that we used to have on Miami Beach, and the guy owned like 3 restaurants. And then one, one on around New Year's Eve one year, some guy hit a pole on South Beach and he knocked out the internet for almost the entire South Beach.

Wow.

Only the people who had those 4G backup routers had credit card processing. Everybody else had no processing because there's only— at the time, there was only one company that had internet down there, or you brought in your own, like, fiber optic line. Like, some of the hotels had their own, you know, their own internet, you know, that they brought from, you know, from a different company. But everybody who had that one company had no internet except this place. They get— and people were calling me, oh, what did you sell those guys? What did I was like, well, now you got to order it and it's the weekend, you know. But yeah, so you got to be prepared. You got to think about being prepared in your business that, you know, for all kinds of things. Have a hurricane plan. We mapped it out. We were, you know, we could have came to work yesterday, but we decided to err on the side.

We should have stayed home the day before. It was worse the day before.

The day before. Yeah, the day before, actually. When it— after it got dark on Tuesday, then it went, it went hog wild over here. There was tornado warnings. I had to like shut off Alexa in my house. I had to shut off the— I had to turn the volume down on the TV. Rocky was going crazy every time the Emergency Broadcast Network— that thing was going off. There was so many tornadoes down here, and there was a little bit of— there was some damage around. But that's today's podcast. We've talked about what to do before the storm, what to do after the storm, what you can do now if you're without, um, without ways to take credit cards. You can contact us or contact whoever does your merchant services and figure out, you know, what kind of technology you can use to get your business up and running.

And if you're tired of contacting your merchant provider and you can't get in touch with them, like PayPal, Square, Stripe, all those other places, maybe it's time for a change.

Yeah, it's time. Yeah, we can get you approved in under 30 minutes, get you up and running, ready to go. So peace out, carpe diem, from B2B Vault and Nationwide Payment Systems.

Peace.