Payment Trends December 2022 | Cannabis Cashless ATM Crackdown | FTX | Binance | Chargebacks | Real-Time Payments | B2B Vault: The Payment Technology Podcast | Episode 135

Hey, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the payment technology podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by this guy, the Steve Jobs of merchant services, 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're gonna be talking about payment trends for December of 2022. Uh, we like to have a bit of a wrap up every month about the technology that's going on in fintech and the news. Uh, you know, stuff that we're using, right? Anything that's hot and, uh, needs to be talked about. So Allen picks out a few things I bring up, you know, we talk about, you know, what we want to talk about. And, uh, so we came up with a list, and so let's hop into it. What's going on with digital assets?

Yeah, digital assets.

What is a digital asset?

Digital asset is any type of crypto tokens, coins, and digital assets could actually be, you know, NFTs and even gift cards can be considered a digital asset because now with a lot of gift cards being virtual, they are a digital asset. Indeed. So there's new legislation in the works through Congress. I believe we talked about the bill before. Putting out a bill and to— that these companies have to comply with audits. Yep. And that's a big problem because I actually spoke with, um, an auditor from, you know, someone that's in the audit business. I was gonna ask accounting business, very, you know, CP, a firm that does audits.

Yeah.

For different companies. And they said they were getting a lot of phone calls from crypto companies, and it's all because of this bill, because they have— a lot of them have not been really submitting a financial report to the FinCEN and the anti-money laundering.

Well, the guy from Binance, CZ, he just straight up refuses, right?

Well, he says that he has an asset report and that the asset report is accurate, blah blah blah. But meanwhile, today the Wall Street Journal reported that he moved money from Binance USA out of the country. And then there was also comments from Crypto.com and one other company, and they said they stand by their asset report, you know, asset audit, right? And, um, but you know, I haven't heard much about Coinbase. Yeah, Coinbase, well, they got in a little tiff with everybody, but You know, maybe that they're— maybe they're following the rules.

They gotta be, because I mean, they're not brought in. I haven't heard Coinbase mention, not once.

I mean, I say one thing, their stock has gone to shit.

Yes.

So it's not good. The stock price went way, way down. It was $300, and today, I don't know, let me look on my phone and see what Coinbase is at.

Yeah, I mean, Coinbase— SHIB is one of the top 3 most watched coins in the world.

So the Coinbase stock is at $34.53. I believe it was over $300 at one point.

I wouldn't doubt it.

Yeah, it was. I mean, just go get the year-to-date.

Yeah, more.

Let's see, the max, it was over— it was 307. It was— no, it was— so it was at 340 was the high, 340. And now it's down to 34.59.

Might be a good time to buy some Coinbase stock.

It might be, but a lot of stocks have gone down. Robinhood, and it's all related to any kind of like fintech now. Robinhood, PayPal is down. Tesla stock is down. Tesla is getting very desperate. I had thought about buying a Tesla and I put a deposit. I lost my deposit because I said I'm not buying Tesla.

Well, they only make you put $100 down.

It's like $250.

Oh, they increased it? Yeah.

And I decided I didn't want to buy the car because they had a bunch of recalls, right? And then one of— and then two of my friends had I actually had 3 friends give me bad news about their Tesla. One told me that their electric bill went up $200 to $300 a month charging the Tesla. Another guy told me— another person told me their Tesla got hit and was at the shop for almost 6 months to get fixed. It took forever. The other person told me they went through water or something, and when they went through the water, the battery got ruined and is over $20,000 and the battery's not covered by insurance. And I was like, I called my insurance company and I decided—

Samantha just said that her friend, yeah, the graphic—

our graphic—

the graphic designer Samantha, she just said, uh, she— her friend of hers that said that there was an update. Yeah. And then now there's an update that they can't— the car doesn't work.

That's crazy.

It's like, I can't open the doors.

And now then Tesla was giving like a They called me on the phone, they offered me like $35,000. They said, oh, you can get the lower car, you'll— we'll give you $3,500 off. And then today I saw they're offering $10,000 off both cars.

No kidding.

No, 10%. 10%. No, the truck's not even out. And then Wells Fargo's been in the news. They got fined like mega bucks.

Well, I'm talking about the Tesla X, not the truck.

Yeah. Yeah, no, the— I mean, the, the— oh, the Tesla X. Yeah, the—

like the SUV. The Y. The Y. Yeah, that's the one.

Yeah, everything's 10% off.

Which one did you— were you gonna—

I was thinking about getting the Y, then they're like, oh, well, you could get the S, and then you could go down, and then— and I was like, no, I don't want to get— not after what my friend told me. I was like, that's, that's defeating the purpose that your electric bill went up $250. $40.

Yeah, because you pretty much— that's what you'd be spending on gas.

I don't spend that much on— that's what I said. I said to my friend, I go, I don't drive as much as you do, but I said, you know, I fill my tank up once a week. Let's say it's $40, $50 on a bad week. Yeah, right. Um, with the price of gas being now like right around $3, but I mean, it's been around $4 to $5 for the longest time, right?. And you know, then it was like $50 a top-off, $50.

Still, that's only $200 a month, right?

So yeah, and I wasn't even filling, you know, yeah, my car, I have an SUV, but it gets pretty decent gas mileage.

Yeah, I'm the same with you.

So I was like, nope, I'll take the— I'll lose my $250, bye-bye $250, and not get the Tesla because I'm not— I think that they need to— I think that I don't think that, that you can have just an electric car. I think you need to have like a hybrid, you know, a mix, a mix, a mix.

I like, I like, I think that the hydrogen cars are very promising.

Yeah, the hydrogen is promising, except it's— they don't really have, you know, they would have to put out places to put height, you know, so you could fill it up with hydrogen. Water, right? Yeah, but it's not just water, it's got to be like under high pressure.

No, I get it, but I mean, there's this one company that is really ahead of— anyway, that's a whole nother podcast.

Yeah, well, we could do a whole pot. I mean, listen, you want to talk about— I've seen videos of cars in Israel running on water. There was a guy in the US that had a car running on water. Rest in peace to him. Yeah, that guy got— who knows who whacked him, but— and the car disappeared off the face of the earth.

He was one of the people that got killed in that Tops grocery store thing.

Sterling? Yeah. Oh, that's weird.

Whole conspiracy behind that, and I'm not going to get involved because I want to see myself grow old.

No, but, you know, I just think that there has to be better technology than the technology that they have now. Because the minerals to make the batteries that we're using, right, there's not enough of that available to replace. And I did the math on this, right? So I looked up how many cars and light trucks— so that means any car you can drive, light truck means, you know, like a pickup truck, SUVs, and any light truck you can drive with a regular driver's license, right? There's like 700 million cars in the United States. That are registered, right? 700 million. That's including government vehicles.

No, I'm saying I'd add another 300 on that.

Okay, whatever. So, okay, so let's just say there's— yeah, because, you know, like, let's say someone lives on a farm, they could have a truck not registered just driving around on the farm. Do you know how many people would have that up north, huh, in Wisconsin, that have like a farm? Yeah, yeah, I know.

That's like 10 cars on the farm, right?

Yeah, none of them are registered, right?

Oh, you need to drive? Oh, you gotta go to town? Hop in the yellow car, it's got gas. There's no plates on that car, right? No, but I'm just saying, I understand what you're saying.

So, so then I looked up— it's an interesting number— how many cars do they make in the United States? No, just cars, period. Electric, gas, everything sold in the U.S. on a yearly basis. Pick a number.

1.2 million.

No, the best year was 10 million.

Okay.

The average is around 7-8 million a year.

Oh, 7 million cars a year. Okay.

Sold.

Okay.

So I did the math and I was like, well, if there's 700, it would take like 40— it would take, take like 30 years to re— that would take 30 years to replace all the cars. And Biden is talking about 2030. Yeah, no, this is only like 7 years.

I wish, and I'm all for, you know, transitioning to a more ecological, ecological.

Yeah.

And earth-friendly transportation. But that is— you're out of your mind, bro.

And then you can't get rid of—

never gonna happen.

Then you can't get rid of gas. Because think about it. What are you going to run? Like, do these tanker ships and like the Navy and like the jets that fly in the air, you know, like the airlines. Like, how are you getting rid of the gas for that?

No, you're not, right?

And how are you going to get rid of gas?

I think they're talking about more so for cars.

I know, but I'm just saying, like, you're not going to get rid of everything.

So it's a petroleum thing, you know, where it's an uphill battle for sure. I think that there's got to be some I think instead of— this is just me, you know, I'm not— who am I, right? But wouldn't it make more sense to invest in the infrastructure for like public transportation so then there would be less cars on the road, as opposed to spending all this money on electric cars? That for— in my— the way my mind works, yeah, it's like there's so many natural disasters that are happening Yeah, and the water is rising. And, you know, like, you ever see the, the meme of the, of the, of the Tesla chargers that is literally submerged in water? Yeah, like, then what?

Well, that's not a meme, that actually happened.

I know, it was real life.

Yeah, that actually happened. Yeah, right.

No, it's actually— it was a picture from down here. It was in Florida, but still. So doesn't it make more sense to, like, make, like, our train system better in our public transportation.

I said that when I was a kid. I was like, when I was growing up down here in South Florida, right? So I was like, I don't understand, like, why didn't they just build a train that went right down the middle of I-95, like in Chicago? Like, yeah, just goes right down the highway, right down I-95, go all the way down to whatever, the Keys, right? Let it go all the way back and let it go to— let it go back and forth., you know, to Orlando or whatever. And they could have trains side by side, some up on the top, whatever they needed to do, right? And just have it go right along the highway, right? Then people can get off and then they can get on other public transportation. That's what I'm talking about. Like, I've been to cities where you have really good public transportation. New York— Chicago is okay. I wouldn't say it's great, but to come from this— but to come from here— no, no, but if you're coming from the burbs and then you're going into the city, that's a— they have that like kind of transportation down pat, you know what I'm saying? Well, that's what their train system is more geared towards.

I mean, Chicago is the— it's not as good as New York. New York's public transportation is the best.

Yes, New York has very good public transportation, like San Francisco, right? You can get around. You don't need a car in San Francisco. You can just take a cab, you can get on the trolley. They got the bikes, they got these like tram things. Yeah. So you can get around like no problem, like in a city like San Diego.

That's what I know. I mean, I just think we'd be better off focusing our money.

Right. But I'm just saying, like most cities, the problem is a lot of cities are not built like that.

No.

And that's the problem is that, you know, you got to start, you got to figure out like, okay, well, if you want to transition to that, you got to— it's a whole process.

But out here, like, this is the last thing I have to say. The people that are in these rural areas, they don't even have 5G internet. Yeah, I know, they're still on dial-up, and you want them to transition to an electric car, right?

Come on, man. Yeah, you can't do that. How are they— you're not going to have like a farmer farming the, you know, whatever, running one of those tractors. The tractor is going to run on electricity. Come on, that's hard-pressed. You're going to be hard-pressed for that. I mean, so let's— so there's this— so the one thing is, is this big anti-money laundering audit thing. And this, this, this, this process not just covers crypto companies but covers a lot of fintech companies. And there's not that many companies that do these kind of audits. And that could put some of these companies out of business.

The place that you were saying— and there you said to me that they're not touching them, right?

Yeah, they said, they said they entered— they said they had about a dozen crypto companies contact them, and they told them no. They said they don't want to be involved in it because, you know, they could be held liable. You blame them? Nope.

I wouldn't want nothing—

that's like—

nope, that's like jumping on a live grenade.

They saying like other fintech companies too are going to get— going to get pushed into this. Oh yeah, you know, the Klarnas and the Affirms and all those companies.

What about us?

No, we're— well, we We process payments, but that's all completely regulated by the bank. So that's all SOC 2 compliant, right? So it's completely audited all the time. No, no, but I'm just saying, like, credit card processing, because we have a partnership with the crypto processing, right? But nobody's processed crypto in over almost a year now through our—

I can't believe that it's been that long.

Yeah, it's been, it's been a pretty long time. Crypto took a dump and then everybody stopped spending their crypto.

When did that start? Um, I don't know.

I mean, I was reading an article.

It was last winter, right?

So I was telling you the article, right, where they were talking about this nightclub in Miami that they processed, you know, over, you know, more than a year ago, they had processed $6 million in crypto.

Wow.

And they were talking about all these clubs in Miami. A couple of them were clients of ours. And how they were processing hundreds of thousands of dollars of crypto. And all these like nerds were showing up, you know, people they never heard of before, spending untold sums of money, right? Because probably they bought Bitcoin at $10, it's worth $80 grand. All right, let's go cash out one Bitcoin and party down, right? Um, we had a yacht guy, they were renting yachts, people paying them with crypto, going to club with crypto and all that. Now it's dried up completely. I still think that it has a place. I just think that it needs to be regulated. We can't have this FTX thing that's got billions of dollars has gone missing. I mean, we have multi-lawsuits going on with, um, influencers. You know, even Shaq was included in a lawsuit, and he's like, oh, they, they called me and the FTX paid me to be in a commercial. He goes, I was I was just the actor in a commercial, right? Right. He goes, I wasn't an influencer, right? Because he goes, I got paid. He goes, I didn't invest money. You know, he got paid. Yeah, Shaq is pretty smart. There's a special on HBO. I watched it. It's very, very good. It talks about him as a young kid.

Yeah, I watched the first two of them.

I didn't finish it. Him as a young kid, and then it goes throughout his career, the end of his pretty brutal, you know, what he went through at the end of his career. But he got, he got, he got very— he got beat up by the, you know, the end players beat the— beat Shaq up.

Oh man, they were— yeah, yeah, they were unstoppable.

Yeah, he was unstoppable. I remember there was a— there's a scene, and it's probably in the second video, they're interviewing like a coach, I think Byron Scott. And he was a coach. He was playing with Shaq.

Killer.

He played with Shaq.

Yeah.

And then he was a coach, right? And then I think he played on the Lakers too.

Byron Scott played on the Magic, on the Lakers?

I think so. Maybe one year.

He could have.

And then, um, and then he said they were interviewing him and when he was the coach of some other team, he's like, well, how do you stop Shaq? He goes, you can't stop Shaq. You follow? He goes, yeah. He goes, you can't stop him. Yeah, that people fouled them and Shaq could not make a free throw to save his life. Oh yeah, if he would have made free throws, I think his career would have lasted a little longer because he was— see Giannis, does he make free throws? Yeah, these guys got to make the free throws.

You see what he didn't see? So you didn't see what he— so he, he missed like, he was like 1 for 11.

Wow, that's crazy.

No, it's terrible, right? So he— they lost the game, and they would have won if he would have made all his free throws. Free throws. And so at the end of the game, he went to the locker room, he came out, back out to the, to the floor, and he wanted to shoot some free throws. The maintenance guy for the Phillies put it like a 12-foot ladder in front of the hoop, so he couldn't shoot the free throws. So he goes up to the ladder, he knocks the ladder over. Another guy from the Sixers, they start getting into it, and all Giannis wanted to do was get off his free throws. But yeah, man, shout out to Shaq. He's a great, uh, influence.

We like having him in Miami. He came— he came and brought us a championship. So go Shaq!

Shaq and Dwyane.

Shaq Diesel. Yep. And then the banks have been in the news lately because Wells Fargo got smacked with another fine.

That was a big one. Yeah, huge fine for millions because they were doing shady stuff to people who didn't have money, right, that were buying cars, houses, and refinancing loans. And so they were giving all the poor people really crappy rates and they were making a ton of money, and now they got to give it all back.

But I think they also did not disclose, like, because they were weird loans with like a floating rate. Yes, you know, it was bad, like it was an entry rate, right? And then the rate went up, and then, you know, I guess the government found that. Hey, they're cracking down on all these companies on the truth in lending, you know.

And now, you know, I was just reading that article you sent me about that.

So now, now, you know, So the bank— the— on the other side of the banks, you know, because they issue credit cards also. So all the banks now are on the buy now, pay later bandwagon. Everybody's got it. Even Apple, who, what, who was going to do it and then decided not to do it. Now they're doing it because now they all changed how it works. So now I got every single one of my credit cards. I got a note from all of them. Oh, if you have a transaction, over $100. That's to be more than $100. There's a small monthly fee. I don't know what it was because I didn't click one to see. I should probably check. And a small monthly fee, no interest, only the monthly fee.

Yeah.

And then you could break as many transactions—

like, mine is $3. The monthly fee is $3.

That's not bad. I mean, I don't know if I would—

what's the interest on the $100 on your credit card though?

Well, I pay mine off at the end of the month, but interest on a credit card is going to be anywhere from 17, 15 to 20% right now. I mean, I think most— I mean, you've got good credit if you get, you know, 15. I just pay mine off, so I don't carry a balance. But most of them—

good for you, man—

most of them are at like 15 on the low side. 17 is probably the average. Some people probably have Up to 24. Yeah, over 20. Yeah, it's ridiculous.

Yeah, I just shut a card down. It was like 25.8 or something.

Yeah, that's just nuts. Like, my son had a card and he had 2 cards, and one of them came and they sent a notice in the mail. I was like, don't use that one anymore. Call them up, close the card. I said, that's no good because if you don't pay one month, all of a sudden you got whacked with a huge interest thing. Now, so the banks are fighting back on this buy now, pay later. Apple's jumping back into it. I mean, Apple— I was reading this whole article— Apple is quietly like creating like their own bank, you know, sort of.

And then also we talked about that a while ago. Yeah. And I'm surprised they haven't opened.

And there's a bunch of lawsuits also going up against Apple where the credit unions and some of the small banks are all fighting with Apple. Over, and there's going to be— there's like two— one bank involved now from Iowa, and then there's, uh, they're hoping that more banks will join the lawsuit because they're saying Apple is charging too much money if you want to allow your card to be inside the Apple Pay wallet. And then the lawsuit alleges that Apple should open up the App Store so that people can load other wallets in there that don't charge money, like Google doesn't charge the bank's money. Samsung doesn't charge the bank's money.

So you can't— I couldn't put a different wallet on?

Yeah, you can't put a different wallet on an iPhone.

Oh, that's terrible.

Yeah, so there's a whole lot. So there's, there's a couple of lawsuits involving that. Then there was a whole nother article about how Walmart and some other players are all partnering with this Green Dot company and like sort of secretly trying to become a bank.

Interesting.

Walmart tried to become a bank before, but it never really passed like the regulation because—

yeah, because I remember, and that was around the time when— because they wanted their employees to be like— like it was better for them to get paid or something, right?

Yeah, they wanted to have their own bank so they could pay their employees through their bank. There was a bunch of other benefits that they could give them, right?

Give them now, but which is all bullcrap.

And then the other thing that's crazy in the news is passwords. Okay, this whole password thing. Passwords has— I don't know who I'm talking to. I saw there's an organization, one of my friends is involved with FIDO, which is about passwordless, you know, to go passwordless. This whole password thing's got to stop.

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

Because too many passwords, I get emails from— I see emails out there. Oh, LastPass, somebody tried to hack it a bunch of times. Every day, other password companies, people are trying to hack them. Google, your passwords aren't safe there. They're not safe in the Edge. They're not safe here. They're not safe there. I get emails, oh, your information's on the dark web, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean, enough is enough. There's got to be like a better solution out there for this whole password thing. Your face, your fingerprint, something. They got to come up with—

two-factor authentication is a pain in the ass, but you know, It's also one of those things that it makes it easier. It, it's, it makes it easier. But there's a step to it.

Like I had to verify with Microsoft, my Microsoft account, for whatever reason, I couldn't get into it. So I'm trying to get on this new computer, you have to log into your Microsoft.

You should have heard this guy scream.

I was yelling out because the Microsoft people wouldn't help me. So finally, I got a guy on the phone. He's like, oh, I can help you with this one part, then you'll be able to do it. So what was it? It's like, oh, we had to verify your identity. So what did they do? They looked at my account. They go, oh, what? They saw my email. They sent me an email. I gave them the code. Then they sent me a text message. I gave them the code. Then they said, go to this website, put the code, that second code in. Boom. 10 minutes later, I got a password reset. But it took like 2 days to figure out how to do it.

But I'm just gonna— like, so which— it was for your work email address?

No, because the thing is, is that you can't use your work email. You're not supposed to be able to use your work email and then set up a person to use that same email address for your personal Microsoft account. Now, it used to be allowed, but at some point they stopped allowing you to use the address in both places. So I'm grandfathered in. So I said, I just want to get in there so I can go in there and download all the stuff that's on there out of there and not have to deal with it anymore. I still haven't figured out how to do that. I'll figure it out.

I'm sure you will.

So one of those, one of, one of those things where I don't, I don't understand where all the stuff is stored. So I'll figure it all out because there's pictures in there. I get messages from Microsoft. Oh, you want to see your pictures from this day? I'm like, I don't even know how they have my pictures from my phone. Yeah, it's the weirdest thing. I haven't figured it out, but I will figure it out.

I have faith in you, sir.

I mean, I have this— all the pictures, they're all saved on my iCloud, so I'm at— I'm fine, you know. They're all—

yeah, they're all in the clouds, the cloud of— are they talking about with cannabis? So we skipped one. Chargebacks.

So chargebacks, it's in the news, it's in the news. They're talking about all this friendly fraud.

What's a chargeback?

So a chargeback is when— so I'll give an example. Sorry, Justin. Justin go buy something on a website, or he goes into a store and he uses his credit card and then gets his bill. Maybe, you know, Justin game player, and he was trying to get some of his money back. He goes, oh, I don't recognize this transaction. I didn't get this merchandise. I didn't get that. I, I, oh, I didn't go, you know, I ate in that restaurant, but I didn't get the food, whatever it is, right? So I believe that first of all, Visa, MasterCard, American Express Discover, if it's an EMV chip transaction They should just look at that and go, sorry, Justin, you put your pin, put your chip in the machine, you chipped it, you're done, goodbye. But they're not doing that. They're sending notices out to the merchant, then the merchant has to go fight these chargebacks. And it's 100% clear that the person was in the business. They used the card, they signed the receipt. They got— in some cases, they have people on camera because everybody has cameras, right? And the merchants, majority of the time, win these chargebacks. The ones on the internet, the same thing. Justin says, oh, I ordered this microphone, it didn't come to my house. Well, it's not that hard. The retailer has the records from UPS or FedEx. It shows it was dropped off at Justin's house. See the time, man? Huh?

Shows you the time.

And they even have pictures.

Well, some— the Amazon— wait, UPS makes you take a picture, right?

Is it UPS? No, no, Amazon takes— Amazon takes a picture. They take pictures all the time. But I've seen UPS and FedEx, if they drop something off outside the house, I'll get a picture.

Oh, that's right, they did start doing that.

Yeah, yeah, I'll get a picture of the package. I got a picture of a package one day that they left it outside the office here on a Saturday. I was like, man, are you kidding me? I had to drive over here, it was raining.

That's terrible.

Yeah, and they just left the box outside. Everything was ruined. Really? Yeah, I had to call up and I was like, hey, you know, everything was ruined, it's all wet, blah blah blah. And went over to— actually just went— I went into the UPS store, they helped me.

Really?

I was upset. It was something expensive. I don't know why they left it outside the door in the pouring rain on a Saturday at a business. At a business.

That's just dumb.

Yeah, and I get a notice.

I would have fired the hell out of that driver. Sorry, whatever. You're fired, you dummy.

They helped me call up on the phone and get the situation resolved.

But good for you.

But the, you know, the thing is, is that they can prove like it's delivered and all that, you know. You know, merchants can use different things like 3D Secure, but I've had merchants tell me they're like, oh, we have people— somebody called me the other day and I was like Look, I says, I can help you, but you're gonna have to like show me, like I'm gonna have to go look at your, your, the what's going on, like the technical stuff going on, like how are these transactions approved in the gateway, are they tokenized, did you capture the token, did the, you know, did you get full address verification, did you capture the CVV2 codes. And then when it was a ticket, something involving tickets, And then when the people come to bring the tickets in, what are you guys doing to show that they used the ticket? Now, obviously, if you have someone bought a ticket and they don't— like, you go to a concert, right? Let's say you bought tickets to see— what did I just go see? I went to see Jason Bonham, Led Zeppelin Experience. It was very good. Excellent. And let's say you bought a ticket to the concert. Then you don't go to the concert, can't get your money back. Well, no, right? So it's in the terms and conditions, but you got to make sure, like, how are they presented to the customer? Do they have to check a box and so on and so forth? So I told them, I says, you want my help, you have to show me a lot more than just telling me some stuff on the telephone, right? And then, and then they started asking about some Verified by Visa and 3D Secure, and I started laughing. The guy's like, why are you laughing?

I to.

First of all, Verified by Visa has— nobody's— nobody's— that, that's like when— that hasn't been used in a while. And the 3D Secure— 3D Secure can help you, but that's only going to help you with a handful of banks, right? The 3D Secure, basically what that is, you put it on your website and the 3D Secure confirms like, oh, Justin made a purchase, and then the bank sees like Justin used his cell phone, right? And they know that that's a registered device because I'm sure people see that all the time. Oh, do you want to register this device? Do you want to register this device, right?

When you're doing a transaction, every time, like you log in, save your information later.

When you log into your bank, right? When you log into your credit card, it says, oh, is this registered, this device, right? So they know, oh, that's a good device, right? And they know that's Justin. So 3D Secure puts a little token on it, right? But you got to look at it like, oh, what banks are you getting credit cards from? How many out of all the cards you took, what percentage are you capturing 3D Secure? So you got to look at that. And if it's just— if the— obviously, if those transactions have 3D Secure on them, they shouldn't be getting a chargeback, number one. Number 2 is if you're not getting enough of them, you know, and you're doing high volume, there's other gateways and other fraud tools that you can put onto your gateway so that you can prevent that from happening. Plus, you know, what are you doing at the ticketing? Like, to show, did those people redeem the tickets? I asked the guy, the guy said, I don't know. I said, me, you don't know? You got to have a system that basically where you're showing that those tickets were redeemed. So, you know, you gotta— you know, we can help with stuff. We know we can help figure out that we're working on another one now where somebody's having a technical problem with recurring transactions, right? So we looked at it, now we're testing some different ways to see how it is, and We're also checking to see if the tokens are being passed correctly, right? Because you have to— everything when you're doing recurring, that the first transaction, that's to capture the token, then the token is used after that. But we got to see. And also the other thing you always got to check on is things like, you know, you need to block out gift cards and stuff and other prepaid cards., on your platform when you're doing that, because otherwise you're just gonna run the first transaction, then the second transaction is going to fail because it's prepaid and the person probably already spent the money. So those are— but you have to go through a lot of steps to figure out what's going on, you know, how is somebody exploiting your platform. And then the other thing that's been in the news, cannabis is in the news. Big, big thumbs down to Congress and Mitch McConnell again kicking the can down the road one more time on the SAFE Banking Act. Nobody wants to man up. That's why they need term limits so that younger people, more younger people can get into Congress and, and get some of these laws passed.

Yeah, I totally agree, man. Put the, put the power into the youth, man.

Let them Not that, you know, we don't want an 18-year-old.

Well, no, I'm saying the youth, and I mean younger, right?

And I think they need to clean up election laws so that people that are business people would be more apt to run for office and not get drug, you know, like today, every time someone runs for office, they're just, you know, going and looking for any skeleton that person might have in their closet. To drag it out, whether it's, you know, it could be from 3 generations, from 5 generations ago when that guy wasn't even alive. Oh, this guy's family, you know, owned slaves, or this guy's family ripped people off 50 years ago, right? I'm saying, who's that person's not to blame for that?

What? I don't know. It's—

I'm just saying, they just—

I'm not touching it.

Okay, it's just dirty. Or they don't like what business the person is in. Oh, this person's invested in the stock market and we don't like that. What stocks they're invested in. I mean, they know everything. There's like a website. You go look up what stocks does Nancy Pelosi own. I don't care. I just don't think that she should be— they should be buying stocks on inside information that they get.

I don't think if you're a politician, I don't think you should be able to buy stocks.

Exactly. They shouldn't be allowed to do that. The other thing in the news about cannabis is Visa's having the big crackdown on the cashless ATMs, or you want to call them script ATMs or whatever, point-of-banking ATMs, these machines.

How are they—

are they like—

so do these networks have like a, like a security protocol?

Yeah, so basically like when you— they're checking the logs on these machines to make sure that they're a real—

that's what I was getting at.

They're checking the log. What's going on now is Visa is putting pressure on the banks that fund those ATMs and saying, hey, Justin— Bank of Justin, Bank of Allen, you need to go check your ATM portfolio and look for these machines, right? So they're looking for machines where maybe the address is not where You know, what is at that address? Does it say that it's a candy store and it's doing $100,000 a week in transactions inside of a laundromat that's in the same shopping center as the cannabis dispensary? But really, the machine's in the cannabis dispensary, so they're going down and investigating that. And then also, like, an ATM— anytime the machine is, like, loaded with money So now some of those more sophisticated, uh, cashless ATM guys simulate loads on the machines, right? Simulating a load, but they're catching that and then they're shutting down tons and tons of machines. And if you get caught, there's a $50,000 per device, uh, fine. Some people— I heard about one guy that found One place that got fined $350,000.

No bueno.

So there's legal ways to do it. You can go to a company like ours, we can deploy ATMs to your location, and then we can get, you know, and then we load it with our cash, right? Or we get a local ATM company that we work with and we get them to load the cash, but we can't load cash from the dispensers.

So, but we're working on other solutions to see if they're a very cool solution.

Yeah, other solutions to see if we can help dispensaries in 2023. Here's a weird one that we got asked for the other day, a retail store. Now, like, I have a donut place and they've started asking for tips at the counter. So when you go get your donut at the counter and your coffee, and then they have an option for you to leave a tip. Okay, but now I had some guy with like, like a cigar store. They're like, oh, we want to have a tip option. I'm like, I don't know how I feel about like everywhere you go. I'm not giving you a tip for giving me a cigar. No, but I'm saying like I go— I'm saying like I've gone into like like a sandwich shop, right? And you're getting a sandwich and then they have a tip jar on the counter, or now they have a tip on the— a tip for the food.

So I worked at Jimmy John's when I was a younger man.

Yeah, they have a tip thing.

No, no, not a community thing.

Oh, they don't give it to the employees?

There's no jar at the—

no, no, it's on the— on the register, on the credit card thing.

Yeah, but that doesn't No, you're not getting that.

The employees don't get the money, man. That's messed up. That's the thing that I was telling the guy at the store. I go, if you're not giving that money to your employees, I got, I said, I got, I got a 3-letter, I got 3 initials that might have something to say about that. The guy goes, well, who's got something to say about it? I go, your boys over at the IRS have a strict rule about tips. Okay, I tell merchants all the time, like, if you're gonna take— if you're gonna get— if you're getting tips and you're doing stuff with the tips that you're not supposed to do, uh, you're gonna get caught eventually. Because one of two things is gonna happen. One, the IRS is gonna come ask what you do with tip money, and then you're not gonna have an answer.

What is his answer now? What does he do with it now? He pockets it, right?

Yeah, he pockets the money. Uh, the other place told me they take the money and they divide it up at the end of the week. They count how much they got in tips. One place, like a donut place, they count up the money of the tips at the end of the week, they divide it by how many hours were worked, and and then they give it to all the employees, not the manager, just the hourly staff. Okay, so they divide it up and then everybody gets a little piece, gets a little piece based on how many hours you worked.

That's fair, that's fair, right?

So they get all the money minus the— whatever, the guy takes the credit card, takes a little money for the credit card fee off. But it's not much. Then he divides it.

I could, I could do— I could live with that. But like, I get what you're saying too. Like, you go to like, you know, the— a regular place and you get a soda and a, and a, and a sandwich and just asking if I want to leave a tip.

Yeah, like, no, bro. Yeah, you can press zero.

I know, but it's even you asking me.

But sometimes you feel bad and you go, okay, 10%.

That's exactly what I do almost every time.

And then it's like, whatever, $8, you left the 80 cents. Tip. Yeah, but still, where does the money go? So the IRS will tell you they want to know where the money went, and they want to see who got it, and you better have records for it. So if you don't have— I just don't— I just see—

I wouldn't be doing that.

I just see tips everywhere now where you just normally didn't see.

No, but I agree, that's kind of— it's super annoying.

I don't know.

And it's, it's like invasive.

Could you imagine if you went into a clothing store, right? You're you're getting clothing and then they go, do you want to leave a tip for your sales guy?

Isn't that guy on commission?

I don't know, I'm just saying, like, not like where my son works. Works in a clothing store, they don't get commission. No, no, they just get hourly.

That sucks.

Yeah, there's no commission.

I feel sorry for you.

Worked in another clothing store, they got commission, but it wasn't very— it didn't amount to much. No, no, it was pretty minor, the commission. But I think the whole tipping thing is out of control. I mean, everywhere you go there's tips, tips, tips, tips, tips. Now here's the other thing that's been in the news for a while. It's been talked about for a couple years, is this real-time payments. And they keep talking about real-time payments, real-time payments, real-time payments. Oh, we're gonna have all this stuff, real-time payments. One, I'll tell you, so they have this thing called FedNow. That's money moving in and out of bank accounts, right? So I don't know how that's going to work in a retail store going, oh, I want to pay with cash on a real-time payment thing, right? They don't— the rail for that just doesn't exist. Now, on a big level, let's say Justin said, I'm buying concrete from Justin, right? My bank could probably set up real-time payments where I could send Justin that money, right? Not a wire, but send real-time payments so that you're not waiting for it.

Well, you're not paying like a wire fee, but you wait for the wire too sometimes. Yeah, sometimes a wire, 3 to 5, depending on the bank. Yeah, most banks it's the same day or one day, 1 to 2 business days.

Yeah, you get the wire. But, you know, real-time payments, I just don't know how that's going to work. The other thing Yeah, I mean, for large transactions, can you imagine a disaster? Well, if you make a mistake, you're kind of— you're screwed.

That's what I'm saying.

Just like Zelle. If you send money to Zelle and punch in the wrong phone number, you can send $500 to the wrong person. So you got to verify the phone number, make sure that's the person's phone number. Don't make any mistakes, you know. Don't be Young Jack, because otherwise the money's gone. There's this— there's There's no getting the money back.

There was this entertainer that recently— he used to rap. Yeah, by the name of Young Joc, and, uh, he was on social media begging for his, uh, money back. Yeah.

Uh-oh, that's not good. Like, dude, forget about it. So the other thing that's out there, and I know we mentioned it on another podcast, is this like pay-by-bank thing where you could scan a QR code, then it takes you to a page, you choose your bank, you basically log into your bank because it's been around for a while, but it's getting better, I think. Right? Right.

Well, no.

So you log into your bank and then you can send the money to the merchant. But the way it's going to work is instead of like, like Zelle or all the other services where the person on the receiving end gets, gets the money one by one by one, this— the merchant gets it in a batch.

Nice.

So we're working with a company that's doing that. We're in talks with them. To put it onto this other alternative payment platform that we're working with. And, you know, it's kind of launched now, but it's a long process to get people approved. But right now we can offer people like Alipay, WeChat, different wallets from Asian countries. Nice. And then you could, you know, so if you wanted to, let's say you have a lot of customers coming from Japan, China, Korea, blah, blah, blah. We could help you. We can get you set up with this alternative payment method. Right now we don't have it where it can work on a website, and we're working on getting it to where it's in the credit card machine. So it's going to be in the smart terminals that—

coming soon, buddy, coming soon.

Customer will be able to choose the wallet, and then it would open up all the wallets that are available on that for that merchant, they would hit the button and boom, make a payment.

Nice.

So, well, that's the podcast.

I hope everybody had a nice holiday weekend.

Yep, everybody enjoyed their, uh, Christmas. Christmas.

Hope everyone woke up to—

well, no, Christmas is this week. Oh, well, when this airs, Christmas will be—

yes, when this airs, sir, Christmas will have passed.

That's right.

I tried to give you the alley-oop, man.

I, I, I went over my head.

You bricked that one, buddy.

Yeah, my daughter is in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

She's gonna have a white Christmas.

There's a blizzard there right now. Yeah, it's a whiteout. It's, it's a mess.

Wisconsin, uh, is getting pounded everywhere.

She just got new, like, tires on her car. She got a new snowblower for the driveway.

It's got to be prepared, man. My, uh, brother, uh, in Brother Pascal, Brother Pac, man, peace, man. Stay safe out in Kentucky. Uh, I seen that they're expecting some really weird, uh, temperature drops.

My friend was in— my friend lives in Texas, but his son goes to school in Kansas, so they have a place there that him and his wife drove up to Kansas to see the son, and they have like a house there for when they go there, right? It's a little project. My friend likes little projects, so he told me this morning that it was negative 40 degrees or anything this morning.

That's what I'm saying.

I was like, wow.

Yeah, I was talking to him last night and he said, uh, it went from like 20 degrees to negative 2 in 5 minutes.

Oh yeah, it's crazy.

I said, man, you ever seen that movie, uh, The Day After Tomorrow?

Oh yeah, that's a crazy movie.

I was like, it sounds like the, the hurricane, like the tornado that—

yeah, 4-3s.

Yeah, he was like, bro, that's exactly what it felt like. He was like, man, we was outside and then all of a sudden it just got freezing. I said, man, that's— that— I don't miss any of that, man. No, come on down to South— well, you guys stay out.

Every—

Pac, you're invited to come down, but everyone else, you guys stay here happy ass.

Rebecca will be here next month.

Please come on down.

Rebecca's coming next month to get a little taste of the Sunshine State. She's coming to a wedding. Spend some time. Yeah, January.

January is a great time to come down here.

And, uh, if you don't—

I mean, if you don't live here, like for me, I'm getting a little chilly.

Maybe we'll convince Rebecca to come on the podcast.

That'd be cool.

Interview her about the weather and technology. It is a technology podcast.

Whether— how weather affects business.

Yeah, how weather affects business.

Yeah, we could talk about that because there's a lot of weather that affects our business down here. That's a fact.

Yeah, and weather affect— like right now planes are probably getting canceled.

Oh, they said, right, uh, 5,000 flights were canceled last night. So I'm on my way to work, to the office.

I hope everybody enjoyed their holiday, and we're looking forward to 2023 with new things coming for the podcast, so watch out. For all the exciting things coming, and we'll talk to everybody soon. Peace out. Peace.