Payment Trends For October 2023 | 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 Jimmy Johnson of payment processing himself, Allen Kopelman. And we'll be providing you educational information about fintech, small business payment processing, and the technology businesses are using in the world today. And in today's podcast, we're going to be talking about Payment trends for October. It's that time of the month. That sounded weird. Yeah. Anyway, payment trends. So there's a lot of stuff going on. Not, you know, it's like really repetitive this month. I feel like not anything major or drastic changes. I mean, we're just trying to find some light in the dark, I guess you could say. Anyway, man, how have you been? Been good. It's a good start to the week, you know, or good start to the week. This guy came into the podcast booth and just said, man, it's the beginning of the week, but it should be Friday.

I know it's the beginning of the week. I'm like, why can't it be Friday?

I wish it was Friday. I mean, I don't— I mean, it's all this blur.

That's good. So today, you know, got some good— you know, I saw today my article that I submitted to Forbes was published.

Congratulations. He's a part of the Forbes Business Council.

So that was kind of cool. And it goes along with what we're talking about today because it was about 5 payment trends for 2023, for 2024, 2024. What are the, you know, what are the payment trends going on?

So that's cool.

Interesting. We'll post the link. People can check it out.

Nice, nice, nice.

And, uh, you know, so there's a lot of good stuff going on. What's going on with you?

I'm going— I'm here another day, a couple bucks short of, you know, a dollar.

All right.

Anyway, man, uh, yeah, life's grand. Uh, I got no new— I mean, I cleaned my windows over the weekend. I was sick as sick as a dog for 2 weeks. I felt like— windows at your house? Yeah, I cleaned my windows on the outside. You know, I cleaned the inside on the weekend when I was— I was like so stir-crazy I had to find something to do. And besides that, my— I don't know if I told— like, I definitely didn't tell you, but my plants had some sort of sickness. There was some white, uh, a white fly. No, it wasn't the fly, it was the white mildew stuff though. Um, apparently, you know, I had this one plant kind of grew out of hand and some stuff died in the back. But if a leaf touches a part of like some wet soil or something, yeah, that's just the cause of disaster, which I know, but you know, I, you know, I didn't do a great I couldn't get to the pieces in the back, and I didn't know about it, which it kind of infected all of my plants. Not all of them, but— so I had to take down my plant stand, which is a huge project in itself, and I had to take all the plants and took them outside, and I had to repot some of them because they were just kind of get there. I was sick, so I couldn't get to it the weekend that I wanted to, right? So I had to let a whole week go by watching my babies like cry for help, which was— it was hurtful. I'm a plant dad. Besides being a real dad.

You should meet my friend Bruce. He has like a jungle growing.

I would love that. Yeah, I would love that. But yeah, shout out to Bruce. I rescued my plants and then in the process of that, when I took my plant stand down, I looked at my windows and I was like, I was like, oh my God, dude, you have to clean that. Because I'm that kind of person, like, I can't— you know, something's dirty and I was clean, I gotta clean it.

I was cleaning the windows at my house. So my house was built in like 1992, '93, right? That's when it was built. So then I've been living there for about 11, 12 years now.

Yeah.

So the windows are kind of old.

Yeah, my windows are extremely old.

And then I was looking at a few of them and I was like, man, I remember when I bought the house, I was thinking about like ripping the windows out I didn't do it because there was a lot of cosmetic stuff to fix on the house, but I think now I'm gonna look into replacing the windows.

Yeah, so I cleaned my windows last weekend, but then when I got done, I quickly realized that it wasn't necessarily on the inside at all, right? So it was all on the outside. So I didn't have the energy to do it last weekend.

Oh, you know what you should get? I got this—

a pressure washer.

Yeah, but I got this Windex thing and you take this Windex thing, this bottle, and you put it on your hose. You spray that on the windows first and then you— no, and then you come with the pressure washer and wash it off and get it way cleaner. Yeah.

I mean, I did the old school where I just grabbed a bucket and a washcloth. I made my grandma proud. All right. I mean, it's sparkly, dude. Like my dad was like, sheesh, you sure you're going to need— you can see right into my house now. It's kind of— but whatever. I digress. So payment trends, October '23. Uh, what you got first on the list?

There's a lot of stuff, like e-commerce seems to be like the big talk, and like, where is all this stuff happening with e-commerce and what's going on with e-commerce? And there's a lot, like I've been looking at like a few different podcasts where they're talking about e-commerce and, you know, and it's crazy, but it is freezing in the podcast, but A ton of, a ton of businesses are getting onto e-commerce and they're trying to figure it out. A lot of them are going to Shopify and then, and then it's not working for them.

Of course it ain't.

And because you have to kind of do, you know, do it yourself.

People have been DIYers for the past, uh, I don't know what, 10 years, I'd say. Um, no, I ain't even— I'm not going to give them 10. I'll say the past 5 years.

Yeah, 5, 6 years.

Um, you guys are— you gotta just stop.

And then somebody else came to me and they built the whole website on Wix, right? And then they're like, oh, I need payment processing, but I applied to the Wix processing and I'm on the list of—

you can't do it—

that they don't accept. So I was like, well, why wouldn't you have checked that before you built the— paid somebody? What'd they say to build the Wix site? They go— they said, well, we paid somebody, we thought they would know.

And I was like, obviously they don't care. Most people are— I mean, honestly, what kind of product was it?

No, it was some kind of like cleaning, some, uh, cleaning company where you go to the website, schedule your cleaning, pay for it, and then they come over and clean your house.

And Wix doesn't take that type?

Yeah, they wouldn't take it because it's paid— it's an advance payment.

That's kind of, you know, silly to me.

Well, credit card rules are they don't like to have, um, you know, things that are paid in advance.

Wouldn't that be like— so they pay for the whole cleaning in advance? Yeah, not a deposit, right? Well, then yeah, that's kind of sketchy.

So they said Wix said no, and then I explained to them like Wix is Stripe, you can't do that, you know, they don't allow for that future delivery of services.

So for the user, for you, for, for those of you that don't know, the Wix payment processor is Stripe. It's not Wix, like you're not—

yeah, you don't be fooled that like QuickBooks is Stripe. Wix is Stripe. Uh, Shopify, it's also Stripe.

So, well, that's the preferred gateway.

Well, yeah, but I'm just saying, if you don't use—

can you even use a different gateway on this?

Yeah, you have to pay 60 basis points additional per transaction to do Authorize.net. Yeah, we had a client that spent 8 grand, built a Wix site for a health product.

$8,000?

Yeah, they have a couple hundred products.

Oh, that's cheap then.

And they spent like $8,000. Well, that's what the lady told me about. I'm sure it was more for someone to do that. And I go, why would you do that? And I was like, you have got to be kidding me.

Like, I bet you they got convinced to go to move the site to—

they didn't even know. They didn't even check.

They already had a website. If they're that successful.

Yeah, they were already doing their thing.

So then someone convinced them.

Yeah, to do—

to move to Wix, right? That is— that's why it's so difficult for me to find jobs, man. Like, I can't find— because web developers like you, man, you suck.

And it's— no, but it's, it's not good.

And so that, you know, the other e-commerce thing, like, I do agree, like, in the past— I say in the past 6 months, um, the The interest of people starting their own stores is resembling the time of COVID right? Like, it's getting really— people are starting to— I feel like people who went back to work are like, let's scream it, like, screw this. Well, it's not that, but I'm gonna figure out— and they have to— it is that, sir.

Yes, it is that.

And, and another part is people still are trying to supplement income, so they're like trying to figure out how to make more income. And the e-commerce store is a, is a way for people to generate a small additional source of income for someone, right?

And a lot of people are trying to do this like dropshipping thing, and that's failing miserably because somebody I know— Justin knows this person too— and they wanted to— they started into this whole dropshipping thing, and they turned into tons of complaints because all the stuff's being shipped from outside of the US.

That's not working out for them.

It's taking 6 to 8 weeks.

Our friend, it's not working out for our friend.

No, it's not working out at all.

And that sucks, man.

And that—

I hate to be like, I hate to be that, because I'm a pops, like I'm a real dad, like I love my kids. And those I told you so moments, it hurts.

It hurts me. Them. Yeah.

But to be the person to have to say I told you so That shit hurts, man, because you're, you're one, you're, you've already warned them, right?

Yeah.

And then you gotta watch them get hurt or whatever.

Right.

And then you gotta, I don't, I'm not the I told you so person. Like I'll never say that, but you still have to comfort them, right?

Yeah.

So in that I told you so moment, right. You're going to either, you're going to say, I told you so, otherwise you're going to learn how to like tiptoe around the tulips and be like, I wish we would have, you know, come to a better—

this is not the first person where I've seen this happen to. No, it happens all the time. I've had 3 or 4 friends of mine come to me and they're like, oh, I want to do this, what do you think about it?

I don't think it's a good idea. Yeah, they go, oh, it's a Ponzi scheme, you know.

It's like we talked about before, people are always contacting us, oh, put a booth at this show, $2,000. Put a booth at this show, $5,000. Put a booth here, $8,000. And then that's just the booth. Then you got to do the logistics stuff, the hotel, the travel, the printed material you're going to hand out and all that. So by the time you're done, a $2,000 show is $6,000. An $8,000 show is going to run you $12,000. Right. You're going to— that's what you're going to end up spending.

And I guarantee you, you spend that $12,000 on some sort of marketing, you'll see way more Well, exactly.

The whole thing is this, is that, you know, who's making money? Like all these associations that want you to join, they're making money.

The venue, it's the venue, it's the promoter, it's the company that puts it all together.

Like I get these people, like they're in a startup, you know, they have a startup incubator. I'm like, oh, I'll come out and speak for free. Oh, we want you to join, pay $2,500. I don't even know who's at your startup incubator, right? Like, I'm offering to come out here. I'm a payments expert, 23 years in the business, right? Just look at all the value.

Entrepreneur, you know, you have a lot of wisdom to give. So it's like, even if, even if you just want to talk about operating a business for 10 minutes on stage, the value behind that, I feel like, would be beneficial.

Exactly. I talked about that. I said, I can come in, I can talk about my entrepreneurial journey and talk about all the different types of businesses.

And then you hit them in the head with how do you get paid, right?

I'm just saying I don't have to come in and go, oh, payments, but that's just part of business today, you know?

Well, every business has to get paid.

Yeah, you've got to get paid.

I mean, you're in business to make money. So like, how are you receiving that money? You know, are you doing it like the Stone Ages or are you in 2023 and letting technology work for your business and not your business working against technology? But I don't know. Um, no, it's—

yeah, the other thing that businesses need to think about with e-com is you've got to put in— you've got to spend money and have a chargeback alert program. You can't look at that and go, no, I'm not doing that.

I mean, you—

any—

like, I don't know. I, I mean, it's funny we're talking about e-commerce because, uh, I've recently, uh, took on a side project to manage a site for someone. And, uh, the fact that, you know, just like you said, you know, like People are, you know, people start businesses, um, but they, they don't know how to run a business, right? Right. And so it's just, uh, the, the project timeline I see is, you know, it's, it's difficult to navigate when, when, you know, you have this idea of what you want but you don't understand the technology or business as it is, right? And so, and I saw that a lot of learnings, a lot like what I've figured out. So many teaching moments now.

Yeah. And I remember like when I remember when I first got into this business in 2001, I think somewhere around like 2003, 2004, 2005, somewhere around there, there was like a period where all of a sudden everybody wanted to build these like one-page to five-page websites.

Yeah, just to get— that was huge. That was— yeah, that's like 10 years ago.

More than 10 years.

One-pagers.

Yeah. Like 2000. Yeah. Where people didn't have a website. It was like the early 2000s.

Okay, let's say 13 years ago.

Okay. So we had a company we were partnered with and they were just literally signing up 10, 20, 30 businesses a day. And then we were getting the leads to sign them up for merchant accounts. And it was just an insane amount of stuff. But then people started— we had to like separate ourselves from that company because people weren't finishing the websites because they would make like a shell and then they would say, hey, we need a picture from the outside of your business. And, you know, back then you didn't have like a smartphone. You could go choo choo choo, you know, send it to the merchant, you know, and just take a picture. It just didn't exist, right? So you had to like get a digital camera, take a picture, upload it to your computer.

It was a process for sure, right?

So people weren't finishing these websites.

So, you know, Pete, you know, when like even getting deliverables back then was not the easiest thing. There were a lot of, a lot of restraints. Like you couldn't upload, you know, like you considering the internet was Dial-up. I mean, it was not the funnest. Yeah, I remember waiting for images or videos to download for sometimes days and then rendering to upload even longer. So like, yeah, yeah.

So just makes it hard, you know, you got to, got to really, you know, when you want to start a side hustle and you're thinking about e-commerce, need to do your homework on it. So other stuff that's going on. In the news, a couple of news things. You got the Federal Reserve talking about making new rules for debit cards. I won't talk about that. Won't make another video on my other channel about it.

I mean, yeah, I mean, I, I was reading about it. It sounds very backwards for the government trying to do that.

Well, any— the government already took a bite at the apple in 2010. With the Dodd-Frank Act and the Durbin Amendment. And then now the Fed's like, oh, they want to cut it in half. You know, you can go back and look at what the 2010 bill did. Free checking went away, no more rewards on your debit card, right? The cost of banking went up.

So like, when you slash the debit fee away from this bank, right, they're going to lose billions, not millions, not $100,000, they're not going to—

billions.

That's going to affect the small business loans, that's going to Bank costs. I'm just talking about the consumer. Yeah, it's going to affect the small business loans for sure. Yeah, it's going to affect the credit card, you know.

No, but just like anything you have to do with the bank, yeah, it's going to go off. The car is going to go up.

The fact that— and I get the debit fees. It's an incentive for you to spend your money wisely. Right, right. Like, literally, it tells you, you go to the bank and it's like, yo, here's a list of businesses we want you to spend this money with, right? And when you do, you get a reward and you save money most of the time. Like, it's cheaper.

Yeah, there's usually an incentive.

You get, you get 15% off or whatever it is, bro. But what I'm saying is the fact that the government is gonna slash these debit fees It— you have to be so rich to like think this is a good idea.

No, no, see, but yeah, yeah, yeah, it's true. But the thing is, people don't understand is you're basically taking— you're taking money away from the banks. The banks need that money to run the bank, okay? So now where's the bank going to get the money from? It's going to shift to the consumers.

Exactly.

And the small business owners. And the big business owners and everybody who does business at the bank. So it doesn't matter if all— if the banks all lose money, then they're going to add more fees for checking, no more rewards on your debit cards.

My question is, how do they think this is going to create a tighter—

because the— because the people behind the bill is Walmart, Amazon, Target, because they just want one money anyway, because they're going to end up making more money.

And then they want a single universal currency.

Right. But the other problem— that could be a whole nother podcast. But the other thing is, is that the Fed's not thinking about all these merchants who are on fixed rate pricing, like through PayPal, Stripe, Square, QuickBooks, which those businesses in 2010 had maybe a few million merchants. Now that's probably 30 or 40% of the merchants are on some sort of fixed rate, right, pricing. And even through regular credit card processors like us, We have people that say, oh, we want simplified pricing. Great. We'll give you simplified pricing. One rate, right? One rate pricing or two rate pricing. You have a, you have a card present rate and a not card present rate.

Most of the time there's three, right? And you got the virtual terminal.

Well, no, usually it's two, you know, card present, card not present. Two rates, right? So you have two rates. But people on that, if they lower the debit fee, they're not getting any money. They're not saving a dime.

Right.

The company is going to make more. The credit card processors, putting those type of rates out are going to make more profits. So they're not helping small business. If they wanted to help small business, hey, the dudes at the Fed, yo, pick up the phone. Allen Kopelman, you can find me on LinkedIn. Set up an appointment. I'll explain it to you how you could help small businesses. Bring back small ticket interchange. Give a break. Any businesses that do under $25,000 get— make the credit card process, the interchange, the Visa, MasterCard, Amex and Discover, give them back, have them give back 10 basis points at the end of the month. That will help small businesses. Forget Walmart. Walmart and Amazon make enough money.

Walmart, the guy said he was going to start shutting down stores.

They are.

He's not.

They closed.

He's full of— maybe if it's because it's in a small rural town, whatever.

You want to know where they're—

well, listen, he said that he's closing down stores because he had $3 billion in stolen merchandise. Do you know how much his profit is every year?

Oh, it's insane.

$150 billion. Right. That is in our— that's cap, Walmart. Mr. What? You're capping, bro. You're lying. You're full of crap. Like, you're not about to close stores because you're losing from loss prevention. Like, that is not happening.

But I think that they have some stores in California where basically shoplifting is legal. Under $900. I mean, I think that there's people literally walking in Walmart and just taking—

well, they're walking in. It's not happening in California either. It's happening if you, if you really, if you look into the, you know, what's going on. And it, it's just a sad state of America, bro. Anyway, let's die. Let's move into something a little bit more. So the other day for Banking Act, this is, you know, I'm, you know, advocate You know, I started doing research on, you know, you have the Safer Banking Act. He thought I was— he didn't, he didn't believe me.

I did believe you, but I'm saying I did some research.

You didn't know what I was talking about.

On the Safer Banking Act versus the Safe Banking Act, right? So I said, why are they messing around with this Safer Banking Act? Just go to the Safe Banking Act. So then I started looking around, who's promoting the Safer Banking Act? So one of the biggest proponents behind the Safer Banking Act, which I wrote down, I'm sure you read it, is mortgage companies, mortgage companies and banks who—

the businesses who do business with the cannabis industry.

No, those— it's for their employees.

Right.

The employees of the cannabis industry, because there's so many cannabis businesses now that those employees can't get loans, mortgages, and credit cards.

Exactly. That's what I'm—

So now they're going to give the Safer Banking Act, which I pray will go to the floor and get voted on.

Is the government even back?

They're back, but they're not. Yeah, they appointed the guy, the Speaker of the House.

Oh, yeah, that's right.

It doesn't—

nothing goes into it because they missed the deadline. So now we got to wait to begin.

No, no, they can still vote on the floor.

Not to the end of the year.

Okay.

So beginning of the year or something like that, they said.

Whatever. They're still doing stuff now, but it's not.

I'm whatever.

They could still go to the floor and have a floor vote on the Safer Banking Act, but it can't get written in until January 1st or something because we missed the—

we missed the deadline.

They could change it. Doesn't matter. It's America.

They can do what they want.

Government. No. So it's going to protect banks who give mortgages and loans and bank accounts to the employees of cannabis businesses.. And I was wondering why all of a sudden I see all these like big real estate companies pushing for the— pushing for it, right? Because they really didn't talk about what it was for, you know. And then also the employees who work at cannabis businesses can't get bank accounts either because they get paid in cash. So a lot of them are getting paid on payroll debit cards, right? And that's just cash, which is cash. But then they don't have a bank account to like write a pay.

I wonder how they've been getting their taxes deducted out of it.

They've been liable. There's no taxes.

I'm just saying, but like when at the end of the year you got these people who are working at these places.

They don't pay taxes.

So they're just out here. No wonder everybody's out stealing stuff.

They're not paying taxes because they still haven't passed the act, the thing that they need to pass, which is the Safe Banking Act. Make cannabis businesses.

So wait, man, you mean to tell me, so people who work at dispensaries right now can't go to the spot, they don't get a check?

Most of them don't get checks. They will under this Safer Banking Act thing. Is that—

I did not know that. Yeah, a lot of them, I guess, cash. I guess it's, I guess it's me just being like naive or whatever. Not naive, but unknowledgeable, or I'm not in the business, so how would I know, right?

Some of them get cash. Some of them do get cash.

But now, like, we're talking this out, I could see like, yeah, you work at a dispensary and at the end of the week you just get a handful of money because they can't do nothing with the money.

No, but some of them, some of them like the bigger dispensary companies, like especially in Florida where it's all state controlled, those companies—

Medicinal's got to be different.

No, no, I'm saying those companies have, have like a holding company and then they're able to pay the employees paychecks, some sort of payroll, right, through some sort of payroll thing like payroll leasing or something.

Yeah.

In Florida, but it's like California and Colorado, it's just the wild, wild west. Hey Justin, thanks for working this week. Here's a pile of cash.

I got my gun too, so I'm good.

And that's basically it. Like there's no, you know, even if they do have a bank account and they paid Justin a check, there's no mechanism. That's why they need the Safer Banking Act so that they can get, but I just don't understand why the government's fooling around. Safer Banking Act, safe bank. Just pass them both already. Start collecting all the tax on a multi-billion dollar industry while we're floating out billions to Hawaii, billions to the Ukraine, billions to Israel, billions all around the world, billions to— I read $16 billion to the, to the UN.

We gave $300 billion so far to Ukraine.

Yeah, that's crazy, dude. That's wrong. So I'm sorry, but how many people are in the United States of America?

333 million.

Yeah, it's a dollar a person, right? More than a dollar per person.

You could give everybody $100, man.

Something like that.

Come on, bro. I don't know, man.

And we're whatever.

It's pro—

if you don't ever read about proxy wars, that's what's going on.

Not $100.

I digress. I was wrong about that.

Well, you get my point. My math isn't math. But yeah, so the Safe Banking Act— the Safer Banking Act— this is a great thing. I think that we've been sitting around twiddling our thumbs with this for the past, what, 4 years?

5 years? Longer. 10 years.

No, I'm talking about since the— Yes, it's been a crazy, dumb, long—

Safe Banking Act's been around a long time.

2014.

Yeah. So that's 10 years. A decade.

Wow.

So they need to get this stuff passed because it needs to— it just needs to get done and stop fooling around and let these businesses do everything. I mean, even point-of-sale companies we work with, I saw one of them had listed in the, in the, in the, uh, products, bud point-of-sale. So they're already ready.

Just everyone's ready. I mean, everyone's got it ready in the pipeline. Yeah, it's all right. So that's the podcast. That's it.

Peace out. Carpe diem.

Check out this Friday, man, episode 200.

Bang bang! We're gonna do a special episode all about podcasting.

Yes, sir.

Peace out, everybody. Have a great week.