Payment Trends Of December 2024 | Biz To Biz Podcast

You are now watching the Biz to Biz podcast with Allen and Justin. 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 Gordon Ramsay of payment processing himself, Allen Kopelman. What's up, bro?

Yeah, Hell's Kitchen, Gordon Ramsay. It's like one of my favorite shows.

Not a fan.

I would say like the getting yelled at part brings— reminds me of when I was younger working in the kitchens.

So I'm just not a fan of Gordon Ramsay.

Okay.

I was an Anthony Bourdain guy.

All right.

Never liked him. Never. I like never liked any of Gordon Ramsay's shows and shit. Just seems like an asshole.

That's the only show that I like. The other ones I'm not a big fan of. That one I like. He's like a—

he's a character, that's for sure.

Oh yeah, definitely a character.

I wonder if he could get punched in the mouth and still talk all that shit.

What, somebody fight I'm just wondering. I don't know.

I don't know. His, you know, like a lot of times people are loud and tough like that until they get punched in their shit, and then, you know, they tend to calm down. I don't know.

I've never seen anybody like go after— well, they would never show it on TV, I guess. Why would they not? He makes people—

it's like great TV.

He makes people cry all the time.

Yeah, I mean, I— yeah, that's my thing. He definitely Does, uh, he, he, he's extra hard on women.

Oh, he's hard.

Mama probably didn't love them very much.

He's hard on everybody.

He didn't get enough hugs.

No, I'm telling you, I've watched that show.

He didn't get enough hugs. Okay, his mama doesn't love him.

Uh-oh, Gordon Ramsay, Justin's calling you out.

I'm just saying, it sounds like you're gonna need a hug, bro.

All right.

You shouldn't be so angry all the time.

So there's been a lot of things in the news about payment trends. So I figured we would talk about—

well, Allen will talk about—

I'm sure you have plenty to add to this list.

Yeah, not much, sir.

Okay.

I don't— you know, it's—

you have opinions about some of this stuff, I'm sure. So obviously a big subject matter going around. Everything is AI, AI, AI, AI that they're talking about. And, you know, like AI-driven fraud prevention for your— on like credit cards. I mean, I think they've been doing that for a really long time.

A form of it.

Yeah, some form of it. I mean, one thing I noticed for sure in this holiday season, when I went to buy gift cards in the stores, every store will not let you purchase more than $300 to $500 worth of gift cards. They've kind of like limited that. I mean, I wouldn't know. I'm just saying from a fraud standpoint. No, I've heard, see people complaining about it on the internet. You know, another thing that everybody's talking about is, you know, embedded payments, like payments being added into all kinds of softwares and, you know, verticalized software solutions, which we talk about all the time, like how to market to particular verticals. Let's say a feed store, a beauty salon, a tattoo shop, a smoke shop. You know, and like, that's like a big thing that's being talked about in the, in the industry and from businesses. And even like Square has been talking about it for the last 2 or 3 years about how to, how to come up with vertical, more verticalized solutions that are more specific to businesses. What do you, what do you think about that? Come on, Justin, we talk about it all the time.

Yeah, I mean, it's happening, but But I mean, I don't have much to say on verticalized software solutions.

You think that's like going to be a bit that businesses really want that or they don't care?

I think it depends on the business.

The owner?

Yeah.

Okay. And then another big thing that's been in the news is a lot of news. Revolving around, uh, mobile wallets and whether, um, mobile wallets are universal or they're not universal. And they're not, right? I agree with that. So someone asked me, I got a phone call.

I took my card out of all that shit.

You took your card out?

I don't have Apple Pay, Google Pay. I don't have none of that shit.

Okay.

If you don't take tap and pay, then I'm not I'm not doing it with my card, right? I'm just done.

Okay.

I don't have Cash App. I don't have none of that shit.

Yeah, that was—

I literally closed every account.

Okay. And, you know, so with the mobile wallets, somebody called me to get a quote for a story that I think that mobile wallets were, were universal. And I explained that not every bank participates with Google and Apple and Apple and Google don't allow, like, let's say you have your bank app.

Nobody plays nice together in the sandbox. So I'm just like, forget all you guys. I feel like I'm a little kid again. Like I've literally have to abandon the playground because no one knows how to play together and shit. Like I'm out.

Yeah, so what I was explaining was, is like all the bank, like you have your banking app like for where you bank at, right, on your phone.

That's it, right?

So why can't your bank like have your credit card in there so you could make charges through like the bank app?

It does, but you have to use— because I have an iPhone, you have to add it to your wallet.

Oh, you can't? That's what I'm saying, like why can't the bank just have its own wallet is my point. Apple doesn't allow it, right? They don't allow it. So that means that it's not Universal.

Yeah, it's bullshit. Straight up and down. Yeah, I'm— yeah, I don't know. I'm just tired of it all. I wish we could go back to cash, gold coins. I don't know, barter system.

The barter system. Yeah, go to the wild, wild west.

I'm down.

Okay.

And then my pistol is—

and then just a lot of talk about crypto and A few people called me about crypto the last couple of days.

Going crazy.

Yeah, crypto went like to $106,000.

I forget the name of the company, but dude, they just invested another like $115 billion in the shit. Like some major investment firm buying— yeah, Bitcoin.

Yeah, that's crazy. And everybody's like talking about buy XRP, buy XRP. And, uh, I haven't heard that. That's just like going around and, you know, in your circle? No, just in general.

I have not seen that at all, sir.

Okay.

I've been seeing buy Doge.

Yeah, Doge is being talked about.

Seeing buy Shibu Inu.

Yes.

And I've been seeing Bitcoin.

Yes, a lot. Definitely.

That's— I haven't heard much about XRP. So maybe that's just in your act.

It went up a lot.

Maybe that's just because you own some, so it's probably like you— in my news cycle, in your news feed or something.

There's a little talk, not a lot. I mean, they talk about like how that's gonna work, banks are gonna use it, but I don't see that being talked about by the banks or by the financial institution type of news things that I carry. And crypto, you know, So, you know, but crypto, the payments part is still being held up because they need to go back and change the tax law and remove the tax on purchases so that you're not double taxed on your crypto.

Crypto payments is just going to be much as a disaster as this mobile wallet situation.

Well, until they change, they don't have a—

there's no real— it's nothing is seamless, nothing integrates correctly, nothing. It Yeah, I don't know. You don't— you can't go to a store and pay for the shit that you want the same way every time because every store accepts business payments differently, right? Like, until there's like a uniformed, like, process—

well, besides credit cards, that's pretty uniform everywhere. Credit, debit, it's uniform.

Correct. But that's not uniform in the way of society wants to pay because credit— not everyone has a credit card, right? Not everyone has a debit card. But I guarantee you everyone has some sort of peer-to-peer money on their phone. You know what I'm saying? Like, so I don't know.

Well, that's a whole nother, you know, that's on my list too about the peer-to-peer payments. So there was a big announcement that came out. There was an article by CNN and another article came out, not an article, advice, you know, announcement from the IRS. And they said, you know, if you're using all of these alternative payment methods, Cash App, Zelle, whatever, Venmo, etc., that, you know, if you haven't got 1099s from them in the past, you're definitely going to get them this year. And if you got them in the past, you're going to get, you expect that you're going to get the same thing again this year and that those channels of payment are being monitored by the IRS and everything's getting reported. I talked to one of my clients who was telling me that they sent me a bank change. I said, "Oh, why are you guys changing banks?" And they said, "Oh, now because every time we want to take $3,000 out of I don't want to name— I guess I can name the bank, TD Bank. They're going to file a report, but the level of the reporting is supposed to be $10,000. That's the federal law. But apparently they had some kind of problem. Now they're going to be reporting $3,000 in cash transactions in or out. So they switched to a different bank who told them that they wouldn't bother them for up to $10,000. And that's kind of crazy. Like, you know, this, you know, like, there— it's like there's a war on cash, like not dealing with cash. They don't want businesses bringing cash into the bank. We talk to people all the time about a SmartSafe solution so that you can take your cash, put it in the SmartSafe, get it electronically deposited, get it picked up once a week, get your change order brought to you, and then you don't have to go into the bank. And then Obviously, that's all done electronically. So you don't have to deal with, you know, going to the bank with cash, getting robbed or anything like that, and probably takes a lot less time and you have to put in, you know, have an employee doing it. But it's, you know, that's just, you know, something that's going on, you know. And then another thing like sort of being discussed is, you know, decentralized finance, which they've been talking about for years, which encompasses crypto and alternative payment methods. And all that. And then, you know, that's just moving super, super slow. And buy now pay later, you know, now I read that, um, Cash App's putting buy now pay later in their Cash App. And so I don't know what that's gonna— how that's all gonna work out, uh, you know, to make that available to more people.

The fact that they're gonna do that is gonna that's going to, that's going to rip through the poor community because a lot of the poor people, you know, that get paid on, they get paid through Cash App, right? Oh, that's fucking—

and I've talked to like, I've talked to some companies about like, how come—

be smart with your money, man. If you're getting paid on Cash App, please do not fall into the buy now, pay later trap.

I've talked to companies before that like involved in these, you know, alternative payment methods. And I said, I don't understand why you guys can't figure out how to get those payment methods on a credit card terminal, right? So that someone walks into a store, that they can use those apps to pay and then have it recorded in the credit card terminal and get funded. It's just so difficult to, like, I don't know, either they don't want to do it in store.

You can go to You use Affirm in stores?

Yeah, Affirm. I'm talking about like Cash App, Venmo. I mean, PayPal now came out with the wallet, whatever. They have your Will Ferrell all over TV. Oh, I could pay with PayPal. But it's still either the PayPal credit card or some credit card you already have loaded in their app. I would think it's one or the other. Let me get PayPal credit. Right, they have a credit card, right? So that's how people are using that credit card. Same as like an Apple Pay credit card. I don't know if you can load other cards in there. I haven't tried it. No, in the PayPal wallet, I haven't got—

that's why I said I don't mess with none of the wallets, bro.

And then, you know, another thing, like, you know, which we preach, we've talked about before, is like, you know, how we're getting a lot of businesses asking us about selling online and how to integrate that into their point of sale system and offering delivery, local delivery, in-store pickup, curbside pickup. And, you know, there's, there's just so much stuff going on now. Like, I was reading about this Amazon Hall thing, and they're like, they're, you know, Amazon's trying to push that to get— take business away from like Temu. Have you looked at it at all online? Temu? And what's that other one? Shiny Shine?

Sheen. Sheen.

Yeah, no, you know, so like Amazon Hall, I don't know what that's all about. And you know, then the other thing people are talking about is like biometrics. Is this going to become a thing? I'm definitely not registering any kind of like biometric, uh, anything.

You did already.

How did I do a biometric?

You got your full face recognition?

No, no, it's turned off. I turned it off on my phone. Doesn't work.

Sure it don't.

Well, I don't use it. I have it turned off. What? I turned it off on the phone. Like, for some reason.

Did you put a camera— a piece of tape over the camera?

No. Who knows? Hopefully my— whatever. They have everybody's picture. Okay. What did we talk about? That guy, the UnitedHealthcare guy got shot. Nobody believes that the guy that's arrested is the guy who did it.

No one. A lot of people that I know don't believe that shit. You know, a lot of people were talking about on, I mean, the Joe Budden podcast, almost everyone on the podcast said that they don't believe it's him. Um, the guy that was a guest on that podcast doesn't necessarily, and he's a doctor, you know, like a It's really smart guy, right? He said, yeah, I don't get it, but you know, he's the fall guy. That's what everyone keeps saying.

Yeah, it's very interesting.

It's not interesting, it's— no, I'm just saying ridiculous. And the, the fact that the attention is on that, and, and then these drones that people are— did you see the video of people shooting at them drones in Texas?

Yeah, they were—

no, in Texas.

Yes, Texas. I saw there was a video with Gatling guns. With Gatling guns? That's crazy.

No, I'm talking about it looked like, like some shit out of World War III, right? Like, it was crazy. I don't even think they're drones. I just think they're holograms, and I think the government is messing with people.

It's just a hologram.

There are a lot of holograms.

Yeah, because they say it's not noisy. They said they don't hear like a helicopter sound or Well, I mean, the big—

you and I have been to several conferences like the Disaster Expo, and I forget which other one.

Yeah, we're at that business expo.

I mean, the drones there were the size of this room.

Oh yeah, they were massive. There was some massive ones. They were like the size of a truck, a school bus. Oh yeah, there was some massive drones. Yeah.

So I mean, uh, I don't know. But whatever.

I mean, I can't see like how something that big would be silent.

Oh, they're quiet. Those propellers, they're made to be quiet.

Okay.

It was quiet. I mean, you're talking, they're like, who knows, 4,000 feet in the air, whatever.

I don't know if you can hit that with a gun.

No. I mean, I don't— the one guy in Jersey, when he was shooting at it, that shit was terrible. He was a terrible shot, bro. I'm like, you can't shoot behind it if it's moving this way. You gotta, you know, it's going this way, so you gotta shoot this way so it kind of runs into the bullet. Smartass.

Anyway, well, they need to get like Mark Wahlberg the shooter out there with one of those whatever gun he had. And he shot it from like a mile away.

Yeah, that was a .50 cal. That was— that's a big gun.

But I'm just saying, like, people were shooting with a pistol. They showed another guy, some cops, and they were shooting at it with their service revolver.

Bro, this right here is the wildest shit I've ever seen in my life. The fact that it is You know, this is in Texas.

That's crazy.

And they're not hitting it. To me, that looks like a hologram, and they're just literally messing with people.

What's all that coming down from? Those are flares. Oh, so they want— they can see it better. Yeah. I mean, listen, you go to Texas, there's people that are crazy.

Look, I see How are they not hitting it? Shit, they're about to light this thing up with everything they have, man.

They don't hit it? No, watch. I mean, this is crazy. You got to— Sean's got to post this. Look at that.

The fact that these people in Texas have these kinds of firearms is a little scary.

Listen, go out to the country.

You see that?

Yeah.

And it's not just one person, bro. That was like 50, whoever. I mean, I don't even know how many guns is going off at one time. They got all the tracer, uh, rounds. Like, shit looks like straight out of Star Wars, honestly.

That's crazy.

Uh, that's nuts.

Yeah.

And they didn't hit it.

I don't know how that doesn't make sense.

So that, you know, war games, man.

But that could be— what are they trying to see? Who's got guns in the US for in case there's a civil war? We know who's got some guns.

I don't know. Donald Trump says the government knows who is flying. They're not telling him, and they're not telling— no, he said the government knows. And then they asked him, um, are you willing to comment on the security meeting that you just had? And he was not able to. And he said that the government has the technology to— they could fly wherever that drone took off. Yeah, they know the derivative of that. So they could go to wherever that is without a problem, with no question. So, you know, it just sounds a little weird. It's just all a lot of bullshit coming up.

And I think it's to distract us from something else. It's about to happen. Probably everybody's gonna be focused on the drone and the aliens, the aliens, and this kid Luigi.

I'm already done with all of it.

That's crazy.

But that was an— in— for those of you who could not see, but I'm sure you may have heard, that was crazy. That's real footage. That's not—

no, I get it.

Did you see the people sitting in lawn chairs? No, they were sitting in lawn chairs watching it, right? Like it was a show.

It's weird. Well, who knows?

I love Texas. I mean, I, I don't know how much I'd be able to live there because I'm like, 130 degrees during the summertime is even—

let me just tell you, Floridians, I've been out to the country before in Texas and Iowa and Georgia. When you— I've been up into mountains in North Carolina, the people that live out in the wilderness.

I know they got guns.

I mean, they got tripping about— no, no, I'm just saying like some people have like an entire armory. I know, like at their house. My uncle, like they're ready for doomsday.

My uncle in up north. Yeah, yeah, I know where I'm going if shit hits the fan.

I mean, they're ready for like go Rick Grimes. Oh shit, for The Walking Dead. Yeah, man.

I mean, these Listen, my pops has a— his closet isn't to be messed with. Okay, you know what I'm saying? Like, I'm like, yo, but anyway, man, yeah, I digress. But shout out to the drone flyers.

Okay, that's kind of crazy. And then the other thing I've been reading about, which I don't know if this is even gonna— you know, there's a big— there's also like a huge push on like anti-money laundering right now. Hence what I was talking about with the banks. And then like GDPR, you can speak on that better than I can. That's more like in Europe, right? And now they're talking about instituting that in the US.

And, um, it's not a bad thing.

It's just— I'm just surprised, like, you know, it's—

I mean, it's kind of— we already implemented it here in the United States because a lot of people are dumb as shit.

And so like, we have it on our site.

Well, yeah, I mean, our thing was like when I was being— when all this was happening, right, the GDPR and the lawsuits with Google and the cookie stuff and all this other shit, we just went ahead and implemented it then and there before it could even affect us, right? Everybody that I know, right, just were like, all right. I mean, it makes sense, right?

No, it does make sense. I'm just surprised, like, now they're going to, like, try to do something.

I mean, there's a lot of stuff that people still don't like. Accessibility. You know, if the— whatever, someone decided to report somebody and their website's not accessible.

Right.

You know, there's a lot of shit still that is, you know, do what's best for your company, man.

Exactly.

Don't worry about everybody else. That's all I could say. Do what you think is best for you and cover your own ass. That's the best advice I can give with the internet. And this GDPR thing, it's not a bad thing. Don't be scared about it.

Just interesting.

And then I always forget what the GDPR stands for. I want to say GDPR acronym. What does GDPR stand for? General Data Protection Regulation. You know, it's just, it's just letting you know, like, you're going to You, when you go to the website, they know when they're clicking or they know when they're tracking, right? I'm saying, so that's what's the big deal. I don't, you know, people who are tripping about that is why are you tripping? Like, what shady shit are you doing with that data that you're collecting that you're tripping about that, right? What, what are you scraping from the people that land on your website and selling if it's, you know what I'm saying?

Like, right.

So I don't know, stop tripping.

And the other—

inevitable, bro. It's like going to the liquor store when you're 18 trying to buy a damn beer, right? You're gonna get carded, right?

And the other thing that would— which I was reading about, which I couldn't find— I Googled around and, you know, so I was reading this thing about Green Payment Solutions. So I was like, oh, what are these guys talking about, Green Payment Solutions? Like there's going to be some some, something for cannabis. And then, no, it's some movement to pay for people to pay more with cash.

Pay more with cash?

Yeah, to pay, pay to use cash.

Now you get a cash discount, you're going to get a cash increase?

No, no, just for people to pay with incentive. No, no, just pay with cash. That's a movement.

Oh, that's the green payment movement.

Yeah, the green payment movement.

Ah, to pay more with cash.

Yeah, use more cash.

I mean, I guess it depends on where you live, right?

I mean, I was— and I was reading about it, and then there was like—

last time I had some cash on me, right?

Yeah.

I don't know, I was like— I don't know, I think I had like close to like $500, right?

Yeah.

We're going up, up to Fort Myers.

Okay.

Just this weekend. But a big chunk of it was going to like be put away already because birthdays and shit, right? Oh, let me just get this cash all When I tell you, I felt like the vultures were swarming. And yeah, like in the gas station, I just looked up and, you know, I was putting my money in my wallet and I look and I'm like, damn, you nosy mother cluckers.

Well, people don't really carry around like a pile of cash.

No, when they heard that machine going, and then I went and did it again because you can only get like 200. Yeah, most of the time. Well, Yeah, $200. Yep. So it's always $400.

Okay.

But then I still had like $30 on me or something. So it looked like I had a lot, a lot of money because all 20s, right?

It's like, yeah, listen, it's a big thing now. Like they tell you, like if you go to the ATM machine and you take cash out, you know, don't drive right up to your house, make sure nobody's following you because there's been a rash of robberies from—

get a gun and go get a CCW. Take some classes, arm yourselves, because shit is real out here, you know. That's— I'm not— all that make sure no one ain't following you shit. Yeah, right.

Exactly.

Someone's gonna— it's only gonna get worse. Yeah, one of my— they don't fix the— like this, what's going on in the streets, I'm telling you firsthand. Yeah, shit is gonna get funkier out here.

One of my friends was at the mall, and when he was at the mall, he has an iPhone, and there's shootouts at the mall every day now. And he got in his car and he looks on his phone and it says that there's an AirTag on his car. No, like, yeah, like there's an AirTag like in his vicinity. So he gets out of the car and as he gets closer to it, it's telling him. So he looks down and he's— somebody put an AirTag with like on him. They put an AirTag and they stuck it like above his— in his tire well. And like glued it, like attached it in there.

He's got a crazy lady. Does he have a crazy lady friend?

No, he thinks he owns a business that is something that maybe people would want to steal. Like maybe he has cash on him, jewelry, stuff like that. Oh, and so he freaked out and then he went back into the mall.

Well, it's time to start moving a little different.

And he was like, what, you know, somebody's watching him. He's got to change, maybe change the car. But, you know, definitely changed.

I mean, I mean, at that point they know what he looks like, so changing the car ain't really doing it.

Park somewhere else.

Yeah, you better put some cameras around where you park ASAP.

The mall definitely got the cameras out to see who did it. Oh, it's being investigated.

Oh, nice.

I mean, how does I don't know, but yeah, well, they can follow you now with the technology they have. You know, they see the person in one place, then they can follow them all over the place on the different cameras, from camera to camera. So they got the license—

closed caption television is real, buddy.

So they got the license plate off the car of the guy who put it on his car.

Oh, they've seen it?

Yeah.

Oh wow. Yeah, that guy's shit out of luck. He's He's, he's up shit's creek without a paddle, sir. I don't know what kind of charge is that.

They don't— they're investigating the guy to see what— who he is and what he did.

I'm just saying, like, what is that? What if someone is stalking?

Oh, trying to rob. Maybe the guy— maybe they'll pull the guy over and he's got a gun in his car or something. I don't know. There's crazy people in the world. You gotta, gotta wrap her up.

No diddy. Anyway, man, that's the pod. Payment trends 2025, sir.

What's happening in the world today? Peace out. Like, share, and subscribe.

They killed the AI guy. OpenAI guy, Suchar Bhargari, found dead.

Uh-oh. Yeah, when did that—

anyway.

Well, now the pod's over. We got extra footage.

No, I'm just saying, bonus footage. Yes, crazy as shit.

When did that happen? Yesterday?

They found his body last week or some shit.

Wow, that's crazy. Yeah, there's too many, like, upper— my brother told me, he's like, he doesn't want to— he said he would never want to be a CEO or a figurehead of any kind of public company with what's going on in the world Today I'm not—

I'm just not scared. Anyway, peace out. That's the pod. Peace. Subscribe.