Six Payment Processing Predictions To Look Out For In 2023 | B2B Vault: The Payment Technology Podcast | Episode 138

Yo, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the payment technology podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by the merchant service sleuth himself, Allen Kopelman. And we will be providing you educational information about fintech, small business payment processing and the technology businesses use in the world today. And in today's podcast, we'll be talking about 6 payment predictions for 2023 from Allen himself. Um, you know, there's a lot of predictions and trends and all types of things that are going along through the internet, but, uh, none can come from the man, the myth, the legend other than himself, Allen Kopelman. I mean, the guy's 20 years experience of merchant services, He's literally seen every trend, you know, possible. Like, he's been around since payment processing started.

Listen, I started with the Knucklebuster and a piece of paper.

See, the Knucklebuster.

I probably—

I don't even know what that is, and it sounds ridiculous.

Yeah, it was this machine. You put the credit card, then you put a slip on there, then you went—

oh, I remember that.

And then you had to go through a little book and see if the card number was right.

Okay, we have a whole nother podcast about the history of payment merchant services. You go down, it's like—

yeah, we did that.

It's like a history lesson.

Yeah, we did this history lesson of merchant services.

No need to go back into that. So in, in today, we're gonna be talking about some, uh, payment predictions that you have, uh, talk about the current state, state of payments, the payment industry. So let's get into that and, uh, explain why 2023 is shaping up be a year of significant change.

There's definitely going to be significant change in the business. A lot of things that's changing right now is basically the consolidation that's being allowed to happen in the industry.

Every— what do you mean by that?

So companies are getting bought up and merging. I mean, so there's companies that are becoming behemoths, very large, because they I mean, there's one company I saw, they've purchased probably about 8 or 9 different companies already, and they just purchased another one. And then another company just purchased a whole slew of companies, and, and that this just keeps happening more and more and more. And also banks kind of merging together through investment, so by having like a common investor group, you know, on, in the, on the, you know, on the back end of the bank. Yeah. And then that investor group is now invested in 3 of the largest high-risk banks. So that's making it harder for merchants to get merchant accounts because now those banks are all interconnected, intertwined with each other, and then they can see like, oh, Justin has an account here, now he wants to open an account over there, uh, you know. And now it's like almost like the same.

I don't like it the way that sounds.

It's, it's getting a little bit muddy. Yeah, it's get— it's muddying up the waters, and it's, and it's, and it's, it's also not— I don't think personally, I don't think it's good for the business to keep— for them to keep allowing this. You know, I agree. I mean, just like the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint, you took one, you know, yeah, telecom provider off the table, and then you're just left with, you know, you're just left with, you know, AT&T, Verizon.

So where are we at, like, considering, like, the current state of—

I think, you know, the business is just going to keep changing. This business changes all the time. It's like Who Moved My Cheese. And I think that we're going to see some really significant changes in that you're going to see technology make a huge leap this year where merchants, businesses are not going to have to have a physical credit card machine soon. There are a number of software companies that have come out with, you know, apps— scan a QR code, make a payment. Soon you're going to see like the The newest Apple phones, the newest Android phones have NFC chips in them. And originally Apple and Google were—

so you'll be able to go like this.

Yeah, I'll be able to take my phone. I left it out of the room so we don't hear beep beep.

Lost an opportunity.

Would you be able to take your card and hit the phone and make a payment? You know, take my card out, make a tap and pay.

Tap and dip.

Dip. Yeah, no, no dip, just no dip. Just a tap. You're not going to need the EMV reader, the little square box. You're just going to go right card to phone or phone to phone and make a payment. And I think that, um, you know, Apple and Google letting outside developers now develop on that—

because it's about time.

I think that the, um, the, the, uh, the Visa, MasterCard, and who else, whoever governs that said, hey, whoa, whoa, you can't do that. And now also, I think another thing we're going to see is we're going to see more wallets get developed.

Well, we'll get into that.

We're getting into that. But so like we're talking about right now, right now, that's what we're going to see. The next— the first trend we're going to talk about is real-time payments. And real-time payments, I think, is going to come first for the big businesses this year. We're going to see bigger businesses get to offer real-time payments between— for large transactions, cut out the wire transfer and go to re— go to real-time payments. I already see a few fintech companies talking about it. You know, we have this thing FedNow, and now it's just a matter of which ACH providers and banks are gonna—

what is a real-time payment?

A real-time payment is, let's say Justin owns a lumberyard and I have a building company and I'm going to buy $100,000 of lumber from Justin. So instead of me going to the bank and I got to do a wire or have a special fob on, you know, a little fob thing, and I got to go, you know, on my computer and then do the whole thing with the wire. Or you got to go, you know, you got to send the wire. I got to send the wire to Justin, right? So instead of doing that, it'll be like a real-time payment where Justin be able to send me a text or an email. I could just click on it, link, log into my bank account, and send him the money— send Justin the money.

And instead of it's taking overnight or a couple hours, 7 to 10 business days—

well, it depends on how you're sending the money. You'd be able to send it bank bank-to-bank transfer, instantaneous bank-to-bank transfer. Comes out of my account, goes through the Fed real quick, ends up in Justin's bank account.

So what's the difference between that and ACH?

So ACH has to go through a whole settlement process, right? The, the bank who's run— let's say you send me a request, an invoice, and I pay you via ACH, my bank account. The, the ACH company then has to suck the money out of my account, and then it goes into their bank, and then they pass it through the Fed, and then it goes to your bank. And then in that process, I could stop them— I could stop it. The Fed, the, the instant payment thing, I think that they're— it's not moving as fast because of all the problems with Zelle and the P2P. You can't stop that. There's no charging it back. You know, you send some— I send you some money from Zelle, there's— I can't get it back unless you're a nice guy and you give me the money back, right?

So what's the— what are some benefits from the real-time payments?

The benefits are businesses' money moving faster between businesses. And I don't know if it's going to make it down to the SMB, small-medium business market, this year, Yeah, I mean, we talked about that, you know, you're not going to go and spend $10 on a cheeseburger and then— yeah, do it real— do a real-time payment. But, you know, smaller wholesalers, you know, is it going to reach down to that level? You know what I mean? Like a smaller wholesaler. But also, it depends on the participation of the banks. So the big banks are participating.

But I feel like this is— this isn't the first time this has came around. No, no, I remember the pay-by-bank thing when I was like there's still a lot of bills that you could pay by bank right now.

Yeah, but it's done through ACH.

Okay, so it's not bank, but it's not like immediate.

No, it's not immediate. Okay. Yeah, they talk— they use the wording, you know, oh, pay by bank, pay with your bank account. Yeah, but it's going through the ACH network. Okay. It's not going— it's not going real-time bank to bank. But you know, it's interesting, the one thing about it is like real-time payments, I'm on— if you're using an SMB and they're doing 5, 10 payments a, a day like that, they're being sent one by one. So now you're getting all these deposits into your account. So that's something that somebody's gonna have to figure out. Like, oh, if you're doing one or two, okay, that's easy to manage, you know, from a bookkeeping standpoint. But if you're doing 10, 20, 30 of these a day, you don't want to get all those deposits. Your bank You know, bank accounts are charged by how many deposits you get.

So what do you think are like the driving forces of getting, you know, people to get on board and businesses to use Ripple?

Well, I think the banks don't really want people to use it right now because they're going to lose out on wire fees, right? Uh, they're going to lose out on people using their credit card possibly, and that's a that the banks are kind of— they're the ones roadblocking this thing.

That's what it all— like, for me, like, when it comes to fintech and banks, it's like they're just Muhammad Ali versus Sonny Liston.

Well, look what's going on with crypto now. Now crypto companies are getting kicked out of banks left and right, right? So, you know, this is what's happening. You know, they don't— you know, banks are blocking, blocking a lot of different— a lot of different— they're fighting with fintech. They need to figure out how to win. They need to marry Yeah, they need to, they need to, they need to make it figure out how to work together instead of working apart.

Agreed.

And the same thing, like the real-time payments thing, there could be a ton of fraud with that too, right? And that's a problem. And the banks are looking at that like, oh, do we want people transferring? Do we want Justin requesting a million dollars and then somebody on the other end is a scammer and they're sending a million dollars from, you know, ABC Company's bank into Justin's bank account. Justin takes all the money out, transfers it off to, you know, makes a transfer into another bank and then to another bank and then off to the Cayman Islands or something. And then poof, somebody's money is gone. And then there's no, you know, security in the way. They got to work all that out. I mean, it all sounds good, but look at Zelle. Yeah, now there's a million— Zelle's in multiple lawsuits, right? Multiple banks— Bank of America, Wells Fargo.

They're gonna lose that lawsuit.

Who is, the banks? Oh yeah, they're being sued. The government, Elizabeth Warren, and the judiciary.

I was reading a really long article about that, and they basically— at this summary was like, they can't, they can't do anything. There's nothing.

They're gonna have to just pay up. The banks are— I mean, they got— there was, there was—

there's—

they're trying— the banks were trying to say, oh well, there's a difference between fraud and a scam, that you fell for a scam. Well, they need to do something. One thing I don't like about Zelle is, so let's say I add you to my account, I get a warning, then I'd say I send money. There's no button to press somewhere to go, oops, I sent the wrong amount. That's the only thing I don't like about it.

There's nothing in the— there's nothing in the, in the internet world that you can do that, right?

That's what I'm saying.

Besides an email. Shout out to Google. They made you— you can retract your email for like 3 seconds or something. You got to be quick on the draw. Undo.

Undo. Used to be able to undo a lot of email, not so much anymore.

No más.

But the thing is, is that they've got to figure out how not to have fraud happen. All right, that's, that's going to be the challenge.

You also predicted that the growth of mobile payments are going to blow up.

Mobile payments is going to continue to grow. We have a ton of business— you have a ton of businesses like the big buzzword the ending of the year was solopreneur.

Solopreneur.

Yeah, that was a big buzzword at the end of the year. A lot of people out of work, side hustle, starting a business by themselves, or it's a husband and a wife, or a boyfriend and a girlfriend, or two friends, you know, or just somebody by themselves. They go, okay, well, I'm gonna go fix computers.

The economy is definitely forcing people to—

yeah, the economy—

figure out ways to make money.

Yeah, I mean influencer— the influencer economy, you know, it's going to continue to grow.

People are trying to become influencers, become, um, and obviously they're going to have to figure out how to get paid, right?

Yeah.

So relax, keep going. There's some podcast stuff happens.

You got a podcast? Stuff happens.

Yes, sir.

Okay, we're having a distraction. No, but we're gonna— I think we're gonna see some different some different things when it comes to mobile payments. We're going to see companies, like I said, using that phone, you know, not having to buy equipment, phone-to-phone transactions and other types of mobile payments. Text-to-pay continues to grow, email-to-pay, e-invoicing— all of those are forms of mobile payments.

Absolutely.

You know, and then, and then now, like, the economy is back open, you know, with people going out into public. So you go— people more people are going to go to art fairs, go to farmers markets, go to craft fairs, outside events. And at these outside events, I mean, you go to the, um, I don't know the name, it's in West Palm, the amphitheater. I think, I think, I don't know who's, what the name of it is, whoever sponsors it. When you go there, it's a, it's no cash, you got to pay with, you gotta, so everybody's running around with their phone. Oh, you need a beer? Apple Pay. You need a pretzel? Apple Pay. You need a thing? Google Pay.

Where is that?

The amphitheater in West Palm Beach. Like, all the food, it's cashless. No cash.

It's every— when?

Whenever they have concerts there.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, so whenever they have concerts.

I thought you were saying— I thought you heard.

And that's all mobile payments. Mobile payments. But I also think I was telling you with the, with the, uh, um, with the Mobile payments. And the next thing we're going to discuss— and mobile payments is increasing with consumers. Consumers are used to paying with, you know, paying a mobile business and things like that. They're not turned off by it, you know. They expect the person to take out their phone or an iPad and a little device, and soon the device will be gone. And contactless payments, the same thing, growing, growing, growing. But the one thing, um, is on this list about the digital wallets— I don't think it's on the list, but But contactless payments also includes digital wallets. You know, contactless grew during COVID We saw an increase of everybody doing tap and pay, you know, customer-facing EMV machines so that you didn't have to hand your card over. You know, people using their phone to pay, tap and pay.

I still don't understand how it's tap and pay and then you got to put your, your number.

Yeah, I mean, put in your code.

Not contactless, sir.

Oh, if you have to put in your PIN code.

Yeah.

Yeah, so that's weird.

Why does that happen?

Because whatever the business is doing to route their transactions— so they're— bigger businesses can do like transact— a lot of them do transaction routing. So if you swipe your card and they see that it's a low amount, they'll let it go through under credit. If it's a large amount, then they want it to go under pin debit because then it costs them less money.

So regardless, even if you, you still end up having to put your—

yeah, unless they don't offer pin debit. I mean, pin debit in a lot of cases is as expensive or more expensive than processing an offline debit as a credit card.

You predicted that the emergence of digital currencies will still, you know, they're going to come back.

Well, I think that we're going to see a change. Well, let me get finished up with the contactless payments about the— the— well, we get— we can get to it later with the, with the, uh With digital currencies, there's still a lot of people buying Bitcoin, and, you know, there's a little bit— there's a lot of them still investment going on in that. And there's a lot of things going on with NFTs and people buying NFTs and using the NFT more as a utility than as an investment, right?

I mean, this stuff is so young, right? I mean, we're talking about—

I mean, there is—

you're talking about crypto and NFTs in the within 3 years, right? We'll say just 3 years. I mean, crypto has been a long time around for a long time, but the past 3 years it has made leaps and bounds, right?

Yes.

And NFTs have literally launched over like night. Yeah, like last year, last year around this time. Yeah, we're talking to town.

Yeah.

And anything that's so young, you know, like it's— you trying to figure out how to use it, you know, it's brand new. Yeah, and I, I love the way where the NFTs are going. I like how, uh, Nike is using it. I like how Adidas is using it. I like how certain companies are, you know, turning their brand into an NFT. And then when you purchase the NFT, it comes with things, you know, incentives like free concerts, uh, merch. Just, there's so many different things that they can be used for. And I, I think that it's— we've only seen just a very small portion of what they could be used for.

Exactly. And, and I think that, you know, we might see like somebody, one of these companies figure out like what to do with stablecoins and how to, how to effectively use stablecoins as, you know, the digital— a digital dollar, you know. But that remains to be seen. I do think that we will see some sort of regulation. I think that they need to move regulation in the United States similar to like what we talked about another— on another podcast about how Japan handles crypto, how you buy your crypto on an exchange and then your crypto is moved to a third-party, uh, website, and that website is monitored by a bank, right? And I think that the United—

and the whole like commission, like, right?

Yeah, the bank—

besides the bank, there's all like— there's just so much. Yeah, there's a, uh, whatever, a regulatory body. Exactly.

And I think that the US has to move quickly and not fart around, you know, and make decisions on how to do this so that it's done correctly to preserve everybody's money. I mean, we read a story about this Celsius, right? Yeah. And now it seems— I was telling Justin, I said, it's crazy, that seems like all the houses that were bought with the state crypto that's now worth nothing. All those houses belong to that company, Celsius, and don't belong to the people in them. Now, some of the people that are in those houses, let's say they're living there, maybe it's possible that they have like squatter rights. So I'm, I'm looking—

I don't know why, there's got to be some— there's going to be some crazy law like that.

Yeah, there's going to be some kind of court.

They'll end up keeping those houses. I hope so.

Yeah, it's pretty sad what's— that, that whole thing is messed up, and that, that, that all needs to change. The law— there needs to be laws against that staking, and the, you know, something needs to be monitored in that. But I mean, there are companies—

prediction number 5. Yes, adoption of open banking. What is open banking?

Open banking is where you'll be able to go to an ATM, let's say a Truist Bank and make a deposit even though you bank at Navy Federal. Oh yeah, that's— oh, that's the antithesis of open banking.

But also, you know, just like there's not going to be any fees, or there's going to be fees?

Well, there might be small— a small fee, of course, right? But I'm just saying, like, neo banks—

what's a neo bank?

Banks that have no— they don't have a branch, right?

So people don't know.

So you use a neo bank, like a good neo bank. USAA is one of the biggest ones, right? So they, they don't really have— I think there's maybe a couple of branches in San Antonio.

Really?

Yeah. And but, you know, they just did a deal with our ATM, the RATM network, where now we can enable certain machines if they meet the criteria of USAA. And then custom USAA customers can go to those locations, use the ATM, and it's free. Nice. Free ATM. Transactions, and they pay the ATM network.

Navy Federal has a fee like that, like at Walgreens and Wawa, right?

A lot of them are linked up into different things called like Allpoint Network or other networks where you get reduced fees or no fees at certain ATMs.

What's the benefits?

The open banking benefits— there's a lot of— there's a lot of benefits because it's going to make— it's going to make banking more competitive. You know, and I know that because now you don't necessarily need to do business with a bank that has four walls. You can do bank business with a bank that doesn't have four walls and you still have access to your— better access to your cash through the ATM networks and things like that, making deposits, doing other banking stuff. But you know, that remains to be—

at the end of the day, you're still going to need a bank though, right?

Yeah, you're still going to need a bank, but you might not have to go to the—

I mean, I guess not, because I mean, you're getting— I didn't finance my car through my bank. I didn't— I'd necessarily— I wouldn't necessarily have to use my bank to buy a house.

I mean, a lot— look at like, look at like Zillow, right?

They don't have a credit card from my bank.

No, but look at like that company Zillow that tells you how much your house is worth. They're buying houses, selling houses, financing houses. You know, there's just a lot of fintech out there. So, you know, but I still say that people, when they, you know, they need to have— people need to have like a regular bank account because they, they need to, you know, you need a regular bank account especially if you're going to have a business. And I think that the banks that are out there need to do a better job of treating their business customers better because the young consumer doesn't need a bank the way I need a bank. Okay, I need a bank because I'd have to do physical banking. I need access to different services that you don't get from a neobank. And someone that owns a business needs those things. Let's say even— let's say, let's say I decide, okay, I'm gonna, uh, partner with my son and open him up like a small clothing store. Yes. Okay, well, he needs access to a regular bank because Maybe he needs to get change, right? Because people come in his store and spend cash. He needs— maybe he needs a, you know, he needs access to those kind of services. So that's where I think that community banks, credit unions, and even whatever the larger banks need to figure out how to do a better job of taking care of their business customers.

On a side note, yes, you've said opening a small clothing store for your son a lot of times.

Right?

And I'm just— you've spoken it into existence. If it's not happening, it's gonna happen.

Might happen.

He doesn't talk about that.

He wants to have his own—

just mentally bring this up.

No, he wants to have like a clothing line, a clothing line, a streetwear line, and then put it in a store, you know?

Hey man, I mean, I'm all for being creative, right? One thing I see, clothing things, t-shirt brand stuff though, for me is just oversaturated and if he's got a niche, that's, that's one thing, right?

Yeah.

But other than like the streetwear—

no, no, t-shirt market— what's interesting though is like you see these different brands, like these clothing brands, like one of them is Untucked. Yeah, one called Untucked, right? So they never had any stores, but now they have little tiny stores at the mall.

Smart.

Because people don't know, like, do the clothes fit? I want to go in there and try on the shirts.

Well, regardless, the whole shopping online is different, right? Yeah, because every t-shirt size is different, like every brand is different, it feels different.

So, right, because I would like— they used— they call— there's like a term that they've been using for a few years called showrooming, right? So showrooming is, oh, I know they sell this like maybe at Best Buy, right? You sell an item And then you go in Best Buy, you touch it, you feel it, you check it out. Oh yeah, I like this item. Then you leave Best Buy and you go home and you go, okay, well, who sells the same item? Maybe somebody sells it cheaper.

Oh, that way.

Yeah, I mean, I'll tell you a crazy story. I went to go buy a TV, so I'm looking on the— on online, and I see this TV at Best Buy and go, how can they sell a TV for $499 and it includes like an Xbox? I don't remember which. It was like Xbox at the time, a few years ago. It's like, how the heck do they do that? So I go to the store and I go, oh, can I buy this TV with the Xbox? Because I wasn't really, you know— and they were like, no, no, that's only offered on the internet.

So then you went online and bought it?

Then I went out to the guys like, oh, it won't work in the store. And I was like, what? He goes, because they can detect like you're inside the store. So I went out to the parking lot, I ordered the TV, and then it was right— then I left because it was going to be ready to be picked up in like an hour. So the same TV that in the store for $399, for an extra $100 came with an Xbox.

Wow. 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.

And people do that, they go to the store, like, I'll give you for example, I wanted to get some new shoes, right? So these Skechers, very comfortable for walking.

Yes.

Rocky a lot. So while I'm at the office, I take them out for a couple of laps around. It's a couple of miles. I need a comfortable shoe for that. So I was like, oh, let me go try it. So, you know, I went, I got a pair of Skechers. I was like, okay, this is my size now. I just order it online. It's really funny. So I didn't buy the— so last time I wanted to buy another pair recently. So I went on the website, I was like, I was thinking about it. Then something happened. I didn't buy the shoes right away. And then within a day or two, I got like a 15% coupon. Yeah, that's how they get you. They know when your cart—

your cart is expiring, take this 15% off.

Yeah, so I was like, oh, I'll save 15% now. Bought the other pair, another color of the same shoes.

Got your ass.

Sorry, right? I'm just saying, like, I became— I became like, I don't like going to the store anymore. But now, like, I want to buy some new clothes and stuff. And I saw like some shirts that I like and I'm like, you gotta find if they fit them, right? That's it.

I ordered a bunch of t-shirts before, like, I was losing weight. I'm still losing weight, blah blah blah. But so I bought a bunch of extra large t-shirts, right? And I ended up basically having to throw most of them all away or donate. I didn't throw them away, I just donated them because I didn't have the receipt. I didn't remember where, you know what I mean? And it's because they're all different shapes and sizes. Yeah, but it's all the same size, extra large, right?

Every company— like, like, I'll get a large, like, this is a large, fits really nice, right? And then I went and got another shirt somewhere and I got a medium. I was like, I'm a medium? No. And I— it did, it fit. No, I was like, it's crazy because it's cut, cut differently. But, you know, showrooming has been going on for years. And it's going to continue. People go in the store, they see an item, then they go home and they look up— they want to look up reviews. People, they should be smart at like the store and have like a QR code, no, read the reviews, you know, especially when you're buying.

When you read reviews, but I don't know, people want to read a review.

Yeah, they want to see like, especially anyway, $200, $300. But open banking is also going to get bigger because we're going to see more kiosks, right? Kiosks is insane. I was reading an article the other day— this is beyond kiosk— I read about some restaurant that's in Fort Lauderdale. I want to actually go there because I've never been served by a robot, but they have a robot waiter. What do you think about that? Who does a restaurant that— like, there's these robots. My friend went on a cruise ship and you order a pizza on your phone, and then the robot comes out. Oh yeah, no, no, but I'm on my phone ordering a pizza, right, sitting in the bar. Yeah. And then a robot comes and comes up to you, and they can track you by your phone. So if you left and you went out into the lobby, it would go find you to go bring it.

That's amazing. So I think it's going to get a lot more weirder in the next couple, right?

But I think we're going to see— like, I was just on the phone with some guys today, and they were talking about their kiosk. They're putting together a kiosk. And everybody's talking about kiosks for all kinds of self-service stuff, like putting a kiosk in a business so you can walk up and instead— and you want to buy the t-shirt, right? From, let's say you're in a bar or a restaurant and you want to buy a t-shirt. Instead of them having the t-shirts like all set up— like we went to eat at that restaurant and I wanted a coffee cup, right? It was a whole process to buy a coffee cup Remember, that was ridiculous, right? It was a whole process to get this coffee cup, right? And so then to make it easier, these places, they need to put it on the phone, buy the coffee cup, boom, and then the waiter can just come bring it to you. Like, stuff needs—

I don't know, but we were sitting out there for like 20 minutes for, for 2 coffee cups. I was getting— I was sweating, it was hot, just got finished eating. Yeah, why you want to stand outside? Like, I'm sitting here like, what is going on?

But I think like the open banking, the kiosks are going to help banks. This is one thing, like an opportunity when you talk about open banking and banking in general. And like we talked about the small banks and the community banks and like local banks, I think that they need to also take advantage of opportunities where, let's say you're— let's say I'm the Bank of Allen and I'm located in the city of wherever, Allen, Florida, right? And then Justin comes into the bank and he says, hey Allen, the bank guy, I need to get an ATM in my business. So instead of Justin just going to some random ATM company, the bank should work with Nationwide Payment Systems so we can get your customer the ATM. And then you could advertise on their ATM and put it on your thing, on your bank website Oh, go to Justin's Barbecue Barn, right? And the ATM is surcharge-free there, right? So Justin, because he's putting the money in the ATM, or the ATM company gets some money from the bank, right? Whatever, a dollar or something, right, for, for doing that. And banks don't think about establishing their footprint that way. You might not want to take deposit— you're not going to take deposits.

Things are just so old school to me.

But just to take money out, they don't think about the network of business businesses to have. So let's say you're a bank. I don't even think they care. They should care because they're losing business to these fintech banks. They need to take back their real estate, the real estate that they already have, you know what I'm saying?

I agree, man. I mean, there's, I, there's definitely a loss.

And kiosks, opportunities and kiosks also. Put kiosks out in the community. Like, okay, you're connect— you do the bank. Let's say I'm at the Bank of Allen, and then Oh, I do, I do the bank account for the city of Allen, right? So now I say to them, hey, we want to put a kiosk in your, in your lobby, and on the kiosk someone could possibly open a bank account, get a credit card, find out about a loan, things like that. You know, maybe you don't want an ATM there because they don't have ATM, but maybe you want to put a kiosk there.

Yeah, man.

Or these ATM with a sidecar next to it., right, that's your— essentially has like your banking services on it or something like that. I think people need to— banks, neobanks, whoever needs to look at that, needs to look at the real estate of that.

And, uh, and in your final— well, not final, you just— we could have kept going predictions all day long, but the continued, uh, growth in e-commerce payments, obviously. I mean, ever since 20— the COVID thing, you know, e-commerce went crazy.

So yeah, I mean, we're seeing e-commerce payments go crazy, marketplaces— we're talking about the Facebook Marketplace, other marketplaces, online retailers, uh, digital platforms. I mean, listen, everything is growing. The other day I see this thing, oh, get this software if you're a digital creator, and then people can— you can sell your stuff on there. You know, and everybody's like promoting these like, like little websites. Yeah, I can go sell their stuff on there. I never even heard of half of these platforms.

I wouldn't mess with it though.

No, no, but I'm just saying, like, and I don't know what— most of these people are selling like coaching classes and stuff like that. I don't know what they're selling, you know, whatever it is, or gadgets.

How to make $3,000 a month with ChatGPT, right?

Yeah, that's the latest one.

It's pretty crazy.

Like how to make money with using ChatGPT.

I was watching— side note about the ChatGPT thing— I was watching an interesting podcast about it. Well, the guy has his podcast, he was talking about it. And he was saying how that the tools that are already available for you to run it. So if you're out there and you're buying content from people, and you want to know if it's been written by, you know, an AI chatbot, there's websites for you to put— paste it into there.

Yeah, copy and paste it in.

They'll find— they'll tell you right away if it was written by AI.

And they'll give you an AI score.

Yeah. And then also, he was saying how the watermarks on there on the ChatGPT— GPT specifically is within, like, I don't know, the next couple days here, they're talking about updating the system so that there'll be a watermark on the digital watermark on all everything that you get from ChatGPT.

Wow, that'll be a big— that'd be major.

Yeah, I saw, because I mean, Google doesn't want this. Google, like, all like this, so like all the, you know, like the major search engines, they don't want you to use AI-generated content because it's not a human. You know, it doesn't have any mean experience or knowledge about the topic. So I get it as an SEO guy. I mean, I've been dealing with this for 10 years.

Yeah. But the other thing is, is that we saw like some, you know, I see all these TikTok videos, right? So there's one where somebody posted a website, Future something, I don't remember the name of it. And then it had like every AI, website on it. There was hundreds and hundreds of them. And then I read a story about it, and it said all of those websites basically took the intellectual property, openai.com, OpenAPI. Yeah, they took it, and then they wrote their own program on top of the ChatGPT. Yeah, that's why ChatGPT came out and said, oh, here, we just give it all away for free. Because they were getting— I think they got upset because it was a bunch of these like content companies who were saying, you know, come— they were getting money for it and they said no, here, poof, they just opened it up to everybody for free.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Anyway, I feel sorry for all the people that, uh, started those businesses. Yeah, sorry, you got a little money grab, good for you.

Yeah, but I think we're going to see the continued growth of e-commerce. And in fact, I was telling Justin We started talking to, you know, I, I've told Justin a while ago, I go, you know, you would see like, um, you know, a natural progression would be somebody has a— what normally I see, like, oh, you have a point of sale system with all your stuff in it, right, with all your products in it, like your point of sale, and then you want to take— and you have your pictures and all your items in there. And then there's been a few companies over the last couple years where you could get— take that whole database of your information from your point of sale, from your point of sale, and then send it over to a shopping cart program, right? And then put it in, and then, and then, then that—

it'll input that and create a website for you, basically.

Well, it creates the shopping portion of the website. Okay, right. And then you have to have a website with all—

attach it to—

to attach it to, and then whatever you link in the payments and all that.. So we had a few people do that over the years, you know, not that many, a few. And I said to Justin, I says, it would be really interesting if you saw somebody take WordPress and then reverse engineer it into a point of sale. And then I started, I kept researching for a while, like, oh, are there companies doing that or not? And then finally, boom, I see one company did it.

Well, WooCommerce did it, right?

WooCommerce did it.

You remember when you sent it to me? I was like, I've never even seen this.

And then, well, they had it, but it wasn't doing EMV payments.

So then I'm like, how? I'm, I've been building websites for a decade. I'm like, yo, how come I've never heard of this? And I did. I remember, I remembered after reading all the reviews. Yeah, I remember helping a customer set that up. Yeah. And it was just terrible. It didn't work. It was very slow. They would constantly timeout. Just, just anyway. Yeah, no, I mean, but that makes—

I would—

there should be a system like that in place for sure.

Right. So now I saw that there's a whole bunch of companies trying to do it now. Because finally, WooCommerce, whatever, they let the—

they've let their guards down.

No, no, they opened the— they let people develop on it. Because they only linked up Stripe to it. Right? So, right, not everybody's going to go to run to Stripe and run to Stripe. But the other thing is, is, you know, these other developers that I see that are working on it, they're in other countries. But I have an appointment with one coming up, and what they're doing is, is a little bit different than the way they did it. So they're— they making like— okay, we don't want to say what they're doing, but they're making it we're talking to them about integrating the payment system that we run onto that so that we could go out and sell that to people. That's what we want to do. Because I think that it's— that's a more— I think that's very efficient. Because let's say—

because just imagine all the, all the brick-and-mortar clothing spots that are open that don't have websites, right? Because they can't operate them. They don't know how to even— where to start, how to get it going, who should call. Ghostbusters, whatever. But yes, I mean, this, that will be a great tool for small businesses if they can upload their merch inventory straight to some sort of shopping carts, you know, content management system, right?

It is content management.

And then, you know, click, yeah, go live.

Boom, you got a website. Boom, you got Point of Sale. But just think about, let's say you're let's say you have a website and then you want to also sell face-to-face. Now you could take that, put it on a tablet, boom, you got a payment system. You got a full-blown payment system to take payments and keep track of all your inventory.

Yeah, that—

I—

when we were talking about the other day, I was trying to like figure out why this isn't bigger than it is, and I have— I can't answer it. It should—

I just don't think it's been a— I don't think it's been available.

And I don't think people have like really set— think that it would be something that people would utilize. I, I don't know, because it's there. It is there. We did, you know what I mean, right?

It's there, but it just doesn't work, right? Well, that's why we got to see if it works and test it out. But I'm just saying, it's, it's interesting because I think it's, it, it's like a natural progression to happen. But I think we're going to definitely see all types of— any business today, you got to get your products online. You need to spend money and get a website. Let me tell you, 3 things growing with e-commerce: in-store pickup, curbside pickup, and ship the stuff out, or even local delivery in some cases.

I like the local delivery thing a lot, right?

Like local delivery, like I saw a thing now where you can call Uber and they'll go deliver something. Yeah, um, Postmates will deliver stuff for for you. So people need to figure this stuff out because people are just going to go to bigger businesses to go buy their stuff unless you're going to do it. And if you're not going to do it, over time you're going to lose money because as the demographic of your customer gets younger— yep, you're going to lose, you're going to lose business. I mean, you know, granted, my mom's 87, she loves to get in her car and drive over to Costco. Nice. I like to go to Costco because I like to pick out my food, right? But almost everything else that I buy, I buy online because I just don't like going to the store anymore. But you buy groceries from online? Um, well, during the pandemic I bought groceries online because I went to— I never forget this— I got in the car, I drove over to Costco like 20 minutes before they opened. There was literally like 300— there was a line. Then I went to Publix and there was a line. I was like, I don't know if I can wait in this. I don't have the patience, like, wait in this line. So I'm like, okay, I'll go back later. I went back to Publix later, the line wasn't so long. I waited about 30 minutes to get in there, got in there, got what I needed, got the heck out of there. And then I said, I gotta figure out how to get groceries. So I figured out a trick. Doesn't matter, I can tell it now. So I used to order, I used to go into the Instacart, put it at night, put together my food order, you know, everything. Then about 7 in the morning, I placed the order at like 7 o'clock in the morning.

Smart, right?

So now what happens is, this is how, this is how I figured it out, because that what happened was is Then the guys— let's say Justin is an Instacart guy, right? And he's gonna do— he look, he sees on Instacart, hey, Allen just did an order. Poof, he claims my order, claims another order, claims another. Now he's got 3, 4 people. He's got a Costco— super smart— Costco for— and the Costco was letting the Instacart people early to go do the shopping. So then they shout out to your people figuring that out, and they dropped it off. Then I told a few of my friends, I I don't want the secret to get out because I don't want everybody stealing my, stealing my dealio. But that's how I survived, because I was like, I'm not waiting an hour in the thing. And they were only letting a few people in Publix at a time. But e-commerce, people need to figure out this e-commerce. I always tell, you know, a story from when I was a chef and I worked in the hotel business, and my— and we had this advertising company come in, and the advertising company, and he told me this story. I'll never forget it. He told me, he goes, people hear something 8 times. After the 8th time, whatever story you're telling them, that becomes the truth. Whatever you're advertising to them, that starts to get— no, it starts to get ingrained. Yeah, right. Grained in them. Oh, the Melrose Hotel is the best Sunday brunch. Well, if you keep advertising that that's the best Sunday brunch, people start to go, hey, that place has the best Sunday brunch, because every time they see the ad, it says, right, best Sunday brunch, right? And they see this picture of all this amazing food, right?

Indeed.

So the same thing, the, the same thing goes for everything else. The, the— and then also people develop a pattern, right, of going to a certain place. I'm sure there's certain restaurants you like to go to, certain thing, places you like to go, and that becomes a pattern. Now we've been set in this pattern for the last 2, 3 years. Shop at home, get the stuff delivered, boom boom boom boom boom. I don't— you know, I know people that will only go out to eat and sit outside. They will not sit inside.

Yeah, I don't go out.

No, no, I'm just saying some people don't— won't go out to eat at all anymore. You know, some people are on a, on a food plan or special, uh, whatever I don't like to use the word diet because it's not diet, right?

Like, it's my choice of food.

It's a food plan. Food plan. Yeah, yeah, you're on a food plan or your health plan, whatever you want to call it. It's your food plan. That's what I call it, food plan. So you're on your food plan and that's it. But some people don't want to eat inside anymore. Restaurants have to figure out how to accommodate that. And I see successful restaurants, the place has outside seating The inside maybe is not so crowded. They don't put every— all the tables on top of each other like they used to be.

Not anymore.

People don't like that. And if it is like that, people don't go to those places. I notice it all the time. Like, I'll see a restaurant with crowded seating and people, no, no, they want to— where people— everybody's sitting outside, right? And then the other thing is the same thing. They have effective, uh, pickup. You know, oh, they encourage you to come pick up, they give you a discount to come pick up your food, right? Domino's is giving people $3 back to come pick up your pizzas. If you buy 2 pizzas, we'll give you $3. How they can afford to do that, I have no idea, but I guess the money that they were spending on the drivers and the gas and all that, that they're— it's— they're probably ahead of the game.

Well, hopefully they didn't cut out the the quality of their ingredients because it's already pretty crappy.

Well, no, I'm just saying, like, businesses— I mean, let me tell you, I go to restaurant, I went to out to eat because I had company in town. Let me tell you, like, I, I was happy.

Where'd you guys go?

I went— I don't want to say where I went because I went to a very popular place. It wasn't as busy as it normally has been. The food was good, but the menu prices were through the roof.

Oh, that's awesome.

And that's, you know, that's, you know, that's just the nature of the economy right now. But, but so businesses in general just need to improve curbside pickup, in-store pickup, ship stuff to people, figure out— like, I was talking to this lady that owns a restaurant, and they were telling me, they says, oh, during the pandemic, her daughter came into the business, who's younger, and they started marketing all stuff. Like, they make their— that mustard, they went to a company, they started selling all their mustard and their cookies and the this and the that that the restaurant is famous for in New York.

Yeah.

And they start selling it all online, and they developed the whole online business. Smart. Yeah. And I think businesses need to seriously think about how to do that.

I mean, people need to listen to their— to the youth for sure.

No, no, but I'm saying, like, let's say you have a restaurant and everybody comes because they love amazing salad dressing. You need to figure out how to sell that. People come, oh, they love the tomato sauce. Sell your tomato sauce. Like, I think people need to level up what they're doing on e-commerce with their, you know, like, if your restaurant is famous for whatever, hummus, sell tubs of hummus, right? And I don't see that many restaurants doing that.

My brother back home is Funky Fresh Spring Rolls. Started off in his, in his house Yeah, uh, got a food truck— I mean, not a food truck, just a stand that he was out at all the places. Uh, then he contacted one of the local grocery stores, they said yes, so now he's inside of the grocery stores. And then he just recently opened up his, uh, like a stand, like inside of a food court type situation.

Nice.

Yeah, shout out to Truman, man.

No, but let's say he's got a sauce that he does though.

Like, he's— all that stuff, what I'm saying is like, it's all coming like slowly getting into the stores. I think it's important. He just went real quick, he just went to his first time where they went to a facility to mass produce all the stuff. So he overseeing everything.

Yeah, you have to go to a cold packer, they call it. Yeah, yeah, cold pack. Yeah. So I think that restaurants need to look at that and go, hey, where can we create extra income for our restaurant by selling this stuff. Maybe it's t-shirts, maybe it's a hat, maybe it's your special sauce, a dressing, this, whatever it is.

I mean, if, if the, the guy who started the hot dog— what is this, the Sabra cart? Yeah, he's got the, the onions in a jar at Publix. Oh yeah, I mean, if that guy's doing it, that's just—

that's a long time already.

I know, but I'm saying like, that's an example.

Yeah, that's an example, but it doesn't have to be public. It could just be on your website.

It's even better if it's more accessible on a website, right?

It could just be stuff you're making in the restaurant, you're just packaging it up, and people are coming to pick it up. Create that demand, then go up to the next level, you know?

Yeah, I mean, just like how you were saying, like the one guy who owns the salon, he, he was selling some products.

Yeah, they weren't selling any products because they didn't take credit cards.

Oh, right.

So all the stuff had dust on the shelf, right? Then they put it in credit card processing. Now the guy— now that he's selling it on his website, now he's selling it on his website. People will come, come in and just come pick it up. Oh, I need a brush, I need hairspray, I need this. Because the guy's, you know, brought in some unique brands of items to sell people, you know.

Well, that's the pod.

Um, payment predictions.

Your, your, your top 6 payment predictions of 2023 were increased adoption of real-time payments. Yeah, the growth of mobile payments, expansion of contactless payments, the reemergence of digital currencies, adoption of open banking, and the continuance—

the continuance—

the continuing growth of e-commerce.

Yeah, e-commerce, I think, is still wide open. There's a lot of— a lot of people can do.

I mean, there's still so many businesses that don't have websites.

Yeah, so many businesses.

I mean, what we were looking online, there was— there's only 62% or something like that of small businesses have websites. Yeah, so there's still 38% of you running around.

There's even people that don't even have a Google My Business page.

Yeah, that's fine.

You guys got to get with the program on that.

Yeah.

So, but in conclusion, in conclusion, the payments business is strong, it's growing, and people are gonna— and I think people gotta— I always said technology is the great equalizer, and I think this is— this year I think we're going to see some game-changing technology come to the forefront in a lot of different businesses. And, you know, keep your eyes out on— keep your eyes and ears peeled on Nationwide Payment Systems, uh, on our website to see these new things coming out. We're working with a bunch of fintech companies to incorporate fintech onto our site for all sorts of new products and services that merchants are going to be able to get from our company and use at your business to help you increase your business and help you grow your business and make more sales.

Nice.

Peace out. Carpe diem. Peace.

Peace.