The Payment Technology Rundown August 2022 | Monthly Financial Technology Wrap Up | FinTech | B2B Vault: The Payment Technology Podcast Episode 106

Hey, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the payment technology podcast with your host Allen Kopelman, and we'll be providing you educational information about business payments, fintech, Decentralized Finance and the Technology Businesses Use in Today's World. And in today's podcast, we're going to do, uh, the monthly wrap-up where we talk about everything that we talked about. Uh, you know, it might be a little redundant for those that have caught all the podcasts, but those— for those people who haven't, you know, here's a little, uh, could be your first time, could be your first time. So, you know, check it out, and, uh, hopefully we cover some good stuff. So what's up first?

Um, let's talk— well, you know, we talked— looks like, you know, FinTech Friday's been really popular, so I'd like to say thank you to everybody. That's our live thing that we do on Fridays, and we try to do it around 3:00, 3:30.

Yep.

And, you know, we've had some people come on live and ask some questions, so that's been kind of cool. You know, um, things that we've been talking about this month, um, what we talked a lot about, crypto. Crypto is just crazy in the news. Most of it has got to do with a lot of government regulation, and today they dropped a big bomb on all the crypto companies demanding that they produce all their records since like 2009, something crazy like that. And they went to Coinbase, Binance, FX.

You mean records?

They want records of all their transactions. They want to see like all the— I don't know how, what are they going to do with it, but they're like want to see like their records.

How are they going to have over— that's 13 years. That's the same.

I don't know, 13 years. Maybe they can go back 7, maybe. I think that's the legal thing, like when you have a business, you're only supposed to keep your records for 7 years.

I was just on the phone with the IRS and she said we can go back 10.

10? Okay, 10 years. That's crazy. But I'm just saying, so maybe 10 years they can go back. So 2022, 2011, they can go back to— I mean, it's a little nuts, but I don't know what's going on with that. And there was a very negative— whoever Powell was, I think he's with the Federal Reserve. Janet Yellen made some announcement today and sent crypto into a little spiral. I mean, I just saw a few posts about it, so yeah, yeah. Then I was talking to somebody about cryptocurrency this morning and they were talking about a bunch of, um, enhancements that these companies have done recently and it's causing a problem with their, uh, the processing like the transactional processing that they do. So for that particular company, for everybody, because these companies are putting in like their own payment rails.

And then, well, you know, Ethereum just upgraded to their like 2.0, right?

Right. But I'm saying like the wallet company, like Coinbase, you could do a Coinbase to Coinbase transaction. Like you have Coinbase and I have Coinbase, or where I have FTX and you have it, we can send money back and forth really easily. But now they're making— they change the procedure of how, like, if you're using a third-party service like some of the ones we work with, how to send the money out of your wallet. They change the procedure. So that's just— that affects— in that sense, it affects everybody who's doing that. Really? Yeah, it's making it— it's making it a little— it's not making it harder, it's just change the transaction flow. So now that needs to just be communicated to the customers so they understand. So we're getting something typed up so we can send out to the client so they understand how— what's the— what the procedure is, because the old procedure is not— is not working. Well, if you want to be wallet agnostic, the payment is it's going to work a little bit different than it was before. Got it. That's all, you know. So, you know, because you don't want to force people to move their coin from one wallet to another, you know. All right, other stuff we talked about. So we covered like high risk this month. I'm going all over the list, so I'll just cross off stuff as we talk about it instead of going straight down. Okay, we'll go straight down the list. So we talked about the Digital Commerce event that I attended.

That was good. We talked—

yeah, we talked about what, like, one of the struggles. I was meeting with somebody earlier from a community bank, so, you know, I was telling them, you know, I was at this conference, spoke to some community banks, what struggles they were telling me about, with especially in regards to them being able to sign up merchant accounts. And then they said they're having the same exact thing. They work with a traditional credit card processor, and customers don't seem to like that, and the majority of their customers are going to PayPal, Stripe, Square, etc. And so I showed them the dashboard for the new product that we're getting ready for the rollout, and they really liked it. They like the sign-up procedure of it and all that. Now they gotta check to see how we can work out a deal. So, you know, the— we learned a lot. I learned a lot about that in that conference. It was a lot of— like we talked about on here, you know, the wallets that people are using, different wallet products coming out, um, all different ways how to pay, what's going on with fraud. I don't think there's a real answer for fraud.

You're talking about at the NPC Digital Commerce?

Yeah, at that commerce event. I spoke at the event. On a panel about point of sale and how now we're making it affordable anyway for merchants to deliver— for the SMB market to deliver an omnichannel experience, right? So we're, we're coming out with it. It's already out, like, but you know, you got to kind of call us to find out about it, but soon it'll be up on the website and fully operational. Um, we talked about There we talked about it in one of the podcasts, which was hard to come up with a title for, but what businesses get special interchange fees. And, you know, merchants really need to understand that, you know, having the correct SIC code for their business can really save them money. So, you know, insurance— we talked about different ones. You know, even restaurants have special interchange fees. You don't want to be set up under the wrong interchange category because you're set up under the right one, you know, savings can be 20, 40, 50 basis points. And the same thing, let's say you're doing B2B transactions, the, you know, on B2B, you know, being— have, have the ability to be using software that's Level 2, Level 3 software, right? So if you're doing Level 2 and Level 3 software, you can have savings of 30 to 60, 70 basis points per transaction, which is a ton of money. Yeah. So understanding how the system works and how— I don't call it manipulation, but it's just like you call the CPA and they help you to get your tax rate down.

Okay.

Like Justin had a question about taxes, we called my brother, right? We found out that had to do it a certain way and then there was no taxes. So the same thing, if you're doing things the right way with credit card processing, you can save on fees. It's important, you know, for businesses. And then, uh, another subject we talked about was, is software the new credit card processor? So I believe the answer to that is yes, and it's going to continue to grow. What do you think, Justin? Uh, I agree.

Since working here, um, the amount of, you know, different types of software that's coming out for, to, for you to, to, to get paid. Um, it's like, why would you just limit yourself to PayPal, right? It's like, there's just a lot of options out there that people can use for, for different types of businesses.

Right. Yes. And the software, you know, software as a service is a really growing business. It's going to continue to grow, and payments are going to be integrated into that. And we can help people integrate payments into their software product. Yep. And then they can get it, be part of our new boarding process too, and eliminate all the negotiation and paperwork and all the going back and forth and calling on the phone, the things that people don't want to do anymore, right? Everybody wants to have this— we were calling— what did we call— what did we— what did I call that? Seamless? Not seamless. We were saying it's the— I don't know, whatever. See, everybody wants to have like a seamless process so that they can sign up and, and, and be— make it easy, you know, right? Easy, easier ways to do business. Like, you don't have to go to the— Justin bought a car, right? Frictionless. Justin went and bought a— he needed a car, so he bought a car from Carvana. I mean, to me that sounds crazy, but just saying, like, the experience— he didn't have to go to the car dealership, you have to go deal with the person, I didn't do anything, right? And then everything— put a down payment down, the finance, the financing, everything was done online, back and forth with some emails, right? Documents, and that was it.

There was no email involved.

Oh, no email, just online.

You create your account, they ask you for your documents, you upload them, you get approved. It literally took me 2 minutes to get approved.

Yeah, it's crazy. Like, why do you want to go to the car dealership?

The delivery process was a little sketch, and I didn't— I wasn't really feeling that part, you know. Like, they told me my car is going to be here on Friday. It took a almost 10 days before I got it. Um, that was the wackest part of it.

I wonder if it came from another state.

No, well, the car was originally from Arkansas, but it was down here.

Oh, okay.

So they delivered it from right up— there's their Carvana, it's right up the street from here.

Oh, okay. Unusual. So they got it. They gotta get a little better on that.

But I mean, it's probably not my circumstance, you know, it's not the same for everyone, right? Like, I'm sure, you know, other people were told that their car was going to be there on Friday, they probably got it, you know. It was just a certain whatever, you know. It's not like I'm— but overall, I'm not dissing the whole Carvana process. I'm just saying the delivery process was a pain in the neck because I didn't get my car when they told me I was gonna get it. So other than that I would highly, uh, suggest if you're in the market for a new car and you don't feel like dealing with the dealerships and you're willing to pay a little bit more of a premium because of that option, then Carvana will probably be very good for you because I found my car really quickly and I'm, you know, I'm happy with it.

You think it was like a little extra?

I think that there's like the price of the car. Yeah, is more than it would typically be at like a regular dealership.

Okay.

Because of the, the, this, you know, you're basically— it's like an e-com shop, like you're going shopping for a car online. So I mean, I don't know exactly. I mean, I guess I could do the, you know, a little—

I think maybe a few hundred dollars. I'm sure the car would look like it was in good shape.

It's really nice. It's really nice. Shape.

It was clean.

It's clean.

Yeah. So I mean, if you rated the buying experience, what would you give the buying?

I will—

yeah, 1 to 10.

I had to get an oil change right away. I didn't like that.

Okay, but I'm just—

well, we're not talking about that, but just the buying process, I'll give it an 8.

Okay, that's pretty good. I was talking to somebody today that they actually signed up a donut shop for for our new service. And the guy told me, he goes, he goes, the sign-up process was amazing.

Really?

Because he goes, yeah, he goes, it was so easy to complete. I got the machine, I got it set up, boom boom boom. And it was, you know, and they're very happy with it. Oh cool.

Did you have him give us a review?

We're gonna— he said he's gonna— I'm gonna send him the link to the review. He said he would leave us a review.

Really?

He enjoyed the— he enjoyed the, uh, the whole process of getting it set up, you know. And then there was a little few kinks when he got the machine, always getting it set up. Yeah, but now we know how to do that, and we're going to make some videos so that we don't run into those problems.

Real quick, before you keep going, shout out to all the listeners, followers, the likers and lovers. We love you guys. Shout out to you guys for, uh, listening and tuning in weekly, biweekly, annually, whatever it is that you do. You're always appreciated. The love is never lost. Shout out to my mama. Hi, Mom.

I'll say hi to my mom. She watches sometimes.

Don't forget moms. Hi, Samantha's mom and dad. If they watch— they're not watching down in Columbia. No, no. So oh well.

Anyway, I'll say hi to Samantha's sister. Maybe she's watching in Orlando.

Yeah, maybe. But yeah, man. So shout out to all the followers. Make sure you check us out on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn @B2BVault. Join the community on Facebook, the B2B Vault community. Got some stuff coming in the works for that. Please head over to YouTube and subscribe to the B2B Vault channel. We need to get them subscribers up so we could get some moolah, baby. Anything else? Oh yeah, B2BVault.info. If you want to check on any past episodes, you can get your listening ears going on there. There's also a couple of forms for you to fill out if you're interested or wanting to, you know, you want to curse us out, you want to get any questions for us, you know what I mean? There's a form on there for you to fill out to get in touch with either Allen or myself. And also a nice, beautiful form for you to fill out if you're interested in sponsoring the podcast and meeting our sponsors. Shout out to them: Nationwide Payment Systems, MPS Printer.

Thank you.

Um, yeah, that's all I got.

That's all you got. And also you can text the word BOOK to 954-827-9818 and get an appointment, find out more information. If you need to get a merchant account, you want to find out about hooking up your software, special interchange rates, whatever you want to talk about, we're here to talk about that.

Argue about the latest payment processing trends. Let's go.

Okay, then we talked, we did another episode about automating your invoice for businesses.

That one was fun.

Hey, listen, somebody actually listened to that and contacted me and they said, hey, how do I do that for my QuickBooks?

I'm excited about it, right? Because I want other people who are in the digital marketing, web design, right?

We signed up a couple of digital creators, period. We signed up a couple of digital marketers for the invoicing.

Specifically.

When? Recently. Oh really? Yeah, we signed up. And, um, no, but, uh, another— a guy called me and he's like, oh, he goes, because I need the better thing for invoicing, links up to my QuickBooks. I showed him our new, new software. He's like, wow, that's amazing. Started using it, he synced it to his QuickBooks, he loves it.

Good.

You know, it's always— it's It's always good to hear that. The other thing we had this recently, this month, was the B2B Vault, our 100th episode.

Oh wow, that was this month, wasn't it?

Yeah, it was at the beginning of the month, right? And we gave away the Mega Quest—

Meta Quest—

uh, the Mega Quest and that Meta Quest. And actually, the woman who won wrote us a nice note on B2B Vault.

Oh, she did?

Yeah, I didn't even— I didn't notice. Yeah, she made a comment. Thanks for the Medical.

Oh, I did see that. Didn't I say I just— the thumbs up or something?

Murder a note back. So that was pretty cool that we enjoyed.

Never heard from the other two winners, so we're recycling your prizes.

Yeah, we'll have to have another. Thank you. We're gonna come up with another giveaway for the audience. And we talked about chargebacks and what a headache.

I mean, come on, who didn't want a $100 gas card?

I know, what the— yeah, crazy.

I was tripping.

$100 gas card and a $50 Amazon.

It's not like you had to spend $100, right? We just gonna give a—

right, giving it away.

It's not like you had good stuff too.

We threw in a cup and a t-shirt, a bunch of other stuff. Yeah, stickers. Yeah, you can get a bunch of stuff from us, but we'll have— go back to the drawing board for another contest. Yeah, we talked about chargebacks and what a headache chargebacks are that, that businesses go through with chargebacks, whether they're online or in a face-to-face environment. Where people are just— don't feel like paying their bill, and then they just want to make the business.

There's something that I, I was going to ask you about, like, what is something a merchant can do? Say they're an e-commerce store, right? What is something that they could do to prevent chargebacks?

Well, a few things that you can do as your business best practices— let me have a phone number on your website. That's number one. Make sure it's answered 24 hours a day, even if you have to go to like an answering service. We used to use an answering service that answered phones for doctor's office because it's really cheap because they're not going to get a ton of phone calls, right? And that can save you because people will call up. Like, I recently had to do a chargeback. Ordered something, it never showed up. I called the people, they didn't answer their phone. I emailed them, they didn't answer. I called them back, they didn't answer. Sent an email, no answer. So I did a chargeback. I didn't get the stuff, right? So, so what—

you guys prevent that?

All right, the phone is one. In your checkout process, make sure it's clear how long is it going to take to get the product, right? Um, I— so, all right.

After that, so I've covered all my bases, I dotted all my i's and crossed all my t's, right?

Right. No, I'm getting towards stuff.

What is the like, right? I'm like, that's the basic stuff. Like, what's the other thing?

Yeah. So, so, so the other thing, other things you can do is, is you can have, you could use 3D Secure on your website. So what that does is it basically you install like a little code on the checkout page. The customer doesn't see it. They don't even know it's there. What that code does is it— as when the person hits enter to send the credit card information, it captures the credit card information. It sends a message, their little code, with it across the network, okay, with the credit card transaction together, right? And then what it does is when, when it's authorized— so what happens in a credit card transaction on a website, it goes out through the gateway and then it goes and pings your bank. So when it pings your bank, there's this extra 3D Secure code in there and it says— let's say it's Justin— say, hey, is that Justin's credit card and is that a registered device for Justin? And then if the bank says yes, that transaction gets a little token next to it. Let's say Justin decides do a chargeback, the bank has to eat it. They give them your money— you give you your money back. Me as the merchant, I don't even know anything happened, never even find out about it.

So is there anything that, like, beyond that, like, say I'm shipping, can merchants take pictures of their sales, like, at the post office? Or I'm just curious.

You could maybe hook something up in your website, might be a little more sophisticated. Where people could— so when it gets shipped, people get the tracking number, or you have a place on your website where they can log in, right, and see this.

Basically what I'm at— what I'm basically— what I'm getting at is like, the chargebacks are inevitable. Like, you are going to get a chargeback.

No, no, but I'm saying the more things you do, you put in place that, you know, like things like you sent them the tracking number, right, right. So they actually got it. It's not a mystery. You know how many times I've ordered stuff, never received the tracking number? I don't know if it's on the way. Oh yeah, I go to their website and you're like, there's nothing on there. You call them on the phone, they don't answer.

Waiting on something.

I mean, I had something that I ordered once, it's really funny, from Walmart, and I didn't realize that Walmart actually runs like an Amazon style. Yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah, I thought I was buying it from Walmart.

No.

So I bought something and he never—

you could buy Rolex from Walmart now.

No, no, it never showed up. Right? I called the phone number, they were like, no help. So I did a chargeback. So I charged it back, and that literally— you're gonna laugh when I tell you this— about 8 months later, you got just the package showed up in the mail. I was like, 8 months later? That's crazy. I didn't pay for it, so I didn't care. I didn't even want it anymore, but it was ridiculous. No, but you got to put— I get phone calls every day for merchants. Oh, how can I stop chargebacks. There's no way you can stop charging. You can't have somebody sign a piece of paper that says, I will not do a chargeback. That doesn't hold up because you have an agreement as the merchant. The cardholder has an agreement with their bank. Their cardholder agreement allows them to dispute transactions, right? So you can't stop chargebacks. What you can do is put policies in place to prevent— so you can win. So, you know, in your store, physical store, Call the customer service, say, I want in the bottom of my ticket to say all sales final. Okay, guess what? If it says all sales final, somebody does a chargeback, you send it in, you're gonna win pretty much. But you have to address everything the person complains about. And believe me, I've seen some of these letters. I read some on that, on that episode. They're really funny.

I mean, persons like the one guy said he didn't get the drink that he ordered, right? That, that, that blew my mind.

Like, bro, well, not only that, he said he was in— one guy said he was expecting a delivery 2 days later at a— from a bar. What's the bar gonna deliver you 2 days later?

I don't know, a happy ending, I guess.

I don't know. No, I'm just saying, like, we wrote back and we said, this is a bar, you walk in.

I mean, Literally, we obviously lost that charge.

Yeah, but we had another guy do a chargeback recently that was ridiculous. Okay, the guy went into a nightclub, a regular nightclub, and you know how they have like the private couch, the couch, like a VIP? Yeah, VIP. So the guys wrote in the chargeback, he didn't get the VIP area that he was expecting. So I had to write a whole letter of explanation that said, oh, when somebody comes in and they want a VIP area, the hostess or the manager takes them around the club and shows them what's available where nobody's sitting, right? And then that's what you can get. If you want to wait because some guy's sitting where you want to sit, then you got to wait till they leave, right? Because most people, it's like an hour or 2 hours or 3 hours there.

I mean, who's sitting there and waiting for the VIP table?

No, no, whatever. There was open ones.

I'll tell you something, that a very important person isn't waiting for 3 hours to sit in the VIP, I tell you that.

Right, but I'm just saying, so you— so they have like 10, 15 VIPs, right? So the guy picked one and he went, but he wasn't—

he didn't like it.

He didn't like it.

So we didn't feel very important.

So we wrote it. We had to explain how it works, how the guy was gonna end it up. I'm like, are you serious? Like, we have to explain that? Everybody knows how it works. Either that or you go take out like 10 grand, pop it in the manager's hand to go, I want to sit right there, and then they'll go over and hand the guy sitting there right now probably like 3 grand.

Hey, you want to move move over there, right?

You can go—

just paid for your VIP experience, right?

I'm just saying, like, that it didn't— you know, chargebacks are crazy. Like, I talked to another guy too today that's from a car dealership, and they said, oh, they have people trying to do a chargeback. I'm like, what, are you kidding me? Person put a down payment on a car, like, $3,000, then they're writing in, I didn't get the car. Of course they got the car.

You got—

they have all the paperwork showing the guy got the car. 3 days. The guy doesn't want to pay his bill. So, you know, sometimes people will do that because he asked me, why would somebody do that? And I said, well, they could prolong, you know, they could extend out maybe a month or two from paying that bill because it's in dispute.

But you still don't have that money.

Who doesn't have it? The person who— no, the business owner got the money ripped out of their account. And then this guy doesn't have to pay his bill, but they're going to win the chargeback because it's a car. It says all sales are final. It's just crazy, you know. And then we talk about like— then we did a whole episode on high risk, why you're high risk, not high risk. You know, sometimes high risk just means you're in a niche kind of business or an emerging type of market.

I learned a lot in that episode, you know.

So this week I got a lot of high-risk phone calls. So one of them was a guy selling erotic books that you could download. Or you could download the audio file, like listen to, you know, the book on your phone, I guess, you know, like romantic novels. Well, they were a little bit above erotic. So there was some—

I don't have any experience in erotic novels.

Okay. So the—

I mean, unless it's like a graphic novel.

So he said, there was no pictures, it was just written. So the guy says to me, you know, I'm guessing like Fifty Shades of Grey, maybe a little bit, you know, more graphic.

That's fine.

So I said to him, I said, we probably can get you a merchant account. However, there's some word— wording on the website that needed to be toned down because, you know, the card brands have rules against certain things. Like age, things related to age, or forcing, or violence, or any of that. It's like, you gotta get rid of whatever.

Oh yeah, some S&M going on.

Yeah, so I said, you gotta like tone that down. And then, yeah, tone it down a notch, right? And then we can get you approved for your account. Now let's see, and then another one where this got a really cool product. I don't want to let the cat out of the bag. But it was related to— you paid a one-time fee and then they basically show you how to do something with your credit. It was pretty cool. And then another one was— I'm working on is one where somebody's doing something to collect the political campaigns, collect money, help political campaigns collect the fundraiser. Yeah, like a GoFundMe thing for political campaigns. I don't really— I got to find out more about how it works. We're gonna have to get like proof of that the people are signed up and some other stuff. But high risk, I always find it very interesting. Yeah. And then I talked to another person with a CBD. Yeah. And I went to their site. I don't know who's processing their cards, so we won't mention the name of the company, but You know, you have to have a— the COA, the certificate of analysis for each product, and they have to be less than 12 months old. So I told them, like, you got to fix all that before I can help you because you're missing tests on like half your products. And then the other ones that I looked at were all out of date.

So they're still getting— they're still processing without—

yeah, like now, like, we just had a client, we got there to get— they get— they got warned they're going to get shut off at the end of next month if they don't update. All their COAs are going to expire, so they have to update them all. And the banks that send them a compliance notice, like, hey, we went to your site, these are going to all— you know, all your stuff's going to expire, so you need to post news.

So what happens if— so if they don't— if the stuff expires, they just like— can you just remove that from their website?

They could remove the item. Right, they'd have to take the item down. But most of the time they tested everything in a batch, you know, they tested all their stuff, right, every single product. So now every product is going to be out of compliance next month, at the end of next month. So they have a month to get that straightened out and get new tests. So you got it on it, buddy. So the banks are really cracking down on compliance. And then another thing we talked about was we talked about cannabis and what's going on with cannabis and the cashless ATM machines and how recently two networks got shut down that I heard about.

I just talked about that.

Yes. Yeah, we just talked about it yesterday and how now that some of the cannabis associations kind of feel that, that they're telling their members not to have those machines in their store and to go get an ATM machine, a regular ATM served by a third party.

So that—

because they feel like these whatever alternative payment methods that some people are using, some of them are P2P payment methods, but they're using them in a business setting, right? And they feel like if they could get that maybe under control, or less people using it, or maybe nobody uses this stuff, right, that they have a better chance of getting the Safe Banking Act passed.

Really?

Yeah, and get cannabis so they could take credit card processing. But we'll see how that goes. It's a, it's a, it's not something— I don't know, from—

I guess when I think it doesn't make sense, like this regulations, it— yeah, but think about it, it's not new though. We were regulating cannabis and hemp a very long time ago. Yeah, but I mean our presidents grew hemp. They were forced. They were— they had to. There was like a thing that you said, if you had farmland, you had to grow cannabis, right?

No, but the thing is, no, I don't understand why it's so— like, also, we have this deficit, right? Yeah, we could be collecting a boatload of taxes on all this stuff already, man. Like, nobody's paying taxes.

So on top of the—

only the states are collecting it.

We could be— we could— there's a whole industry that could that literally saved the United States of America.

Well, yeah, it could definitely write the— it could definitely write the ship.

And like hemp, between hemp, you know, production, like creating— you can create cars, uh, clothes, paper.

Yeah, more stuff could be made from hemp. That's one of the things, like the concrete. The USDA said when they released, like, to make hemp legal They thought 80% of hemp would be used for commercial purposes, like what you're talking about, and 20% for CBD. And it actually went the other way. 80% is being used to make CBD, 20% for— need to have more and grow more industrial hemp.

That's, that's my point. I mean, yeah, I don't know, dude. It's just the, the powers that be obviously have something against Canada, and I can't figure it out because there's a—

somebody showed me a website recently recently. I have to go look it up again, what it, what it was. I heard him talking about it, but it's a website that showed you where you could follow members of Congress and what stocks they're buying. Yeah, in the stock market. And I was like, wow. And I was happy to be out walking.

And then we had a whole conversation about that too. Politicians shouldn't be able to buy stuff.

I don't know, but they talk about what are they buying, and then you go see how it's related to their district. Right? And then there's a number of congresspeople who are investors in a bunch of cannabis companies. So why are they investing in cannabis companies if it's illegal? Why is a congressperson investing in it?

I don't know, but I've seen— I don't know, I'm just random conspiracy theorist stuff.

No, that's just—

no, real quick, I'm just saying yesterday I was gone and jumped down the rabbit hole a little bit of information. And there is a bunker on the top of a mountain. I can't remember the mountain. It's in the United States, right? In the United States, the US government just got— they just hired a contractor for $500 million to build it. No, to improve it.

To improve it.

Last year.

Yeah.

There was, uh, $350 million for improvements.

And in this video, it's just saying like, that's $850 million, it's almost a billion.

Yeah, they've almost put it— there's— it's in the article saying like they've almost put— they put over a billion dollars in. Yeah, in refurbishing this bunker.

Yeah, who's it for?

So that in case of a nuclear fallout, yeah, the United States government can continue to do its thing.

Yes, I suppose.

Only 20 miles from DC.

Okay. I know that there's other stuff buried in the mountains, like in Colorado. Oh yeah, I'm sure they have all that, but they also have like—

so the thing about this is like, it was just weird. It's like, why are they doing all of that right now, right? That's very considering. Yeah, the war in Russia, China, North Korea.

Iran, Sri Lanka, a lot of stuff going on. Kuwait, there's a lot of Iraq, there's a lot of Afghanistan, there's a bunch of unrest going on, man.

Well, let's see out here. It's getting spooky, fellas, ladies and gentlemen. Pull up your pants and make sure you have a supply of water.

And then the last thing, you know, so the last thing we've talked about, which we talked about a lot on the podcast lately is omnichannel. And, you know, merchants, the SMB, small-medium business merchants—

omnichannel, not to be mistaken for Omnicron, right?

The omnichannel and how businesses need to get on board with that and figure out how to create the customer payment experience that their customers want. We talk about it all the time. And then, you know, what business Big businesses have been quite successful with it, and smaller businesses need to become successful with it.

Yeah, the small business community is having a really, uh, they're put— they always— all my, like, fellow entrepreneurs, there's a lot of pushback when I start talking about getting the merchant account.

Well, they need to get with it because they do need to get with it because there's a lot of room to make more money.

Um, the one thing that I keep expressing is the residual income possibility. Because in the past, we would build a website for a business. And it'd be done, you know, besides the maintenance, or if you're doing some marketing or social media management for it, right? Well, that business that you set that website up for, they got to get paid, right? Yeah. I mean, it's a business, they have to earn money some way. So they're going to be even sending invoices, or they're going to be collecting payments online, or they're going to be, you know, selling their products outside out of their shop. So that's an opportunity for us, seeing that we already have their trust because we were, you know, we're, we're building their website for their business, or we're doing, you know, whatever digital marketing aspect of it. So we have their trust. Why not take this opportunity to build your, you know, a partnership with us. And then you can offer those clients merchant services.

And then not only are you, you know, they're like, helping you, you're helping your client.

Yeah, the client's like, dude, this guy built my website, set up my social, blah, blah, blah. And not only that, he made sure that I can get paid for my business. Like, you know, instead of the, you know, the old school ways of PayPal or whatever they do, whatever you guys are doing nowadays. But I mean, and then so then we do that for all of these clients, but then you never get any money to use.

What if you do it because they go to PayPal or Square? Yeah, and then you don't make it. They don't—

we're not— I'm not making any money from PayPal, right, for setting that account up for them. But with us, if you go through the way that we're doing it, partner with us, partner with us, you get commission, you get a residual off that, you know, like every month, a whole not a ton of money, but it'd be enough to fill up your gas tank.

You know, if you have a small agency, let's say you're building 5 e-commerce sites a month. At the end of the year, you built 60. If each one of those clients made, let's say, $50 a month, that's $3,000 a month in residual by the end of the year. So I mean, Grant, that's your house, it's a house, a couple of cars, kid going to college, all of them could be a boat. Could be, oh, join the boat club.

You could be buying every pair of Yeezys that you ever wanted.

What's a Yeezy?

Yeezy, the shoe kind of—

those expensive shoes, Kanye shoes. Okay, are they expensive?

They're like, I don't know, I'm— I think so.

Yeah, yeah, they are.

I don't know, they're at least $200.

You could get some of those fancy Air Jordans.

You could buy yourself a Rolex really quickly.

Okay, so yeah, there you go.

I'm on it, man. Like, I— my whole since I've, you know, been trying to get people to use this service, you know, I mean, it's just like, when it clicked in my head, like the light bulb went off. And I was like, okay, wow, all the money that I've left on the table is crazy. Like, I literally started calling all the—

we've seen a guy that we know, Zachary, right? It's a guy that I know, he actually has an agency, and then by accident— on purpose— he got into the payments space. Oh, right, right, right, right. So it's a guy that I know, and he got into the payment space, and he doesn't understand. He also doesn't understand— he's made a couple of videos about it— he doesn't understand why web designers and digital marketers and agencies are not hopping on board with partnering, partnering with a credit card processor.

I mean, come on.

And we have the easiest program for you to partner with us. Person answers 10 questions, white label it for you. Yeah, answer 10 questions, they get approved, you start making money. That's it. Your customer is able to take payments. We get most people approved in 10 to 15 minutes.

So you were talking about point, point of sale, you're talking about invoicing, you're talking about website plugin. SM, you know, the e-commerce plugin.

Um, everything's included in the program.

The point of sale, if you're, if you're a brick and mortar shop and people pay at your location. Dap, tip, whatever. What is this?

All kinds of every—

tap, dip, and trip. What is it?

No, no, dip, dive, duck, dip, tap, and then whatever, NFC pay. Dip, tap, and pay.

Dip, tap, dip, tap, tap, taps, dip and taps.

Yeah, you can pay with the equipment we have now. It's crazy. You can tap your card on it, tap your phone on it, you can stick your card in. It's awesome.

No, it's pretty awesome.

Yeah, you can send somebody— I was showing a guy today from a donut shop, he's like, oh, we have wholesale clients, right, that order, you know, like donuts to their office, like, and and they want to invoice them. What they want to get invoiced once a week, right? So yeah, I showed the guy, I said, oh, you just go in here, do this, send it, it's done. I sent the guy a sample invoice. It's like, wow, he goes, so easy. He goes, because I can do— run every— run my whole business right from there, and it's— and sync it to QuickBooks. He goes, it's all synced up. They hooked it up and they love it. So it's working great. It's awesome. So thank you for listening to the August 2022 B2B Vault Payment Technology Podcast wrap-up episode with Allen and Justin and Rocky, who's taking a nap today. Also, if you want to just see something fun, go, you know, follow us on social media. Check out Instagram. I think it's on Instagram and YouTube and TikTok. There's a really cool video of Rocky basically attacking me while we're trying to do the podcast because he wanted a snack. So it's a really funny video, check it out. We'll put a link in the podcast, uh, put some links in the podcast notes so everybody can go have some fun. Maybe we can get a million views on the Rocky video. It's got a few thousand already.

Yep.

So everybody have a great day. Carpe diem. Peace out. Peace. B2B Vault. I think that's something we should do in the