The Payment Technology Rundown | Monthly Financial Technology Wrap Up | FinTech | B2B Vault: The Payment Technology Podcast Episode 96

Hey everybody, what's up? 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 be giving you guys the monthly wrap-up. Uh, we decided, you know, to try something a little bit new for, um, the, the episodes for all the shows that we do. So we created a bit of a schedule because we kind of talk about the same things but not necessarily necessarily the same exact thing, like something that's in under fintech or something that's under payment processing or something that's under real estate or some cryptocurrency. I mean, so in today's podcast, we were gonna— we decided that we would do the wrap-up of all the different topics that we had during the month. And a little bit more laid back as usual than most shows.

But yeah, a little less structure.

Yeah, less structure.

So as part of today's podcast, if you want to ask us a question, we're going to leave a comment on the B2B Vault community page, the B2B Vault page, and the Twitter page. And you can go and visit there, and we could even do it on LinkedIn too, right?

Yeah.

And we'll leave a thing, ask, uh, ask B2B Vault the question, and your question could be included in the 100th episode, which is going to be happening in a couple of weeks, right?

August 10th.

August 10th. Okay, so watch out. I just gave Justin a surprise assignment.

Oh, what?

And, uh, so that's what we're going to talk about. So in the roundup today I guess we'll just go down. There's 9 podcasts that we put out this month so far.

7. You got 7 duplicate in there because of the—

oh, I got a duplicate.

Well, it's not necessarily duplicate, but we started doing the FinTech Fridays, so there's 2 episodes in there that, you know, okay, that are—

well, they weren't about the same thing.

No, it's just FinTech, financial technology, whatever's happening in the week we talk about on Friday, right?

So we were just talking. So, you know, one of the most popular things we always talk about is whenever we talk about CBD and cannabis, those get a ton of listens. So I've seen some of them have over more than 100, some have more than that, because the tracking is different, is not exactly accurate tracking.

It's really tough to find out, right?

Because it only tracks into a couple of apps, so it doesn't track all the podcast apps. And there's like more than 50 of them where, where the podcast is on. Oh yeah, yeah, more than 50 different podcast platforms, platforms that people have the cannabis. So we talked about cannabis-related businesses and how—

what is it? What is a cannabis-related business? Because that had me befuddled a little bit as well. Like, what, you know, it's not— you obviously a cannabis business is what, like a growing—

well, cannabis business would be somebody selling cannabis, like dispensary, or growing. Well, they're selling it too, but that's not considered a cannabis-related business, right? So cannabis-related businesses are like LED lights, you're selling pipes, you're selling, uh, other things. Like we have a guy that sells rolling papers, packaging, cones, packaging, different things to a cannabis card doctor. So those kind of things—

cannabis, medical marijuana doctor.

Yeah, medical marijuana doctor. So you can get your card. And so we talked about that in the podcast, and now we've helped businesses in that sector get merchant accounts without being in the high-risk category, paying 7, 8, 9, 10%, get regular pricing, because there are banks that like that business. And that's what I always talk about with high risk. It's not necessarily always high risk. You're just in a particular niche where there's only 1 or 2 or 3 companies that actually want to do business with you, right? We know who they are.

So text BOOK to 954-827-9818 to find out more.

That's part of our fintech. And then so we went up, we talked about that, and we also talked about like legalization and are they going to pass any bills in the House and the Senate, or is it just all a bunch of lip service about what they're doing with cannabis? We went over— there's over 50 bills, yeah, introduced right now, and there are a lot of them, cannabis, and a lot of them are similar.

They're all the same. I mean, they're all basically the same. There's just, there's a couple things that are worded differently. Some have stuff that's included that's not included in this one?

Yeah, well, there's two— the two main topics that their Congress is dealing with is decriminalizing the cannabis and letting people either out of jail and removing stuff from their record, or at least when somebody sees it, it's not going to be like a big black mark, right? And then the second thing is the SAFE Banking Act, of which there's a couple of different versions of that. And they just need to act on it and stop dilly-dallying. It's like 5 different versions. But one thing that I don't like is, is that there's been talk that several people that are members of the House and the Senate have made investments into cannabis companies, and I don't know, I don't like that.

So you're saying that the senators are making money off cannabis but they're still down with locking people up for it?

Right.

But also, shame on you.

But also, we don't know what companies they're investing in, but they could be the companies that are— they— that they're going to let legally take payments or something like that. And I'm not— I, I'm just think they got to make rules.

We talked about that too, about backdooring investments, right?

They got to make rules about these and how these people—

insider trading. They've been doing that for years, right?

Insider trading. There's a bunch of people in getting in trouble for it now, but I don't think they're going to do anything about it. The other thing we talked about was Buy Now Pay Later is in the news every day. Buy Now Pay Later, it's the sign. If your business— if you— so there's two forms of Buy Now Pay Later: physical products, which are Buy Now Pay Later every two weeks, and then we have a service where if you offer a service like you're a coach or you offer any other kind of service, you can get Buy Now Pay Later, and it's one payment per month. So they make the first payment, then the second payment 30 days, 60 days, 90 days later. It's a great way to make extra sales for your business.

I was signing up for a different one. It was doing it like every 2 weeks, right? Do you have an option to do that?

Or no, if it's physical products, it's like Klarna or Affirm.

It's only— they only gave me the option of once a month.

Well, yeah, well, it depends how big the— that some of the companies that do physical goods, it's based on the ticket size if it's going to be once a month or every 2 weeks.

So if it's a bigger ticket, it's going to be like twice a month?

Well, no, it depends on the company. Different companies, different rules. There's probably like 20 companies offering buy now pay later for physical products.

Yeah, I mean, I'm just talking about—

no, that's it. Well, I don't know their rule. I'm not familiar with every single company, But let's say you have an item, it's $50. Yeah, they're gonna do it every 2 weeks. Let's say you have something, maybe it's $100, maybe they're gonna do it once a month. But it depends on the company and what terms they use.

Once a month. But my— I'm like kind of like, man, why is it gonna— why would you sign me up for a month, for a year, that's— it's only $10 a month?

I don't know, don't ask.

I thought it was dumb. I just, I just wanted to get—

wanted to try it out.

Yeah, because I'm like, I'm doing that with everything right now. Like, if they're— if I have the option to buy now pay later, I'm doing it. Forget it, or I'm putting it on my credit card, right?

Whatever, get your points.

So, uh, finally Affirm is the one— is the bigger one, right?

Well, there's Afterpay, Affirm, Sezzle. I told you there's at least 20 companies that I know.

I know, I'm just saying like the one that's really big right now, Affirm.

They're one of the ones that's big, the bigger ones, right?

So they would— they were denying me for whatever reason. Yeah. And finally they approved and it's only $10 a month.

I'm like, wow, it's crazy.

Where are they getting this financial information from?

I have no idea.

That, you know, it's very, uh, because I know you guys don't have the right amount of income for me.

I'm sorry. No, they're, you know, the problem, the buy now pay later, it's basically some of them are taking a lot more risk because they're letting people do it with debit cards. The one we have only works with credit cards for the services. So like I told you, there's so many companies and then they make deals with the different vendor. You know, like let's say it's a big shoe company, so they're going to make a better deal with them than they are with somebody else.

Okay, so what do you mean by that?

You know, they're going to give them a better rate, better terms, things like that. So the terms could be different depending on the vendor. Well, yeah, like for a larger size company, you better get a better deal usually, right?

Right. But I'm just saying, which is stupid to me too. It's like, why would you give the deal to the guy that's like really struggling? And as opposed to the guy that's making—

well, they might only do one transaction a month. Again, the other guy's doing, you know, one transaction every 10 minutes.

It's true. You know, it's money talks and BS walks.

But buy now, pay later, it's here to stay. I mean, we talked about in another podcast You know, the government's definitely looking to regulate it and see how these companies are making their credit decisions and things like that. But it's not going anywhere. We just did a podcast where I talked about— one of the things I talked about was that innovation is outpacing regulation right now. So innovate away. They were—

remember, we were talking that Congress wants you to— they're promoting innovation. But they also want you to like, you got to stop, right?

Because they have to regulate.

Yeah, you can't keep, you can't keep, you know, innovating.

We need to have a special office of innovation too, which makes no sense.

Can't keep up with the innovators, right?

Yeah, because they vacillate to make decisions.

Whatever, man, leave the technology for the—

yeah, that's why fintech is growing and growing and growing all the time. And the other subject we covered was small business and mobile processing and how important that is. Because in today's environment, you know, the last couple years, you know, going through the pandemic or the whatever you want to call it and different things going on, created a lot more businesses that need to have mobile type processing. So either mobile machines, little mobile, you know, things hook up to your phone, taking a payment through your phone, sending out a text message or an email with a link to get a payment. Using a QR code to get a payment. There's a whole ton of forms of mobile payments with businesses, and it's growing. You know, e-invoicing is a mobile payment. So that's just a growing, growing trend for small businesses, and we have great products for that, for mobile payments to help you with your business, because it's important to have your business grow, be able to collect money 24 hours a day by giving somebody a link, and then they can collect payment. You can collect payment.

There's just so many ways because they're busy.

People are busy, so you have to create an environment so your customers can pay you on time.

Yeah, I mean, like, for you lawn care guys out there, I was thinking about this the other day. This is like perfect for you who, you know, if you got a client that you go to, you mow their lawn twice a month, you set up the text-based messaging, you can set it on a subscription base so they get You know, they know they got charged.

Or you could set it up like you go to their house, you send them a text, hey, I mowed your lawn, claim to pay, boom, and you get paid. And you can even— some of them allow you to add a tip line, let them leave you a little tip.

I mean, it's just, there's a lot of different—

there's all kinds of ways you can use mobile payments in your business. And, and, you know, instead of waiting, like my lawn guy, he purposely comes on like Saturday or Sunday every couple months so he can get paid. If he would just do that, he would get paid all the time quicker, have better cash flow in his business.

You know, pool cleaning guys, everything like that.

It's—

there's a lot.

Any kind of business like that, yeah, show you things to do. You can set up subscriptions for your clients. That way they're just paying. Like my pool guy, I set him up with that. He just has it where Every month he bills me the same amount. Every month I get a receipt. Thank you. And they come clean the pool. I don't have to bother with them, you know. And a lot of other businesses are doing that. Uh, air conditioning company that I use switched from a yearly payment to a monthly payment. So you just pay, um, and they come and they clean your air conditioner out twice a year included with that monthly payment. So when they show up, they clean that whole—

they service, they go inside, you know, or just outside?

No, outside. And then they come inside, the guy changes the filter.

Because there's this one guy I was just asking because one of his places that I was calling, I didn't read. Oh, and they were just servicing the outside, right? And then it dripped on the inside and I called them like, yeah, no, it's not part of the package, right?

You didn't get that package.

And I was like, oh, well, I want to cancel the package, right?

So you gotta— yeah, any type of bit— lots of businesses are coming up with ways. We did a podcast on this a while ago. We called it the subscription economy. So it's, you know, it's a very popular business tactic to use.

It works.

Companies use it now. I've seen accountants use it, bookkeeping companies use it, bill every single month.

I mean, look at all the web designers out there that are on monthly maintenance. This is perfect for you. You set up subscription and then you're done. You don't have to hound your clients anymore to pay it.

Yeah, and then you're, you know, because you're sending them an invoice, oh, mail me a check, mail me a check, mail me a check, then you gotta wait more. No, then, then they're behind 2 or 3 months by the time they mail you a check. And the other thing we talked about on the podcast is what is fintech and what the F is fintech and fintech And we did it, we did it. We're doing a new thing, we call it FinTech Fridays, Fun Tech Friday.

Like, the whole premise of the show is, you know, obviously we're in the financial technology, yeah, business, right? So the thing about that is FinTech is— it's confusing word, it's confusing.

I mean, I made a good definition for it. FinTech is any app where you're moving money or accepting payments. That's what fintech is from a simple standpoint.

From technology. Yeah, man, this goes from cash and you use the tech to move it around, right?

Yeah, you're either intaking money or sending it, sending out money. There's all types of cash, right? There's all types of fintech apps, websites, services, all types of fintech. So And that's also, you know, subject matter everybody seems to like. They love the fintech podcast.

Well, it's because, I mean, you're fintech, fintech, fintech, fintech, fintech, fintech. If you got your Google alert to fintech, I guarantee you your email, you have to like comment. Yeah, man, I had to, I had to really structure mine so it's just not getting, you know, the same regurgitated information over and over again. I mean, fintech is cool and all, but there's only so much that's really changing, right? I mean, well, buy now pay later, crypto—

no, there's new things coming out all the time, companies entering the space. So it's interesting to read some of it, you know, some interesting— like, we're working on a fintech project now. You'll be able to get a merchant account soon off of the website Answer 10 questions, get a merchant account. Boom, boom, you're done. So the next thing we talked about in the podcast—

wait, wait, before you have to end it here, uh-oh, don't forget about the contest, the contest, the 100th episode contest where you'll be able to win the Meta Quest 2, formerly known as the Oculus, where you can jump into the metaverse and play with your friends in the metaverse. Yeah, sounds pretty cool to me.

Somebody was telling me they were going to have metaverse dating. I thought that was weird. Like, they—

well, I mean, technically people are already doing it. I know a guy that is like, he does, uh, DJs. He DJs and then he does parties and invites people that he doesn't know into them, into his party room, into his metaverse party room. It's kind of cool to be in there dancing. So yeah, man, check out on our, uh, YouTube channel, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, you name it, we're there.

Enter the contest.

Please like and subscribe to the YouTube channel. We're trying to get our followers up to as many as possible, trying to monetize that channel eventually. Um, also you can check us out on Spotify, iTunes, um, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Stitcher, uh, Pandora, Amazon, wherever, wherever. We're literally—

whatever podcast app you have, put in B2B Ball.

You're gonna find us on social media. It's B2B Vault, very simple. We're there. Please join the community on Facebook. Please, if you want to win this beautiful Meta Quest thing, and you do decide to join into the giveaway, you must confirm your email address. And you must reside in the USA. Otherwise, you will not win. I'm sorry. Maybe in the future we'll have an international contest.

We do have people listening all over the world.

Yeah, shout out to y'all who are, you know, all right, we have a lot of Ukrainian people up that are listening to the show right now. To all the business owners out in Ukraine, please hold your head. You know, we stand firmly with you guys. We're sorry that you're going through this. Um, I don't know, it's a war going on outside.

No man is safe from Yep, so there's other prizes, and we're gonna be doing the live show, doing some other giveaways, giving out some swag. So if you get on the live and you ask a question, or you put a question in on social media, you could win, uh, you might get picked. As we pick your question, you might win some swag, swag bags.

Wu-Tang Forever, it's Wu-Tang Wednesday.

If you're— so the next thing we talked about was cryptocurrency and real estate purchases and luxury purchases.

I love that, that whole— anytime we talk about crypto being used for like really big ticket items, I like to hear about that.

Yeah, I mean, it's— it's—

so do our listeners.

Yeah, I mean, we talked about, um, $22 million purchase done in Miami for— with crypto. Another one was, uh, somebody hooked— linked a house and an NFT together in Tampa. $654 million, I think it was. And, you know, there's— we get contacted all the time by different mortgage companies and title companies and real estate attorneys, and they want to get linked up so that they can do crypto transactions because there's a lot of international buyers. And the way they want to— the way for them, the easy way for them to do transactions in the US is to use cryptocurrency while the market is down. People don't use cryptocurrency the same way outside of the United States as we were using it in the United States. So it's a little bit of a different market. They use it in that they purchase a lot of stablecoins outside, and then when they're ready to do a transaction, they literally like buy the Bitcoin and do the transaction. So they're not, you know, like, and then like doing it as an investment. You know, when I go on—

they're moving money around, right?

So when I go on CoinTracker, which I check it like a couple times a week, sometimes every day, you see literally the transactions going on. Those are business transactions of buying and selling goods and services. And trading on Bitcoin is in the billions of dollars every single day.

Yeah, I mean, Elon just sold, what, $190 million of this? Yeah, $150 million.

I guess he needed the cash.

Well, yeah, and then everybody was— he bought $150 billion Bitcoin last year. He just sold like $91 million, right?

But we don't know how much he paid for all that.

Yeah, I mean, so like, I don't understand why people were making a big deal about it. It's like, so what? Elon Musk is not hurting for money just because he saw that Bitcoin. He probably is making a money move. He needed liquid. So he had to get rid of the Bitcoin, right?

I'm sure he sold coin that he had for over a year to reduce the tax burden.

Yeah, that's another thing what they're saying, because that, you know, that there's this new— the way that the taxes— that's why people were like, he's going to lose so much money. And actually they only do that when he makes a certain amount of money and he can't— and the money that he got taxed on, he won't— the money that he has left in his, you know, in Bitcoin, he, he, he won't be able to claim gains on it until next year, right? So I don't get it.

I'm sure that he sold it after the capital gains.

So no, he's fine.

Yes, he's fine. Listen, I read somewhere he paid $700 million in taxes.

So he did.

Peace out, Elon Musk. You are a good American citizen and you set a good example and you pay taxes. I pay a lot of taxes. Myself. I don't like it, but I pay taxes. The other thing that we started this month, which was new, is Tales from the Vault. That's where I relate some personal story about, uh, payment processing and 20-plus years in the business. And this month we talked about point of sale and the evolution of point of sale. I was telling the story about how You know, I worked in restaurants when I was younger and the point of sale systems that we dealt with at the restaurant and how they evolved and then entering the business and then actually entering the payments business and then dealing with Payless point of sale on the, on the, on this side of the fence. So I have experience with it as working with it, then as a merchant using it. And then selling it. So I talked about like the evolution of it, and it's amazing now, like, you know, the computers that we used before— like, this phone has more memory and capability than like the first computer that I ever used. It's crazy.

I mean, we were saying during it, I was saying like how just money's evolved. I mean, like, you went from paper. Yeah, food stamps, everything, everything's electronic now.

There's a card, people's Social Security goes into their bank account. No check to take to the bank anymore.

I can't tell you last time I tried.

Well, somebody today called me and I said, oh, would you like me to debit your bank account? You want to use a credit card? You guys, it was an older guy, he goes, no, I'll just mail you a check. I like to mail a check. I'm like, okay, it's a long-time client, they like to mail a check. So I give them the option because I know they really, really— I know he really likes to mail checks.

Well, yeah, and plus that guy probably has a box of checks.

I have a box of checks. I can't tell you, like, the last— I, I hardly ever have to write a check. I mean, we have ACH, we can send money out ACH, we do it all the time. Yeah, there's not many places that even, I mean, take checks Do they know checks is not very popular, especially in retail? Used to be, right? We used to sell the little machine and it read the check, took a picture of it, took it out of the— but no more. That's, that's all gone. You know, there used to be one of the biggest companies in that business was TeleCheck. They don't hear about that anymore. So we talked about the whole evolution of point of sale, like used to use these giant computers. Now you can run a whole restaurant on an iPad or Android tablet. It's amazing. It's crazy. And we had another FinTech Friday where we talked about fintech buzzwords. What were the top 10 or 12 buzzwords in fintech? And we explained what they were. That was a really interesting podcast. I like having those discussions with Justin because it's kind of fun, like, to— when we talk about it, then you think about, like, what's going on, and they— it's— he starts to remember all the different stories, like, what we're reading about in the, you know, in the news and what we're seeing every day come across the newswire and what's in the payment magazines and everything.

Some other people in the industry, you know, shout out to, to some, you know, to the other podcasters out there, you know, trying to cover this without making it super boring. Because I mean, me and Allen literally don't go at it, but I'm like, dude, no one wants to hear about that. You know what I mean? No one wants to hear you talk for 20 minutes about a product, right?

Well, we try not to do a product podcast. We try to relate it to more about technology.

We just don't want to sell you something, right? Right.

What we try to do, like, you know, somebody told me this morning, I was talking to somebody and they said, you know, you're like one of the few guys in this business that's not like into like one or two products and you just push pushing those products. You're more into like the whole approach of, hey, this is your business, how do you run your business?

And then, and then figuring out like what kind of technology, what tools can you—

yeah, what kind of tools can we put in your toolbox, right, to make it more— toolbox to make it all work so that you can take— now you have this toolbox of, of things so that you can take payments like more effectively. One guy was asking me this morning like, how can I stop people from doing a chargeback? And I said, well, you can't really stop it, right? You can't. There's no— there's no way to stop people from doing— what kind of business was it? Was the auto repair. I'm sorry, Rocky. Whoa, stepped on Rocky's foot, scared me. I moved. So he was asking me about chargebacks. He was telling me, you know, he does auto repair. Yeah. And that's—

and it looked—

way he described it to me, it looked like the people either used somebody's credit card that they stole, or they used somebody's credit card that they didn't know, or they were just a straight-up scammer, or they just used—

they— their grandma let them use their credit card to get it, and then their grandma decided that she didn't want to pay for it anymore, right?

Or the person didn't pay the person back and they did a chargeback. So It's hard to tell. I said, send me the chargeback letters, then we can have a more in-depth discussion about it. But it comes down to business practices. You know, if you—

let's just say, if you're taking anybody's credit card, it's not that.

Like, let's just say— and I don't go by like, oh, the guy was dressed this way or that way, because listen, I owned a restaurant. I used to have one guy that came in, he used to spend a ton of money. Used to wear shorts and flip-flops and a t-shirt, and he just didn't care. And I've, you know, this is before like Google and all that. And then one day he was in there and somebody said, they said, hey, you know, you know who that guy is, right? I said, no, I know his name, I know his phone number, but I don't know who he is, right? So the guy proceeds to tell me like he was one of the biggest attorneys in New York, and he's a multi-whatever, you know, he's money out the wazoo, he's loaded. And wow, that he comes and eats in your restaurant, he goes, that really says something because this guy's like Mr. Fancy Pants. And his wife was an ex-professional tennis player and she was— and, uh, yeah, and how— and then I actually got in that she was playing on the Women's Senior Tennis Tour, I guess it's over 40 or whatever, over 50. But, uh, she played, as in like a few tournaments every year. But the thing is, is you can't tell, you know. Like, I worked for one boss, I never forget, he said to me when I first started selling merchant services, I know, I can tell by this application and the guy's credit report. The guy was wearing gold nugget jewelry, and I started laughing. He goes, why are you laughing? I I said, yeah, the guy had on a gold nugget— he had on gold nugget jewelry. I don't know how he could tell that, but you know, whether the person was good or bad, this guy owned like some kind of bartending school. It was really popular because there's a lot of hotels opening up at that time. When I started in this business in the early 2000s, there was tons of hotels, right? A lot of hiring, cruise ships and all that. How do you learn to be a bartender? Either you get thrown into the soup and somebody teaches you on-the-job training, or you go to bartending school, right? This guy at a bartending school was very popular, and, you know, what am I— you know, whatever. We got him a merchant account for the bartending school. But, you know, it's, it's, you know, business is just business. So I was telling the guy, I said, you know, you have to decide, like, okay, the average person comes in, they get an oil change, they get a tire rotation, right?

Right.

And they fix BMWs and like Audis, so whatever, foreign cars. Yeah. So, so then he said— so I said to him, I said, well, if somebody comes in and they want you to fix their car, right, and it's over like your normal amount, right? So I said, what's the normal amount? He goes, oh, you know, $300, $400, $500, $600, you know, in there. That's like a normal repair. I said, well, if somebody's spending, you know, $1,000, $1,500, $4,000, $5,000, you know, you probably need to have a policy where you're checking their driver's license or making a copy of it.

Well, you would think that they're going to check their driver's license.

No, they didn't check it. I told them, I said, go try to buy some furniture like at Rooms To Go, City Furniture. Even walk into like a Brandsmart, um, Best Buy, you try to go out of there with a big screen TV, they want to see your ID. They ask for the— they want to make sure that the license and the credit card has the same name. Now I've never tried to like, you know, swap it up, right? So I wouldn't know. But now like Best Buy, the last couple times I bought stuff at Best Buy, I bought it online. And then they do a curbside pickup. And when you show up curbside, they ask you— they want to see your ID and the credit card.

Yeah.

So because I bought, you know, I bought something and I said, so, you know, I have my dog with me, so I'm not gonna— can't really take Rocky inside Best Buy. So I needed to get some—

huh, you could, but I don't know if Rocky would like all that noise.

Yeah, but still, at the same time, like, you know, you know, he'll be— he would want to say hello to everybody. Because he's that way, right? So it could be like, his hellos aren't always the nicest. But I'm just saying, you got to develop a policy in your business, and that's all part of like what we do. We're doing, you know, we're doing a little bit more, you know. We try to— we give you consulting, we give you education, we give you— we teach you about what we can have in the toolbox based on how you want to run your business, right? Yeah, this guy was pretty interesting. He's like, for customers he has outside his business, because sometimes like people can't— they can't come till late, they work, right? So they're going to come pick the car up till 8 o'clock at night. So to make it easier, he had like a special lockbox outside with a code, and then he parks the car in front of the lockbox. He has like 6 or 7 of them, and he puts the car there, and then he text— when the person, he sends them a payment link efficient. They pay, then he gives them the code to the lockbox.

Nice.

Then they can get their key out, take their car. But he only does that for customers that they know. But, you know, somebody repeat clientele, they don't— you know, I told them, I said, you have to develop a policy. You got to protect yourself. We're going into a recession. There's going to be people that just do a chargeback because they lost their job, they don't have enough money. They're going to try whatever to get out of paying some of their bills, you know. And then the last thing we talked about was payment trends. And that's what, you know, in payment trends we talked about all kinds of stuff, government regulation and all that. One of the things we didn't cover, but I'll talk about now, is with all this inflation going on, I saw an article where there people were complaining about some restaurants that added on like an 8% inflation, uh, oh, thing on there.

Ladies and gentlemen, be prepared to, to see your food costs go through the roof. Don't be surprised when you're looking at $18.

But I'm just saying, like, what is the restaurant gonna do? They can't keep printing the menus up every week, every day. I don't want—

I don't blame the restaurants.

They gotta figure it out. And most people don't understand this. A restaurant, if they're lucky, they're only clearing, let's say, 5, 10, maybe 15% a plate. No, you know, total off of the bill, you know, off of their sales.

Oh, right.

Yeah, right, right. I mean, if you're the best, best operator, right, maybe you're clearing out 20%. But a lot of these places, they don't own the building, they're paying high rent, they have tax, you know, they've got to pay sales tax, they got to pay the employees. Everybody wants to get paid more money. The government's driving up the driving up the, uh, the minimum wage. I was watching a panel on TV. They were talking, they were in Michigan, and they're like, oh, the governor of Michigan just put in this law. And some of these people said, hey, we're gonna have to close. We don't know if we can run our restaurant and serve food at a price that people will pay with these, uh, things that they put.

Well, that's what I'm saying. Like, I So that goes back to what I was saying about how, like, when, when, when these— when you go to the grocery store and you buy a pound of ground beef and it's $25 a pound, that's going to be a problem. Don't forget, don't— but it's coming.

Well, we better start growing some.

I watched, I watched this documentary about how much it costs to feed, yeah, animals like cows, pigs, and that.

It's expensive. They say that's what you need to get the food there, gas, right?

And so the, the farmer was like, so you guys, which means the consumers, we haven't even seen that cost because they haven't taken those cows to the slaughter yet, right? So when they take those cows to the slaughter, and then it's crazy. That blew my mind when he was explaining how much this food is going to go up. Yeah, he said it. He said, and I mean this woman, she said, you guys must— you have got to really prepare yourselves. For this food. This is— it's going to be crazy. And I believe her.

Well, the one thing is, is they gotta— the government needs to stop taking the reserves. We can't talk about the government for— we could get on here and talk about the government for an hour. Yeah, but the thing is, is they got to get the price of gas down and diesel down to get the price of goods down, because the price of food and other goods is not going to go down until gas goes Real quick, on the government thing.

The definition of recession, right? It's 2 quarters of documented loss.

We're already past that.

We're way past that, ladies and gentlemen. So stop with the 'we're going into a recession.' I'm not talking about you. I know that. But everyone else, like, stop, bro.

Yeah, there's no— what did they call that? Transitory?

Yeah, it's like, what— I don't even understand what is—

what are y'all—

who's—

we are trying to make everybody feel better.

No, they're trying to lie to us and like, right, it's like your little baby, like, oh yeah, you'll be okay.

Yeah, well, you can believe what you— when you get— when you go pay for stuff, that's the reality.

Exactly.

It's on the news, it's not real.

No, it is not.

It's not real. But the thing is, is, you know, businesses are trying to figure out ways how to, you know, cut corners, save money. And we talked about that with technology, kiosks, ordering online. I mean, we're talking about paying at the table, pay at the table with a QR code, cutting down. So because they have a problem, they have a labor shortage and they also have a problem where they're having to pay higher wages. They can't afford to have the amount of employees they have.

It's like the worst. It's like a really bad, like, storm.

It's a challenge. It's, it's that we're definitely— business owners are facing a challenge. Now, if you need help with technology, we can help you with technology. If you need help with, um, figuring out, you know, just consultation, other pain, you know, what to do, like from a technology standpoint, we can help you, you know, cut—

can help you map it out.

Yeah, map it out. Map out your technology stack that's going to work for your business.

And see, right there, what he says, we're not like all the other places, we're just gonna pile on all this stuff. Oh, you need this, we're gonna throw this at you, this, take this curveball, take this slide. No, what do you do? You sell products online. Well, we have a perfect package, like a platform that's—

yeah, well, we show you like what to do, you know, how to cut down on fraud, cut down on chargebacks, you know, you got to organize your business And you got to be efficient today. So everything, you know, same thing. We, we're trying to be very efficient and we're trying to provide educational information for business owners. So check out— if you— this is your first time listening to the podcast, check out some other episodes.

Yeah, the other episodes are available on Spotify. You can check out the website b2bvault.info. It has the past 10 or 12 latest episodes. That you can, uh, take a listen to. Uh, so yeah, and there's some forms for to get in touch with us if you need to at the bottom of that page.

And don't forget to go to our social media @B2Bball and put in a question that you want answered during the 100th episode, and you can win a couple swags, some swag items, some other surprise gifts. Never know, you never know.

Allen has a bunch of stuff in the office that definitely someone else could find use for it.

Exactly.

Yep, I was going to say something.

Crap. We have some stuff. We got some— we got some cool stuff that's sitting around. So everybody, carpe diem, peace out. Want to book an appointment? Hey, technology, we can show you how to use this in your business too. Text the word book to 954-827-9818 and get a link to set up an appointment. Oh, I remember now. It's really easy.

Shout out to MPS Printer for sponsoring the podcast. And also, if you are a merchant and you're looking for, you know, direction, or you want, you know what you need, there's a button, Apply Now, on B2BVault.info. Go ahead and fill that out, small application out, and Allen will be in touch with you in 24 hours.

Carpe diem.

Peace out.

Check out this movie, man. What?