What Is A Omnichannel Merchant Account? Omnichannel Payment Processing | B2B Vault: The Payment Technology Podcast Episode 97

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, DeFi, or decentralized finance, and the technology businesses use in today's world. In today's podcast, we'll be talking about what is an omnichannel merchant account. It's, uh, you know, one of those new words that we talk about a lot on the podcast. Um, the fintech industry— well, the fintech word is in itself is another one of those words that that is, uh, constantly in the news, Google, uh, updates and all that.

Yeah, they either call it omnichannel or e-commerce. Yeah, you know, everybody's calling it something a little different, right?

So what is it?

Omnichannel. It's everything. It's basically— that's what it is. It's like, what can you do? You know, it's like merchants need to do so much with their business, so You know, the business was, you know, really simple when I started doing this business in 1999, 2000. You know, you would just go to the merchant, you put a terminal on the counter, you know, then merchants expanded into, oh, I got to have a website and sell on my website, right? We had to get them a second merchant account. So then they needed a second merchant account for the e-commerce. Then companies started saying, well, you know, we don't want merchants to have all these, you know, merchant accounts, you know, too many merchant accounts. So they would give them what they call the Omni account, they called it. So that you had your retail account where you were doing your card-present transactions, you know, and then your Omni Commerce, your second account, you know, because pricing is a little different. So, you know, you have a second merchant account for your non-card-present transactions, like for your website or virtual terminal. Now there's a few companies— there's like one company we deal with has it for B2C, and then we have another company who have an omnichannel product for B2B. We'll talk about that one on a separate podcast because it's— the focuses are a little bit different. But with OmniChannel, now you can have— we have one dashboard. You log into the dashboard and literally you can do everything. So let's say you had 3 credit card terminals in your location. You could see which staff logged on to the terminal, which terminals have sales. Let's say you also had a virtual terminal, then you could see the, the volume. Let's say you're sending out payment links for people to pay invoices, you can see all that going on. And then let's say you had— you could see it by payment link, so you can see everything going on in your business basically from one login. And then you're able to have your credit card terminal. So we just hooked up a guy with a, a small donut shop, right? So they put it in, and what did they— they're They went crazy, like, using everything in the system. So they have, like, the credit card machine set up in the store on the Wi-Fi, right? Then they have also, like, a, uh, a kiosk, like, out on this— in front of the place. So people, like, walking by in the mall— like, in a mall— so people walking by can just get, like, a cup of coffee. So they have the other terminal over there. Doing that. And before, you know, I don't know what, what they were doing. And it's got a customer-facing screen, and the customer can easily add a tip.

Nice.

You know, like either a dollar amount or a dollar amount or a percentage. Sounds good. Then they don't have to— then the person can decide what they want. So they have their receipt printer shut off, and they can get a text or email receipt or no receipt. So, you know, people don't want paper receipt anymore anyway, right?

I never do.

Yeah, so I don't want that. And when it works great, and then they have like some, um, people who buy donuts for them, like, you know, Jose, like they deliver it so they can just send them out a payment link real easy, email it to the person or text it, the person pays it, and then they can go over and deliver the donut order. So they're using everything. You can even create an invoice and put the items in, you know, detail out all the items and then send an invoice beyond the payment, you know, besides just the payment link. Wow. So you can also take these payment links and customize them for like your website. So let's say you're a non-for-profit, you can put it on your website and say, oh, you could set up all the donations with different amounts in a payment link. You could also put like, oh, the membership different memberships and just put different payment links. And you don't need to— you don't need to worry about setting up, you know, like WooCommerce. You don't need to worry about setting up a shopping cart. You don't have to do any of that. You can do it all with these specialized payment links. How crazy is that?

That's cool.

Yeah, so it makes it real easy. Plus you could also take those same payment links and use them on your social media. So you can just take the link to the payment link and said, oh, you want to make a donation? Boom, pop it in there. You can do a lot with these payment links. This is what makes it the all omni-commerce, and then it's easily tracked back from the dashboard. And then you can give, like, let's say you want someone to have access to the dashboard, you're the manager, so I put you in there. And then say Anna and Samantha, they don't need access to the, the whole dashboard, they just, you know, cashiers, put them in as a cashier so they only. So you can limit who has access to like what information. Sounds good to me. Then if you want, you can go even a step further. You can connect the whole thing to your QuickBooks. Then you don't have to even go enter it into QuickBooks. You run your batch out at the end of the day, and then it's gonna match— go and match it up. It's gonna match what's in the terminal to your deposit in QuickBooks. Then beyond that You can put up to 500 items in a catalog, so it's like a mini point of sale for some— for something simple, like a simple tech business.

What would that be?

Um, like I was just talking to somebody on the phone and they had a parking business, right? So people come there for parking, so they could create like for their parking, they could say they could have one— they want to make sure like the guys are charging the right amount. So they have different, like, levels of, you know, they got like the regular parking. Okay.

Yeah.

Right. Then they have like, oh, you want your car parked in the front for $20? Oh, you want to get your car in the front and get it washed, whatever that costs. Right. So you could put all those items in there and then keep track of like what the guys are doing and your bit, something small like that. Or maybe even a donut shop. Maybe you have 20 kinds of donuts. You could put all the donuts in there, right? All the different coffees, put it in there and then ring it up, you know, just like a cash register but on the credit card machine. So it's pretty cool for like a smaller type business or maybe a food truck, you know. And then you can, like I said, now nobody wants the paper to print out, right? So you just do everything text, email, receipt, and you're collecting all that information so you can do marketing You take that, export it out to your MailChimp, and then do, you know, send out email marketing. Or use, like, we have a text platform. You could export it out to the text platform, get people to join your texting platform. Uh, there's also a loyalty program, you know, and then mobile. Everybody wants to be mobile, so you can be on Wi-Fi or it could be on 4G, 5G. You know, so what can machines— oh, the machines, right? So they, you know, so you depends how mobile you want to be, or you can just tether it off to your phone, which a lot of people do. Like, we just signed up a guy, they do computer networking and like fixing computer networks and installing computers and all that. So they just bought like 3 of the handheld ones, they just tether it to their phone when they go out, they want to— the person has to pay, they just get the credit card, boop. They don't have to invoice them, nothing. The person paid right when they're there. So it makes it convenient for any type of business, very, where you're out doing a service call, right? And you just, you know, want to get paid quickly. You know, lawn guys could use it. Any type of business could use that. And like I said, it's all in one dashboard. So the owner can be back in his office, right? He's got 3 guys out in the field. He can see who's doing what. Very good. How long, you know, because then he knows when they left, because the last thing they're going to do is collect the payment.

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crap—

Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn.

Yeah, we need to get more people on TikTok. Come on, let's get some more people on TikTok and then we'll get Justin to dance. I might even do another dance. You know, it was horrible, but it's still good fun. I don't know about dancing. I know, I don't know. TikTok's a very interesting platform, to say the least.

TikTok is different.

Twitter is— I love Twitter. You like Twitter? Twitter is like the Wild West of, uh, it is kind of Wild Wild West on Twitter.

It is.

You know, the other thing cool about this platform is that there's that, you know, and there's still more coming, but like app-wise, you can add to your— so let's say you have employees, you want to have a time clock and payroll reporting, you can put that in there. And then let's say you have a payroll company, you can just export out the payroll, email it over to the company, and you're done.

Very convenient, you know.

And then let's say you have more than 500 items, right? So then there's other software you can drop in there It's an extra cost, not much. And but, you know, then you can have a full-blown restaurant software or full-blown retail software to put in all your items.

Well, that's good. You can, you know, grow with you, right?

Grow with you. And then, you know, you can also export all that for online ordering onto the— onto a website. There's appointment booking if you have salon or spa. You know, so now you have your online booking engine, and it sounds like it's got everything that's, uh, yeah, you just need to figure out what you need. Gift cards, um, key— you can turn the— you can link up to a kiosk. So they have like a— there's a company that makes a kiosk. So let's say you want to be like McDonald's, no cashier, have people go to a kiosk.

Did you see that pizza making machine kiosk that is blowing up?

Yeah, everywhere. Yeah, they got it. Yeah, they got a machine and you just walk up, hit what you want.

There's no employees at this place. Yeah, nothing. You walk up to the machine, tell them you want the thin crust.

Just makes like a— it just makes a small pizza.

Yeah, personal pan pizza.

Yeah, personal.

Um, yeah, tells you what toppings you want on there, spits out the pizza. Literally no employees. All you have to do is, uh, if you want ingredients, if you— to be the owner-operator, you just— you obviously, you need to find a space, and then you purchase this machine, and off to the races.

Yeah, that's like—

I looked into it.

How much is it?

It's pretty expensive. Yeah, yeah, they don't really give you like the price. No, but there's a minimum investment. There's a minimum investment.

Sure, you got to buy a couple of them. I mean, listen, it can be very popular. Cash, cash out of pocket. I know, but I'm saying like, let's say you owned the office building, you go, oh, let's have pizza in there for the employees. You just put it in there.

You could definitely make money that way too.

Yeah, you could just have it in there as a convenience. People go up, run their credit card and buy it.

Imagine there's places, one of those in— they should have stuff like that in schools. Yeah, my kids are constantly complaining about the food.

Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. Like, I saw a concept, you know, and I'm waiting for the people to finish, like, what they were doing. But basically, they had a concept where you could just put, like, have set up, like, sort of like a convenience store, right? Have different items. You can even have some items that would have to be put in the microwave, you know, like macaroni and cheese, some small frozen dinners. And people can just go take the items I was like, well, somebody's gonna steal it. And they're like, no, because if you walk out the door without paying, like, it sets something off so they know somebody's— okay, you know, can't be like fully unattended, you know. But you can just have it like in a hotel lobby or let's say in a school, and then somebody can just go in there and then they just take the items up to like a little station and ring everything up and pay.

Nice.

Well, with a credit card just from like a touchscreen. No employees. I mean, let me tell you, it's coming down to that. It's coming. I mean, listen, you can go to the airport and you can check in. You don't have to talk to anybody. I mean, I don't know, it amazes me when I go to the airport, right, and I see this whole line of people. I'm like, what are they doing?

It's like, yeah, I don't understand what 90% of the— I get you have to check your bag.

A lot of people still check bags, right? But you can just give them— you don't have to wait in line to do that. You have to wait in line to check your bag. What about those dudes that were outside? They don't have those guys anymore, so they make you go inside and check your bag. Yeah, now they're charging so much for bags. Like, this is like— I'm telling you, like, I'm going up— like, I'm going on a flight to Atlanta soon where I'm speaking at the Digital Commerce event, and I'm going to be on a panel talking about point of sale and omnicommerce. August 22nd through the 24th. And then the last day of the event, they're having an alternative product expo where they're going to be talking about alternative products, CBD, etc., etc., etc. So that should be a pretty interesting, uh, conference.

Nice.

You know, and I'm speaking on a panel with the 3 other people, and the moderator is a guy Dave from the Federal— Atlanta Federal Reserve.

Uh-oh.

And, you know, part of the thing we're going to talk about is omnicommerce and how can— obviously the big merchants can accomplish this, right? But now we have a tool for smaller and medium-sized businesses so they can accomplish omnicommerce. So it's already here. Now you just gotta put it together. It's, you know, it's like instead of a technology stack, now you have one dashboard, one technology, and you can put all that together for your business. But I would say with a fairly low skill level, like, you're not gonna— and plus you're not gonna have to buy a bunch of stuff. Like, you're not gonna have to buy— like, if you're only doing a few items on your website, you're not gonna have to go out and do a whole full-blown shopping cart situation, which can get into some big bucks. So you can— hard to handle, right? It's hard to handle. But you can get these other softwares where it already gives you the website shopping cart. Like if you're using the full-blown restaurant or retail store, you can do that. But for other smaller businesses, now they can save— they can just use the payment links. And people love to sell stuff on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, right? You can just drop in one item with a payment link. They can just buy that one item, you know. So it's a great way to sell because people do that social selling.

Yeah, for sure.

You know, it's a big, it's a big, big thing, you know. So big thing also, you can do a cash discount where you can pay zero for credit card processing. So winner, you know. People are all the time like— I was, I was telling somebody today that I would say 8 out of 10, um, card-present, you know, like retail, restaurants, bars, right, that sign up with us all go for the cash discount feature.

Yeah, I believe you. You know, sorry guys, I'm out of it today, man.

But they're, you know, because we discussed on other— we discussed on another podcast cash discount and inflation, you know. So the price of gas came down a little bit, but It's not, you know, it's still very— 89 cents!

Wow, the crowd goes wild!

Goes wild.

I mean, it went down a little bit, went down 89 cents on average across the United States.

It's around, it's close to $4, although I've seen it close to $5 depending on what neighborhood you're driving around in. Like, just—

I haven't seen above 4 bucks in my neighborhood.

Go drive west of the office, that one on the corner, that's the highest priced gas station in Fort Lauderdale except for maybe Boca. Go up to Boca, you still see like $5 gas, like in the middle of the— in the— in the high— in the high, uh, wealth area.

But this one, you know what the profits was for the gas in this quarter?

No, I have no billions.

800 and something, 850.

Yeah, but that was net profit or gross?

I don't— I mean, they just said profit.

Yeah, that's the problem. You don't know what the net, the, the net profit is. That's the whole— that's all the problem with gas is. I don't like, I don't like how gas and oil is handled, period, because it's all done with these gas futures, and that's just not right. I mean, basically it's just game. People are gambling, right? And then we're paying for it. We're paying, we're paying the gambling on the gambling side. So it's a little crazy, you know. The way that works. But cash discount is very popular. So you have a business and you're looking for to do the whole omnicommerce thing, omnichannel. You want to have an omnichannel for your business where you're doing business-to-consumer payments, and you want to have a really flexible system that so you can do everything that you need to do in your business. Because today It's all about flexibility, curbside pickup, delivery, mailing stuff to your customer, letting them come in the store so that you can service everybody. So now we have a product that the small business owner, small to medium-sized business owner, can, can compete, you know, can compete with the bigger boys because, you know, we can't outbuy— you can't outbuy them for advertising, right? They can outspend you, you know, Amazon and Walmart can outspend everybody on TV, like an internet, right? But from a service standpoint, you can get the right tools to be, to be competitive, to remain competitive, right?

And to make you, to refine your processes so that it's, you know, it's better than the big guys, you know what I mean? It makes people want to go spend your, their money at your establishment because you do it better than them.

I tell people all the time, like someone was asking me today, oh, what do you tell people when you talk to them about credit card processing. Do you tell them you're going to beat your price? I go, no, I sound like this. I said, that's the last thing we discussed is the price. What we talked to them about is how is—

how—

what are you using for technology today, and, and what would you want to update? And then we explain to them like what type of technology is available for their business type, you know, because every business type is a little different, right? So we want to make sure that we're getting them set up with the right type of technology for their business., right? Getting them set up so they have the right type of technology stack, stack for their business so they can do things faster because they have less employees, you know, everything, you know.

So less resources. You want to, you want to, you want to be—

you want to be— technology is considered cool, right? That's why everybody runs out and buys the new iPhone, the new Android phone, right? The news, the new phone, whatever it is, right? Everybody wants the latest technology. Oh, I gotta get the coolest laptop or whatever you need, right? You want to get a cool TV. TVs blow my mind, right? I wait, you know, I wait a while.

I remember I was gonna say I'm a little older. I'm 42, man, so I'm not on that. Something comes out and I'm—

I don't know. No, but like the young people, right?

Oh yeah, no, yeah, for sure.

Like young people, they're into that. They gotta have the latest technology. You know, but you can have, you can have technology that can help you run your business, make it run smoother, do quicker. You want to book an appointment and find out about technology, have a discussion with us. We give everybody a free 15-minute consultation. Just text the word book to 954-827-9818. You can book an appointment with yours truly, Allen. You can even talk to Justin. He'll help you too.

If I want to. Give us a call.

Maybe you'll get Anna on the phone. She'll set up the appointment. So yeah, we send you the appointment link, book your appointment. We'll explain to you omnicommerce, omnichannel, how that can help your business, help your business grow, help you make more sales, help you be more efficient in your business. So everybody have a great day. Check us out.

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