What should businesses be doing in the current economy? | Financial Lieracy Month | B2B Vault | Episode 155

Yo, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the payment technology podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by this guy, the Brett Favre of payment processing himself, Allen Kopelman., and we'll be providing you educational information about fintech, small business payment processing, and the technology businesses are using in the world today. And in today's podcast, we'll be talking about financial literacy. It's April, and April is Financial Literacy Month. So Allen thought it'd be a good idea to, you know, give you some advice that he may have. And so yeah, he's been gone for quite a while. Captain COVID over there was sick. So we decided to, you know, let him rest his voice. He didn't have much lungs when he was talking.

So yeah, too much coughing.

Yeah. So pardon him if he, if you know, if he breaks out into a coughing attack, but you know, he's recovering and doing his best.

Um, yeah, I missed podcasting. We didn't get that. We usually like hang out and spend a lot of time together.

Yeah, it's been a long time, like 2 weeks. Yeah, it feels like—

sick—

feels like longer than that.

Yeah, um, might be 3 weeks. I was pretty sick.

You know, it was 2.

It was 2 weeks.

2 weeks. But, uh, so we're back, back to regular scheduled programming. Um, so tomorrow's Wednesday, today's Tuesday. We should have this up for the people tomorrow.

Yeah, yeah. So let's talk about, you know, what's going on in the economy. And, you know, there's a lot of talk, you know, are we gonna have a recession? Is there gonna be a recession? Are we in a recession now? I mean, there's definitely a lot going on in the economy. We have the constant raise of interest rates by the Fed. Anybody who's following the news sees that, right? And there's been like some bad stuff going on with that and some good stuff. The bad stuff going on with that is we saw, you know, multiple bank failures and a big crackdown on crypto, which I called the, uh, choke point 2.0. On the— on crypto. But then, you know, this week we see the price of Bitcoin go up, right? Which is pretty weird, you know. And so that's kind of, you know, kind of like, you know, what's going on one side and what's going on on the other side. The other side of the coin is, which is really weird, is that, um, banks are starting to see that people are taking money like out of the market and then, you know, stashing it in CDs and money market accounts. And if you have cash, that's definitely where to put it right now. And a lot of the banks, you know, started raising up the interest that they pay on those accounts. And even companies like Betterment and Robinhood, right, who are not really banks but they're connected to banks and those are FDIC-insured accounts. Excuse me. They're offering, you know, Betterment I think is at 4.2%. I don't know what Robinhood is at, but I saw one the other day that was coming out from another company offering 5% on a CD.

Oh wow.

So there's definitely, um, you know, banks are bolstering their Uh, you know, keep— to keep their customers having to raise interest rates. Because let me tell you, interest in bank accounts has been non-existent for years, you know, in money markets, in CDs, savings account, it's been non-existent. So, huh, well, I'm just saying.

I know, I mean, you're talking to somebody who has none of those, so.

Well, it is what it is. Yeah, but today, like, one of the things you should be watching for is that As correct, you know, credit is going to get— is getting tighter. So we see that all the time. We see it in, you know, what will they approve, um, merchant accounts for, how much volume will they give people. They want to see people's bank statements. So we see, you know, credit. So if you don't— if you don't have great credit, you know, now is a horrible time. If you have— if you have a bit in your business If you have good credit and you think like, oh, I might need money in the next year or two, I wouldn't be waiting around to try to get a loan or a line of credit. I'd be doing that now, um, because we saw, you know, we don't want to see a repeat of 2008-2009. 2000 to that— 2008-2009, we saw a big credit crunch. We got destroyed in it. I personally got destroyed in it. I had made a large purchase on a credit card of $30 grand of equipment to find out after we already got the equipment that American Express, uh, did not let the trans— even though the transaction was approved, they didn't fund the transaction. And they actually like sent us a letter saying, oh, your credit limit was reduced from $40,000 to $5,000, even though we were paying it off pretty quickly, right? And then we had to work out terms with the person who we had bought the $30,000 worth of ATMs from. So it worked out then? It worked out, but it was stressful. Yeah, it was pretty— it was pretty stressful to the point where I was like 'If I have to, I'll go to my savings account and give you guys the money. Otherwise, you know, can we pay it back over the next 6 months?' Which they agreed to.

Nice.

Um, you know, so in this type of economy, cash is king. And also, you know, if you need, you know, if you need terms from your, you know, like the companies you buy from, right? If you're getting terms, you know, make sure, you know, that you're you're keeping up your payments because you don't want them to reduce your terms, right? You know, which is important. You know, you need, you need, uh, goods for your business, and that's just very, very important, you know. So those are, those are things that are important, and I would definitely keep an eye on your, on your credit cards. You want to keep an eye on your credit cards for two things: personal cards and business cards. And what you want to keep an eye on is the limits that they have on there, because all of a sudden you don't want a big surprise when you want to make a big purchase and all of a sudden find out one of two things: they lowered your limit or they put the interest rate through the roof. And interest rates on credit cards right now, I think, are the highest that I've ever seen them, ever. Like, and my— they're double, you know, it's way up in the double digits. Yes, it's crazy. And, you know, so, you know, I already talked a little bit about where to stash your cash. I know people are checking all the different banks, who's got this rate, who's got that rate. You want to make sure whatever rates that you're getting, like for a money market, that they're adjustable, like you're not locked in. I wouldn't put too much money into CDs unless you were getting 5% plus. The other thing that's rampant right now is scams, and scams are like completely out of control. Um, while I was home sick, um, right before I was sick, my, my somebody close to me had, had got an email, and they thought they were buying something, and it turned out that the person, um, the person was scamming them and then tried to debit their bank account for like $5,000.

Wow.

Um, they ended up flipping out. I was like, listen, calm down. You got to call the fraud department at the bank, then you got to go to the bank and get, you you know, new accounts opened up, switch your debit card, so on and so forth. Then I was talking to another person the other day, and they were telling me that— I don't know, you know, people are home, like, alone, so maybe sad. And then somebody calls them on the phone, oh, it's technical support from, uh, Google, you know, oh, we need to remote access your computer, there's a virus in there. And then this person proceeds to tell me this story, how a parent, older person, did not know anything. The person remote accessed into their computer, uh, the person was tricked into logging into their bank account, and then while they were on the computer, they were watching the person try to sell money out of their account. And, uh, it was, it was very, very stressful. The person was not able to do it because, you know, now Zelle put on that two-factor authentication thing when you add somebody to the thing. To the— I noticed like on my business, I have to check, I've been Zelle for business, but on my personal one, if you did send money by mistake, now there's a button on there to undo it. Yeah, within 24 hours.

Really?

Yeah, something like that. There's a time limit on it, and I was happy to see— I was happy to see that. Yes, that's good, because, you know, I'm tired of hearing about these, you know, people getting scammed out of their money. And don't click on any links like, oh, I'm sending you some money, oh, get— click here for an Amazon gift card. No, no, no. If you don't know who it's coming from— I got an invoice the other day, and then I saw, I was like, well, I know this company, but why are they sending me an invoice? I wasn't about to open it up, so I called them on the phone. They're like, no, we didn't send you anything. Uh, they were like, can you send it to us? I'm like, well, I'm not— I mean, if I send it to you, don't open it because I don't know what's in it. You know, there's probably a virus.

Right, probably.

And that's a little bit, you know, you know, concerning. And then I got— oh, the craziest thing is I keep getting these emails on my, uh, in my email account, and they all go to spam. And they say like, note to self, and the person's spoofing, which I don't even know how anybody knows how to do that. Do you know how they do that, spoof an email address?

There's a lot of different ways that they're doing it, and they make it look like it came from yourself. Yeah.

And then they write in there, oh, I got naked pictures of you, I got pictures of you doing this, that, and the other thing. Yeah, I got pictures, uh, I got all your, uh, email list. They don't have any of that. Then they want some Bitcoin, send Bitcoin to my wallet. Somebody I know got one of those emails, right? And they're reading it to me. I started laughing and I was like, listen, that is fake, fake, fake. Do not send that person any Bitcoin, you know, right? They're just gonna rip you off. They don't have your stuff. And I just don't understand how, you know, micro— between Microsoft and Google, right, how much of the they control the majority of what's going on on the internet, would you say?

Yes.

I mean, considering Google owns YouTube, Google Search, they own the Gmail, right?

I mean, I don't know if Facebook can be in whatever, but yeah, I'm talking about email communication.

You get where you're going. Yeah, right. And then on the Microsoft side, you know, Microsoft 365 plus whatever live E— whatever, Outlook.com, Live.com, Hotmail, that's all Microsoft, right? So between them, that's got to be 90% of the email traveling, right? You know, and then, you know, hosting email is only, you know, you got GoDaddy, Bluehost, I mean, you know, the largest hosting companies probably— there's probably 10 or 15, right, large, you know. I don't understand how these companies all can't get together and figure out how to stop these, you know, wackos sending all these emails. You know, you got Facebook and Twitter wanting to charge people, what is it, like $15 a month to be a verified user on social media. Yeah, right. And why can't they verify?

Well, that's kind of what I think— that's where that— that's going to help with the the spam.

You think it's going to help with spam on— but that's not going to help with spam email.

Why wouldn't it? You see, so the whole point of the verification thing is to, to get rid of the bots. And what you're talking about is a lot of it is just bots. It's not real people. It's, it's email lists and it's getting sent out.

Yeah, by a robot.

Exactly. So the verification process Although I'm not a fan of it, and no, I'm not gonna pay for it, I understand the logic behind it.

Yeah, I get the logic behind it.

And that's why these, you know, I mean, with the email, that's the hosting company wouldn't have anything to do with that.

No, but I think that they could figure out like my, what my method is, is like when I get an email from somebody, I look to see like, because Microsoft's like, you know, now that they're on LinkedIn, in your Outlook, you can see whether the person has a LinkedIn account.

Oh yeah.

So if they have a LinkedIn account, I'm going to trust the email a little bit more. If they don't have a LinkedIn account, then I think it's a scammer most of the time. I, I, I question Google.

What if it's— they're sending you from the G— from not Microsoft?

No, no, but if they send it from Gmail, if that's the email that they use on my email, it's not a So my LinkedIn is not associated from to my LinkedIn. Okay, well, I'm just saying it's gonna— I'm just saying, like, I use that kind of as a barometer. Sometimes, if I don't know the person, might be missing out.

No, no, but I'm saying if I don't know the person, and I'm just saying that if you don't know the person, that what if that person doesn't use that email address for their LinkedIn?

Well, you know, And I check it if I don't, you know, I don't open attachments from anybody I don't know.

Well, that's standard operating procedure, but yeah, you got an attachment or a link in there, I'm not clicking it, not opening an email because they don't have LinkedIn.

No, I'm not saying I'm not going to open— I'll open the email, but I'm saying I'm not clicking any links or opening up any attachments if it's somebody I don't know or I don't see like they're connected. Even if you have a link to InLink, I'm not doing that.

If if I don't know you, right?

Exactly. It's just dangerous. And the other— it's just— but I'm just saying, like, the level of fraud right now is completely out of control. We get people applying for merch—

gonna get worse. People are broke. It's gonna get real ugly. I've— from my— that's my prediction. Financial fraud, just everything. It's good about to get grimy. It's gonna get ugly. That's my prediction for 2023.

Well, let's hope it doesn't get that far, but the amount of people trying to scam on, scam on, uh, on, uh, uh, you know, run business scams and open up merchant accounts using stolen identities and things like that is out of control. Like, we've seen in the last couple of months, like, more than 50% of the applications that come in, the leads You know, we do like a little scrubbing, you know, we check the phone number, we go to the website, we call the actual business phone number, and then they go, we didn't— we're not applying for a merchant account. And then, you know, those people need to start watching your credit. Like I tell everybody, I was talking to a business owner the other day, I'm like, do you have Credit Karma or some kind of Experian, or what are the other ones? What are the other— TransUnion?

Yeah.

Like, do you— are you hooked up into one of those services? The guy goes, no. I go, well, everybody Buddy, mark this, put this, make a reel out of this. If you are a business owner or just a consumer, you can get free credit monitoring. Either your bank has it, right, because I know Truist has it for Experian, and, or you can get it free with Credit Karma.

Is it really free though?

Yeah, Credit Karma is free.

I don't think it's really free.

Yeah, it is.

Not forever.

Yeah, it's free forever. I've had it and I don't charge. I don't pay for Credit Karma. You just go on there and sign up. I mean, yeah, they try to sell you stuff. They go, oh, you can get approved for this credit card. That's how they make money. Oh, we can lower your car loan. Oh, you could get better insurance rates. They get money from advertising. That's how they make money. But it's free. And anyway, you're entitled to get your credit report free once a year from each agency.

Right.

So you can go to those agencies and you can usually say, I want to get my credit report. But, you know, if you get— if you can get free credit monitoring wherever, some credit cards offer it, some banks offer it, and Credit Karma is free. I would definitely suggest if you own a business or you're a consumer, monitor your credit. Another thing I want to tell you that my son and a couple of his friends fell for some stupid person was asking them their information to get them a quote on something, right? And then it turned out that whoever was doing that tried to enroll them in new insurance even though they had insurance from work. And then my son got like a letter in the mail from Blue Cross Blue Shield. That shit is messed up. And he called, you know, we had to figure out where did that come from. And the person ran a scam and probably got money for enrolling them in the, uh, healthcare marketplace. And so we found that, we wrote to Blue Cross Blue Shield, they answered back. Then my son called up the marketplace because they said it was done through the marketplace and reported whoever that company was.

And you gotta know who it is.

They do.

No, Jacob, he didn't know who—

he didn't know. He just said the person was just saying, oh, what's your name, I'll get you an insurance quote, and said, oh yeah, you know, I get paid to do these market surveys. And you know, they didn't— he didn't ask for his social or anything like that, and they don't need it. They didn't even have Jacob's payment information. They just sent like a bill in the mail for the insurance.

Oh wow.

And he's like, I didn't— I said, dude, where is this coming from? And he's like, oh, some guy, somebody was doing a survey. And they said they get paid to do these surveys, and they were giving people candy and all this stuff. And they probably were getting money to do the surveys. And probably if you were in the system, right, they got you an insurance quote. And, uh, that's just totally messed up. Don't give people— like, people call you on the phone, don't give them your information over the phone. Don't give them your social, don't give them your date of birth, don't give people your driver's license number, none of that stuff. I mean, absolutely, it's just crazy the stories that I've been hearing. Like, I was watching the news program and they were talking about all these people getting these Listen to this. This is really crazy. So, you know, me and you always talk about AI, right? Yeah, all the time. AI. We get emails every day about, oh, this AI can write a book in 5 seconds. This AI can make a video. This AI can write a blog post. And no one— and for $500 a month, the AI detector— of course it's their AI detector. Won't show that it's AI, right? Every kind of thing, right? So here, listen to this scam. I'm watching the news, and what's the scam? They call your phone, they call a phone number up, so they call like my phone.

Got it.

Then they listen to my voicemail, right? It's scary because I have a podcast. Someone that could just get my voice off the podcast, they get your voice, right? So they record your voicemail Hey, this is Allen, blah blah blah blah blah, right? Then they take it, they use some AI software, right? And I saw that, the website for this, and they play it to that website. That website now mimics my voice. They tell it what to say, and then they get on the phone and call like my, my mom, look up like my mom or something, and say, oh, Allen's under arrest. And I need your credit card to pay, get bail him out of jail for $1,000. And people are falling for this stuff.

I mean, the—

and they're calling them the elderly, huh?

Have you heard any of these voices?

Yeah, they played it. The guy played it on the news. I was like, holy moly, it sounded exactly like the person.

This does.

And they were also showing like famous people too. They were like, oh, you could have a fan, you could go on there and get like, uh, Kevin Costner, baseball players, LeBron, this person. It's right on the website. I mean, this AI thing is gonna cause a lot of headaches from a fraud perspective.

I mean, there goes voice activation, that whole—

yeah, voice activation. Yeah, someone can steal your voice and then mimic it. Can you imagine? What would your mom do?

She got my door. There's a bunch of that type of stuff, right?

Right. Yeah. Unlock my door. Yeah. Even on your phone, like, you know, you have on some phones have it where you can talk to the phone and say, tell, or like, you're, you know, and tell it to do stuff with your voice.

It only recognizes your voice.

Yeah. Yeah. Voice activation. Yeah. Well, that's really messed— I mean, what would your mom do, right? Or your wife gets a phone call It sounds like you— hey, I'm in jail, I need $500, you gotta Zelle it to this phone number right now. I mean, what are they gonna— are they gonna do it?

I don't know, my wife probably wouldn't, right? She wouldn't fall— no, she wouldn't fall for it. But, uh, some people— my mom would probably fall for it because Yeah, yeah, it's crazy, right?

So they were showing a whole thing, and this is like a big scam, and the cops— and they were even— the police were talking about it, that it was going on, and they know about it, and they're trying to, you know, and people need to be aware of this stuff.

Yeah, I mean, you got to be aware of technology. There's a lot of technological advances that are happening around us. A lot of stuff is happening, so Yeah, we even saw, like, we're—

I was showing Justin a website a few minutes ago. You went and looked at it, you said, oh, this guy's thing didn't work, right? But it was some crazy program that you could just download on your computer, put it on some Google spreadsheet, and then it would do things like, uh, go to LinkedIn and go whatever page you were on, suck everybody's information off of their page. Now, I didn't try it, But it said that's what it could do. So let's just run a script.

It's connected to the API. The one for checking out who visited the website kept giving me errors. You know, the instructions are very simple. It's not a copy and paste and then add the API key. So it didn't work, man. I don't know if that's because I didn't give you a dollar.

Oh, oh, oh yeah, because it says $0 on there and maybe they want a donation. I don't know, to get the real—

I kept saying there's not enough traffic and that's impossible, so whatever.

Yeah, that's weird. But you know, be careful with all these AI websites. You know, like I said to Justin, and I don't understand why we tried one one day and it didn't work, and I wrote the guy an email. They did refund me. So they didn't even charge my card. They, you know, they sent a refund because this thing didn't work.

What was that one?

I don't remember. Something that it would turn your— take your, take your audio and turn it into a blog post or something.

Oh yeah, no, that's true.

Yeah, and yeah, it was horrible. And there's just so many of these websites out there. And there was another one that I saw the other day too that was a website where you could take my— I could take my voice, right, play it for the talking to the computer, right? Or they could get anybody's voice for that matter. Then they could— you would take your picture and turn it into like sort of like a cartoon avatar thing, and then you could tell it what to say and it makes like a whole little video. It's kind of cool. Yeah, but I'm just saying, this whole thing where people are copying somebody's voice, they can be on the computer and just be like typing what to say to the other person, and then they've got my voice sample. They said it's enough from just your voicemail message can do it. That's, you know, and they were talking about how dozens and dozens of people got scammed by this. But the one that really is upsetting me is like all these older people that I hear about getting a call from Microsoft, getting a call from Google or Yahoo, and then they tell them, oh, I need remote access to your computer. And then they get in there and then they're trying to steal money out of these people's, you know, older people's bank accounts, right? And it's nuts. I mean, you know, I heard one story where someone got scammed out of 300 grand.

It's a lot of money to be getting scammed.

Yeah, well, the person got access to their computer, you know, and it's scary. I yelled at my mom one day. She told me, oh, Yahoo called. I'm like, what, are you kidding me? So I was like, shut your computer off.

And I was like, my mom—

I told my mom, shut her computer off, call the bank, cancel the credit card you gave them. And then I sent— I called one of my friends up, Dan, who was a computer guy. And I was like, oh, are you in the area near my mom's? Because that's where he used to work, and he was in the area. He went over there and cleaned up, and whatever program that, you know, he disconnected from the internet, and then he, whatever program that person put on there, he took it all off.

It's crazy.

Yeah, the person had put a keylogger on there and a remote access thing and something else. And I was like, I told my mom, I go, you know, that person, if you would add a spreadsheet in there or something with your— all your passwords on it— don't do that. Don't, don't have passwords on your computer. Get— use LastPass or some other kind of—

whatever you mean, saving them in your browser?

No, not saving them in your browser, saving them like on a spreadsheet or something.

Well, that's not smart.

Yeah, like, don't do any of that. Get a password program.

I mean, I'm, I'm I'm— I tell my mom to write them down.

Yeah, my mom has them.

I tell my dad to write them down actually too, just because then that way you can always access them. You don't have to, because most of the time they're trying to log in through their phone anyway, so that's why they don't have it saved, whatever.

But so that's our podcast for today about what's going on financially in the world and what, what's going— what people are dealing with. Maybe you got some good advice about, you know, money management and watching your credit. Don't fall for scams. And if there's some, some subject you want us to cover on the podcast, you want to ask us a question— we did get a question, uh, last month on the podcast about PCI compliance. Somebody wrote in.

Yeah.

And they asked about why do I get charged for PCI compliance, and we're actually going to feature the answer in the newsletter that we send out. So the answer to the question is the PCI compliance is a requirement by the card brands. So some companies don't charge for PCI compliance because they're PayFac and they're actually the merchant of record. But if you have your own merchant number, then you need to do PCI compliance. There's a thing called the SAQ self-assessment questionnaire. And the way— what I do with my customers is, is I just say, hey, you have to do this SAQ. This is what you do. You go to the website, you log in with the temporary password. You're probably going to look at everything and go, this sounds like Chinese, right? Like most things. And you're not going to know how to fill it out. Don't call me on the phone because they mix up the questions so we can't help you purposely. There's an 800 number on the website. Call them up and then let them walk you through the whole thing, and that's it. And then, you know, like, I had a customer, a really big customer, and they couldn't get it completed, but they had gone in there and they didn't listen to me and they messed the whole thing up. So I got on the phone with them and we did a screen share. And then we fixed the questions that they answered incorrectly, and then everything worked. There you go. But you know, if you're not sure how to answer the question, you know, ask your salesperson or just call the 800 number. That's what those services are there for. That way you don't get charged the non-compliance fee. Absolutely. And no reason for you to pay a non-compliance fee because doing the SAQ only takes about 10 to 15 minutes maximum. And like I said, they call the 800 number, they're gonna— whoever the person on the other line, their customer service is going to ask you a few questions, confirm your business, complete it, you're done. Then every year you get an email from them, you go in, has anything changed? You get— you say no, boom, it's renewed and you're done for another year. So complete your SAQ, and that way you don't have to pay a non-compliance fee. There you go. And if you think the fee is too high that they're charging you for PCI compliance, then, uh, you know, ask the company. Say, hey, lower the fee.

This—

I think this is too expensive. Most companies I find charge a fair fee. Occasionally I come across companies who charge a ridiculous fee. Or they charge some non-compliance fee of like $99, and that's just, you know, out of control. They're trying to get that person to become PCI compliant because most of the time there is some kind of insurance behind it if there was a breach. But, you know, breaches have not really happened in the, in the small merchant world in a while, especially since EMV. Before EMV, Breaches used to happen all the time. People would get a keylogger on somebody's point of sale, steal thousands of credit card numbers, and then you have a nightmare on your hand. And believe me, I handled 3 or 4 of them that people, uh, had called me to help them deal with that. Rocky does not like PCI compliance either. He says don't pay non-compliance fees, complete your SAQ.

Check out the podcast at b2bvault.info. We're redesigning the site. I should have that done soon. But it's still up, you know, for now, if you want to sign up for the newsletter, sign up for the newsletter. Ask us a question, you can ask us a question. Check us out on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok. That's about, you know, oh, and YouTube, subscribe to the channel on YouTube for us. Thanks to all the followers that are out there. You guys are watching, so thanks for watching. Thank you for listening.

Glad to be back. Peace. All right. Yeah, can you believe that AI scam shit? It's crazy. Yeah, I was watching