WTF Is A Merchant Account? | Financial Technology | Payment Processing | B2B Vault | Episode 129

Hey, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the payment technology podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by this guy Allen Kopelman, and we'll be providing you educational information about small business fintech, payment processing, and the technology businesses are using in the world today. And in today's podcast, WTF is a merchant service account? You know, we want to figure it out. What the— is it, um, merchant accounts? Uh, I— on some, you know, when you really think about it, there's been not a lot of education when it comes to, uh, businesses, uh, and, and then the amount of different services that you can get when it's so far as a merchant account. Um, and then, you know, we're limited to the idea of PayPal or Stripe or Square or, you know, whatever other option that you decide to use. And, you know, I think we're gonna, uh, really be able to explain what a merchant account is, when you need one, why you should have one, um, the benefits of it, and, uh, all the other stuff that comes with having a merchant account. So, uh, honestly, like I've said a bunch of times, I wish I would have, uh, been educated on, you know, you know, even having a partnership or having the, uh, the mentorship of someone like Allen, who's been in the business, who can explain these things to you. Um, you know, like when, when I was building websites— I'm still building websites— but, you know, for the business, I always use PayPal, only PayPal. Um, I mean, unless it was for certain clients, they, you know, they would, uh, do bank transfers. That's just the way they wanted to do it. I mean, I was set up so I had a, you know, a business bank account and I was paying all the fees and doing all this extra stuff. And then, you know, even when you get paid from PayPal, right, you know, they take a fee, they take a fee when you spend the money. Like, it's just fee after fee after fee. When you send money with PayPal, there's a fee, um, unless it was for friends and family. But I don't know how it's working. I, I totally discontinued, canceled, whatever, deactivated my PayPal, business PayPal account. I deactivated it.

They They've made their pricing worse than a merchant account.

I can, I can imagine.

I mean, I went on their pricing page, I couldn't believe it. I was like, how did somebody figure out what they're paying?

Right? So like, you know, I mean, and then when you get into the other options that you have, as far as especially for me, who's like selling websites to businesses who need to get paid, right. And when we typically do that, we said this 1000 times. We build a website, what's the first person we— what's the first company we use?

PayPal.

Because why? It's simple, fast, integrates with WooCommerce, WordPress.

Boom, boom, boom.

Free. You don't have to, you know, there's nothing involved in it. You don't have to pay for their— there's nothing to pay for PayPal. There's extensions that you have to pay for if you need them. But WooCommerce out of the box, and you can activate PayPal for free, right? So that's the, that's the incentive of what brings people to use PayPal. But if I would have known, I could have linked up with someone like Allen, you know, and he could have said, yo, you need to, you know, you should have your own merchant account, and then you could sell these services to your, to your actual clients, right? Because they need to get paid. And then not only are you getting paid from the website, but you're also getting paid on the back end, and you get that residual income. And you know, what else is better than getting money when you sleep, man?

Exactly. So, so I wanted to look up a simple explanation to what the F is a merchant account, right?

Right.

So I looked around, you know, because I mean, I wanted to simplify it so it would be simple, easy concept to understand. So this is what I came up with. Merchant services is a bridge, a bridge between your customer's credit card and debit card. So it's creating a bridge between that credit card and debit card, the customer, the merchant service, whoever you're using, right? Make sure that that cardholder gets billed, right, and that you get cash in your bank account. Account. So that's the simple explanation. The merchant doesn't sound simple, right? But I'm saying in the simplest term, that's what merchant services is—

a bridge between a customer and their— and your bank account, right?

Yeah, that's it. That's the best— that's the simplest way to explain it, you know, because that's basically what's happening. A customer is either coming into your business physically putting their chip into the machine, and then the machine is calling out, getting approval, set, making sure that customer gets billed. And then at the end of the day, your batch, you're getting money into your bank account.

All right, so why should someone get a merchant account as opposing to, you know, just using PayPal?

Well, there's advantages and disadvantages to each one of the, you know, to all those services. If you're a really small— you know, when Square and PayPal start and Stripe really started out, they were really going after like the micro businesses, meaning like a guy mowing lawns and he has 2 or 3 people a week that need to pay him, that don't give him cash, you know. And as time has gone on, you know, they're going after, you know, bigger and bigger businesses, You know, and, you know, and merchant services keeps getting more complicated. And that's why, like, we launched a new website where we're giving people the simple pricing.

So with a nationwidepaymentsystems.com, right?

So if you're having the, uh, you know, if you, uh, you know, there's all different, you know, I started in this business in 1998, started this company 2001, and, you know, there's all different types of pricing plans. So you know, we deal with all different types of merchants, startup companies, you know, companies where it's, you know, card-present, you know, a retailer, a store, a restaurant, a cafe, a sandwich shop, a food truck, you know. So what I've grown to see is that over the last few years, you know, You know, Square introduced their point of sale system. You know, you now see Stripe is going to come out with a physical terminal. PayPal is also introducing a physical terminal, right? So when we had the opportunity, that's why we created the Nationwide Payment Systems website, which gives you simplified pricing. So, you know, when you have a merchant account, it's not always so simple, right? The pricing is not So simple. So people— but people have tended now in the last— I would say in the last like few years, people started to opt for more simplified type pricing. And you don't always get that from the— from every merchant service company.

You aren't getting simplified pricing from PayPal or Square or Stripe because it's not— it's always different.

Well, then— well, the one thing is, is, you know, as they've grown and they've added on more services that those services cost money. So now there's additional fees, and people don't realize what those fees are. Or somebody goes and gets a Clover, and then they don't realize. All of a sudden they look at their bill and they're like, man, I'm paying like $200 a month for all these Clover fees. So, you know, so, so we tried to look at like, oh, what kind of simplified type things can people have? But You know, like things that people were dealing with, like, you know, I deal with merchants all the time, business owners of all sizes, could be somebody in a startup mode, or this morning I was helping one of our clients that does millions of dollars a month and they wanted to get some better pricing from the bank. And we talked to the bank and we said, oh, how can they get better pricing? They said, well, we need consistent amount of volume. This is how much volume we would need, and we'll give them a better price, and we'll give them a bundled, like, one bundled rate. Nice. Because one, we have history with the client, right? Right. So we have a history of processing their transactions for a couple years, and they're a good client, and, you know, they wanted to get a better price, but they need to be more consistent with the volume because they have several merchant accounts because they're doing millions of dollars a month. And that, you know, And a lot of times they don't— you don't want to— when you're— when you have a business where there's a lot of volatility, which that business has volatility in it of a lot of refunds and things like that, chargebacks going on, you don't want to just have one company, right? So you need to have 2 or 3 accounts. But, you know, whatever. We're, you know, we, we have good relationships with banks, so we're able to work with customers that are doing large volume and negotiate with the bank and say, hey, Justin's insurance company you know, wants to increase the amount of business and they want a little better pricing and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then we— I got that done. Yes, get it done for them. But, you know, merchants are dealing with all kinds of things like tiered pricing, you know, like one-rate pricing. And where you look at a bill and you see all these interchange fees, processor fees, transaction fees, monthly fees like statement fees, regulatory fees, gateway fees, PCI fees, non-compliant PCI fees. Annual fees, you know, 1099-K fee, statement fees, on and on and on, right? Now, in some businesses—

when you're saying these fees, where are they coming from?

No, all these fees come from the credit card processor and Visa and MasterCard and American Express. Okay, so you have all these, you know, all these fees. So you can have— so you can have simplified pricing, but it's hard. Let's say you're a small business like Justin. Let's say you had a sandwich shop.

Right?

It's hard for the credit card processor to say— to get— to, to give you like very aggressive, you know, fees because there's more fees. But now we start to see this, what we call the Stripe, Square, um, PayPal, right? Those companies are called PayFacts. So in a PayFact situation, it's different than a merchant account. What's the difference between a PayFact and a merchant account. So with a PayFac, Stripe is actually— or Square or PayPal is the actual merchant. And I've talked to merchants that have those services, and then they'll say, well, I had a chargeback for like $2,000, and then this company doesn't help me, right? Because they don't care, because they're the merchant. You just have a submerchant account.

Yeah, they do not care.

So that's Depending on what kind of business you have, sometimes it works for people, right? Because if you don't have a business where you might be dealing with a lot of chargebacks, PayPal can work.

I mean, yeah, I mean, for like invoicing and stuff, PayPal is great, right? But I'm just saying, like, sometimes, like, for a store, for, for e-commerce shop, probably not so much because, you know, they're taking a percentage off every, every sale.

Well, you're going to pay a percentage to somebody. Everybody, every company you use your—

I'm saying PayPal's taking a piece, right? A bigger piece than most. Most.

So, you know, you have to kind of decide, like, okay, how big— you know, sometimes it's, you know, you, you start off one place and then you, you go somewhere, you know, then you start to move, you know, you say, oh, well, this, this isn't working for my business. But you also— we did a podcast about, you know, what happens when you get shut off by PayPal, Square, or Stripe., which happens frequently, more frequently than, than you realize. And then the, the business owners left holding the bag like, oh, what do I do? What did I do wrong? Right. Well, they don't really have customer service. So what we did is we, you know, we created a service similar to theirs. Right. But with the added benefit of that, you get customer service. So there are— there's live chat 24 hours a day. It's a 24-hour phone number. Plus local, you know, local support through, through our office too. So there's, you know, a lot of support which you don't get from those companies in general, right? They just— it's all emailing back and forth, emailing. I mean, you might get a phone call if you're a busy enough business.

I got, uh, one time when, uh, I was dealing with, uh, a discrepancy with PayPal They literally sent me an email saying, contact the seller, that's all we can tell you to do.

Like, so yeah, they don't want to get involved. They're not really part of the—

that's the most trash.

It's the one— that's the one disadvantage you have. If someone— if you get a lot of chargebacks, they're not going to really help you, and they'll probably shut your account down. Whereas we'll— if if someone comes and works with us— like, we're working with another merchant that their business grew very large, e-commerce. Um, they were on Square. Square saw that they got quite a bit of chargebacks, and Square just told them sorry, adiós, and cut them off, shut down their whole account. And they got on the match list Now, normally, if we saw like a pattern, something happening to a client, you know, we're going to contact the client. We're going to go, hey, what are you doing as far as why are all these chargebacks coming in? What happened? What did you do? How can we fix this? You know, and then we would employ different, you know, methods to fix the problem. But in general, I think people have to people have to kind of weigh, like, oh, you know, when you're getting a merchant account, you have to fill out a bunch of paperwork. You have to— they're going to request a lot of documents from you. If you do Simplify, go to one of the companies, like you come to the nationwidepaymentsystems.com, you answer 10 questions. Justin did it, set up his account for his business, and it was approved in less than 5 minutes. So we know people like that style of doing business because between PayPal, Square, Stripe, and other companies, it's probably about 100 million merchants using that service. Oh yeah, I mean, Square alone has almost 64 million, I read.

I mean, I can't—

customers—

I mean, I just— with freelance freelancers in general has to account for the majority of that, right?

Freelancers are pretty big with PayPal, so that's what I'm saying. So it just depends on—

no one, no freelancer is using their bank, right, to like to invoice because it just costs too much, you know, right?

So it's, yeah, but, uh, you know, and then the other thing, a lot of—

and if you are, you should stop and go to nationwidepaymentsystems.com and there's a form for you to fill out, apply, and find out your solution right there, right?

So, you know, and then last year there's a new IRS rules came down because they saw during the pandemic that a lot of businesses started using Zelle, Cash App, Venmo, PayPal, friends and family, and other type of P2P payment apps, right? Person to person, you know, apps. And then the government came down and said, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, right? Here's this, all this increased volume, right, going on, and said to those companies, hey, if there's people using this in a business setting, right, we need for you to, um, start, uh, giving those people a 1099-K, which is the same thing you get from any other payment processor, and, and send them a bill, and then they got to pay taxes. And, and that went into effect in 2022. 2, that in 2021 it went into effect and people started to get—

next year, this year you'll start getting, right?

But some people got it last year because they started transferring people off of a personal account to a business account.

They automatically did that to a bunch of people, right?

That's what I'm saying. So in 2021, some people got— that were processing a lot of transactions got caught with their pants down because all of a sudden they got a 1099s in the mail.

I mean, and they're like, oh, did you get caught with your pants down, or did you just like finally get caught?

They got caught, right? Yeah, they got caught. That's what I'm saying, that their pants pulled down because— and now this year people are going to get that, get it again, more people, because they're going to get a big surprise.

Businesses who are running like that need to stop. First of all, you're, you're you're setting yourself up for failure because you're commingling funds. Not just— not just that, but you're running your company like a criminal organization. So, you know what I mean? Like, who do you think you are?

Well, I mean, you know, it's— it's, you know, the thing is, is people saw that as a substitute for cash, right? And, you know, there's cash— my point, right? I'm just— that's what I'm saying. And it wasn't a substitute for cash, and You know, and those companies also, they're in, they're in hot water. You know, Zelle is in hot water with the government. Cash App, Venmo, PayPal.

In my mind, the reason why the government did this, and this is just, you know, this is my opinion, yeah, they did it because of the drug dealers. Well, because, I mean, I don't know who the hell is using Cash App to send, you know, for business. I, I would never ask you to Cash App me $12.

I wanted to, I went into like a, I went into like a barber shop and they had like They were taking Cash App and Venmo. I'm like, you, you're not— I asked the guy, go, you should go look at the fees that you're paying for that now, because a merchant account is going to be much cheaper. You should just get a machine from me, right? And, and then be done with it and stop playing around with all this. Because not only that, when you're—

when you— then he says, my customers don't want that, right? Well, how do they know that you even accept anything else besides Cash App or Venmo? You don't advertise.

Yeah, but the bad thing is, is you also get a deposit for each transaction to your bank account. And then if you go over— most banks only let you do 100 transactions, after that they start charging you. So people don't go and check, like, what they're actually paying, is my point.

Yeah, I mean, I, I don't— I mean, a lot of barbers I know, they don't— they're not like, every time you get $10, it doesn't auto— it just stays in Cash App.

Yeah, but it depends how you set it up. Some of them, right, it goes right through.

Zelle, I wouldn't wait until the end of the day.

No, like Zelle goes once, one and done. There's no batch.

Hello everyone. We'd like to take this time to thank our sponsors Nationwide Payment Systems and NPS Printer. We'd also like to shout out the listeners and everyone that subscribed to our YouTube channel. Thank you for tuning in. If you'd like to reach Allen or myself, head over to B2BVault.info where you'll find two forms, one to contact us and another if you're interested in becoming a sponsor. If you'd like to sign up for a merchant account, click the Apply Now button located at the top of the page of B2BVault.info, where you'll answer a few questions, and you'll be on your way to processing payments in no time. The podcast is available on Spotify, iTunes, Pandora, and other popular streaming networks. Thanks again for listening.

I'm trying to say is that they were using all these peer-to-peer platforms, and they're— and now, you know, and now they're— now everybody's getting taxed. Well, so that's another—

we all got to pay our taxes, right?

But I'm saying that's another reason why people should just get a merchant account, not deal with these complicated services, because this way you get all your money in one deposit and you're not getting deposits from all these different places.

And then, and then you could still accept all of those, you know, like you don't have to be— someone who's got Cash App, if you have a merchant account, then they have a Cash App card, they have a PayPal card, they have a— I'm sure Stripe has a card, right?

Uh, not sure if Stripe has a card. They think they're coming out with one.

SquareUp has a card.

Square has a card. I'm not sure. I've made— they might have a virtual card.

What about Venmo?

Venmo, that's part of PayPal. Oh, that's right. So that PayPal does have a credit.

So I mean, out of the two, the Cash App and Square have debit cards. And also, like, if they want to pay you with PayPal or Cash App and you set up your merchant account, you can still accept those funds because they have it in an Apple Pay, Google Pay, blah blah blah blah blah.

Exactly. People have those cards in their wallet, electronic cards in their wallet, and they just make payments with Same thing. Like, I had a merchant tell me recently, they're like, oh, we were taking Apple Pay just directly through Apple Pay. That's like, guess what, that's some guy defraud them out of about $10,000. So they come to me, oh, can you help us? Like, I can't help you. I can't— how am I going to help you with that? Like, it's not a chargeback like through the normal credit card. If you would have had the guy come in and Apple Pay on your machine instead of Apple Pay to Apple Pay, you would, you would have been able to fight the chargebacks. But now you can't fight it. Now you gotta go take this guy to court. $10,000, there's no small claims. That's $5,000 small.

Oh, that's right. In Florida, that's criminals, right?

It's criminal. The guy defrauded them. It was a buy here, pay here car place, like a, you know, where you come in and make—

so why can't they just go take their car?

Um, they, they're gonna— they're trying to get the car. They can't find it. Well, and the guy charged back all the Apple Pay transactions, so they stopped it. You know, I'm just saying, you know, businesses don't realize the dangers. Like, the same thing, like, you know, the advantage— the advantage, like, if I Cash App you some money and I say, hey Justin, you know, you sent me this, um you sent me this book and the book's all ripped, right? And I paid you $100 for this book, right? And then I get— I go, I want my money back. Guess what? I can't do anything. There's no— so the consumers—

well, you can't. You have a certain amount of time.

Yeah, it's a little difficult. Like someone Venmo's you money, Zelle's you money.

Oh, this is your account.

Yeah, right.

But I'm just saying, you can request it back, right?

But I'm saying, right, right. Right, but there's no— you have no chargeback rights like you do with a credit card. So from a consumer standpoint, consumers should not want to pay with these methods because they lose all their consumer protections that you have with credit cards. And then— and the business shouldn't want to do that because then, let's just say Justin didn't give me my money back. Now I'm going to go on BBB or Yelp or whatever. I'm going to write a bad review on Google, say, oh, don't use Justin for books because He sent me books and they were all damaged and smelled like cat pee or whatever it— whatever the item was, you know. And, and then you don't have any right, you have no rights as the cardholder, you know. So, you know, that's why we always weigh out— I always weigh out services. What's the good, what's the bad? Like Cash App is trying to get into businesses now and say, oh, we want to launch like a business side to Cash App. But at the same time, you know, you have to, you have to remember when you— that, that the consumer has to remember they can't just get their money back. And the business owner has to understand that, you know, they're going to pay— there's, you know, there could be also negative consequences of, of accepting that, those, those payments, because like there's talk of them, you know, wanting to integrate into the Visa MasterCard system.

No kidding.

Yeah, interesting. There's talk, talks about— I mean, PayPal years ago wanted to have people accept PayPal. They couldn't do it. They put it in Home Depot, they put it in a bunch of large businesses, and they got no traction whatsoever. So then they jumped in, they said, oh, we'll put our— we'll brand our PayPal card with Discover, which had a partnership with MasterCard. So then now when you see the PayPal card, that's MasterCard on it, right?

Yeah.

Or Discover has one or the other or both. It's not Visa. No, I don't think so. I think it's MasterCard.

I don't remember.

And there could be— there could be banks, like a lot of times, like I have USAA Bank, so you could get a MasterCard, a Visa, an American Express, or Discover from of the bank, you know. I just get whichever one's gonna give me the most money back, so, or the most air miles or whatever I want it for. So I'm just saying, like, you know, different issuing, but the PayPal Direct card I believe is a MasterCard or a Discover card. Yeah, they had to jump into the— they had to jump into the fray because how else were they going to increase their business? Same thing with American Express. American Express used to be a separate application, a separate deposit, and all that. Now American Express is getting more usage from their card members because it's on the Visa MasterCard network. Got it. You know, and that's the, that's the advantage to being in the Visa MasterCard network. And I think over the next couple of years, we're going to see maybe some of these payment forms come into the, come into the Visa, MasterCard world because customers— look what Zelle is going through now. Zelle and Cash App, right? And I believe Venmo, all three of them, and PayPal with the pay, the, you know, the money transfer, the— yeah, the— right, they're all on the hot seat with the government now. They're being called before the Financial Committee, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, because they're being because they did so much volume during the pandemic. They're being accused of all this, you know, fraud, uh, scams happening, money missing, people not getting paid, people getting money taken out of their account that they didn't authorize because somebody hacked them through what we talked about with email, right? And, you know, getting texts, log into your Zelle, and then some scammer is getting your your credentials and then transferring money out.

It's crazy.

So those companies are on the hot seat. And you know, there's other companies coming out with stuff called Pay by Bank, and we've talked about that before. You know, is that going to be an option? You know, another option merchants have gone for in the last few years is the cash discount, surcharging, dual pricing, whatever you want to call it, where me as the business owner, let's say I want to pass a 4% fee to all my customers. So people come in, the bill's $40, and then it's a— they'll see on the screen, oh, it's $40 if you pay cash, or it's $41.60 if you pay with a card. And a lot of businesses have opted for that simply because— for two reasons. One, it's simple, right? So it's simple. They know they're not going to pay the credit card. They're saving—

they're most—

they're not— they're saving probably 95 to 100% of their credit card fees, right?

Right.

So they're not paying for credit card processing. So that's helping them survive, you know, in this economic, you know, whatever whirlwind that we're in, right? So that, that's helping. And it's simple. So it's simple to understand. And I would say in most cases that the customers don't complain complain about it. If they do, they won't come back. But I'd say in most cases, people don't notice. I mean, $40, another dollar, it's not gonna really make my decision.

I mean, I honestly, I've never paid attention, right, to how much the difference is. Like, if they ask cash or credit, like, um, you know, I mean, I have cash, I'll pay in cash.

But, but we've been dealing with it at gas stations for— since I'm, since I'm No one pays for that, man. No, no, but I'm saying you go to the gas station, you'll see on some of the pumps that you'll go to, oh, it's $3.50 if you pay with cash, and it's $3.60 if you use your card.

My mom says that she works at a gas station and she's like, she's got to explain like, how come the gas price is changing in front of my eyes? Like, you see, it says cash. And now it says credit, right?

Cash, credit, right? So people—

we've been, you know, we've been, you know, as you know, it's been that way, right?

It's been that way forever at gas stations, the government payments, school payments. They've been allowed to do it for like a couple of decades. And, um, you know, and then, and, and some business, you know, and people opt— I think we're just over the last 3 or 4 years, we just see people opting in for more simplified type of payment options. And the other thing, so let's just talk about like the pros and cons. Like, so the cons of having a— the cons of having a regular merchant account is if you're not doing a lot of volume, there could be a lot of fees. Um, the pricing can be confusing, the bill's going to look confusing. You might have— you're going to have to do PCI compliance. You have to log into this PCI compliance portal and fill stuff out. And then if you don't do it, you're going to get whacked with a non-compliance fee. And then every service you want to have from that company, let's say you say, oh, I want to— besides my credit card machine, I want a virtual terminal. Oh, you got to pay for that. Oh, I want to get— I want to get my money deposited next day. Oh, there's a fee for that. Oh, I need, uh, whatever it is. Oh, there's a fee for that, right? So you could get feed to death, you know, just depends on the size of the minute. You have a really big business, right? And you could get, you know, you can negotiate a lot—

negotiate it—

but you negotiate a lot better pricing. Or let's say we've talked about on the podcast about emerging markets, right? So if let's say you're an emerging market business that gets special rates like insurance education, different businesses like that, right? Then you can get, um, you can get, um, you know, you can get better rates that way. So you just have to know, understand, like, what you're doing. But if the volume's not there, it doesn't matter. The monthly fees could, could add up over time unless you have a lot of volume.

So, so as a web designer, why, why would I stop using PayPal and sign up with Nationwide Payment Systems?

Well, the benefit is with our new system is every customer gets the dashboard. So they already get— and they're getting the same similar type of service that you have from PayPal or Stripe. And we're giving you— giving a free WooCommerce plugin. Oh, the dashboard is like where you log in to your account, and then you can see all of your deposits, all your transactions, all your customer information. You can send out an invoice. You can actually have a two-way communication with customers that you invoice, and you can get the keys to the WooCommerce plugin. So we give you the free WooCommerce plugin, which normally, like, if you had a regular merchant account, you're paying $99 or $100 a year.

You keep saying that the— it's not That's free, sir.

Right, the gateway is—

WooCommerce is free, right?

You don't have to pay for WooCommerce. I know that. And if you're gonna use PayPal, talk about the gateway.

What, Authorize.net?

You have to pay for that.

That's not— but that's— you don't— not most of the time you don't.

If you have—

no one uses that.

Okay, we have a lot. I have a lot of merchants, they build a specific type of website And then they need Authorize.net. And if you use Authorize.net, you got to download the Authorize.net plugin.

Okay, specifically what he's talking about, if you have Authorize.net, you're getting jerked, come over to Nationwide Payment Systems, we can help you, right? Okay, all the other people that are already using WooCommerce, and they're not paying for anything, sir, at all. They're not paying for anything.

I get that. Okay, that's what I'm saying, because PayPal and Stripe give you a free plugin for it. They have a— there's a whatever— they have their payment plugin, whatever you want to call it.

There you go.

And it's free. So the same thing, Nationwide Payment Systems gives you the free payment plugin. Yes, right. So that's what I'm comparing it to versus Authorize.net.

Authorize.net is like signing up a merchant account, right?

That's what I'm—

we're not— we're trying to explain.

I know, I'm giving the pros and the cons of that situation. So the, the, the con is that you don't have to pay. The pro is if you go with Nationwide Payment Systems, you're getting the similar type of service to PayPal, Stripe, Square, and and we're giving you the free payment plugin for your WooCommerce site that you would pay for if you were—

that you would pay for if you're using Authorize.net, right?

If you were using Authorize.net, you'd pay for the plugin $100 a year, right? Plus you pay Authorize.net $20 a month and 10 cents a transaction. So we've eliminated that from the equation so that we can be on an even playing field. The Nationwide Payment System is on an even even playing field. Our rates are less than PayPal, Stripe, and Square.

Got it.

So we're less and we're giving the same service and even better features and adding more stuff all the time. We're on a roadmap to add more stuff.

Yeah, I was just trying to make sure that— because when you, you've been saying that it's paid and it's not. All right, it's just not. Authorize.net, you do have to pay I guess for an extension to activate it through WooCommerce. I've never done that. Okay, out of 10 years of building websites, like they must be all operating some very different types of businesses, sketchy businesses.

They're not sketchy, just larger companies they're building, or they're building like, like what, like a construction company? No, that have that like big CBD companies.

Okay, we'll see. We'll see. Now you're It's a different type of— PayPal doesn't process CBD, right?

That's what I'm saying. So, well, we don't process it either right now, but we could be soon on nationwidepaymentsystems.com. Right now, CBD not accepted. You have to get a regular merchant account because it's not, not a product all banks want. No, but you have people that go out, they build a specialized— I'll give you an example. They build a Vegeta.

The reason why I, I'm bringing this up is because I'm talking about as far as freelance web developers, we make it easy for agencies aren't using Authorize.net, right? So with using PayPal, right, they're using Square, they're using Stripe to attach it to a website. So the majority of like these WordPress websites, they're, they're not running Authorize.net.

Okay, I'm just saying. So what we're— what I'm saying is, is that we're now making it easy for them to work with us. Go to PayPal, Stripe, and Square.

They pay—

did you ever pay you anything?

Okay, you never even got into that, right?

So they don't pay you anything. If you're an agency and you come to work with us and you refer clients, then you get this— the, the benefit of the free payment plugin, and you get paid, and your customers get an easy way to get a merchant account because they answer 10 questions and get approved in 5 minutes, and they get their— and you get the free the free payment plugin.

Keep saying this free payment plugin, you're gonna make me throw something.

Well, I'm just saying that's— I'm used to that people have to pay for it. Okay, I'm used to— you get a regular merchant account, you're paying for an Authorize.net thing that's $100 a year. Go look in the WordPress.

We've seen it. I know what you're talking about. But I would never— I have never said, hey, man, you should go get an Authorize.net account.

Right, I understand that.

That's why I don't— I've never wanted my people to go like to spend more money, I guess, you know. I wanted them to be, you know, whatever. So carry on. Uh, yes, we have everything that you need to run your e-commerce store. Go to the website, you get it, fill out the application, and you'll be on, you know, on hit the ground running in no time. It's really simple.

Yeah, so that's the— so, you know, what is the merchant account? Merchant account is a way for you to get paid.

Simple.

Your customers put in a credit card, you get cash in your bank account. Easy. That's it. That's it. For those guys in the back, for the guys in the back, your customer puts their credit card information in the website, or they put their credit card in there.

That's not what you just said.

What did I say?

Whatever.

Rocky doesn't like it.

Let's go. I'm starving.

You're starving?

Yes. What else we got?

That's it. That's the whole— that's the whole website. What is the merchant account? So you can get cash in your bank account. You give your customers what they want. They get to pay with their credit card that they like and give them their consumer protection. You get cash in your bank account and you have your rights as a merchant. To protect your business.

There you go.

And you get customer service from Nationwide Payment Systems that you don't get from the other companies who are the big competitors to what we're going up against right now with our new, new service. But you should give it a try. If you're an agency, partner with us and you— and, and, uh, you know, become part of the ecosystem of residual income. And merchants save money, save money and get better service. So you'll be able to save some money and get better service from a payment company. Work with a payment company that's going to be able to help you grow your business and, and so you can flourish and be a successful entrepreneur. And that's the information we give you on the podcast all the time, educating business owners about payments and about different ways how to do it and why you should have a merchant account, why your customers want you to have a merchant account, because they want their consumer protections and they want their miles and their cash back and etc., etc., rewards. So peace out, thank you for listening. Like we said, can visit b2bvault.info, hit apply, and go to the Nationwide Payment Systems website. You want additional information, you can get in touch with us there, or you can text the word book to 954-827-9818. You'll get back our appointment calendar, and you can set up an appointment. You can talk to me, you can talk to Justin, you can set up a meeting with Rocky. Maybe he can't tell you much, just like, give me some chicken jerky, and that's about it. Peace out, everybody. Have a great day. That was a good one.