#312 - Making Payments Easier w/ Blytzpay

This is the Independent Dealer Podcast, Education by Dealers for Dealers. Now, here are your hosts, Luke Godwin and Jeff Watson.

Hello, and welcome to the Independent Dealer Podcast, brought to you by Buckeye Dealership Consulting.

We're on the beach, man.

We're together. We're on the beach, and we have a guest.

Yeah, you're going to be the new co host, right?

I'm the new co host.

Way better not.

I don't know how you guys do that.

We decided overall, we are upgrading our appearance and our appeal to all crowds. So Robin was nice enough to fly us down here to Cabo and have us at her estate. It's been a beautiful week. 20 group.

Yeah.

Robyn's actually here to help us in our 20 group.

Yeah, you know, Niada, we've been 20 group members for a long time, and they have a new program where if, you know, people in the 20 group want to hear from a vendor, they invite the vendor down. And this time it's blitzbay. And. And blitzpay is a sponsor of the podcast, and we call that a twofer, a two for two for one. And, you know, it's going to be kind of a how I built this from Robin, because we do that for dealers, but sometimes we don't know what goes into a vendor doing what they do.

Right, yeah. So, Robin, tell us that. Let's start this conversation off with how did you start Blitzpay? Where did the idea come from? And why get mixed up in the crazy world of dealerships and car dealers?

I deal with dealership dealer principles because they're. I mean, we use car dealers love them.

Yeah, good questions. We started so circa 2016, I got a bill in the mail, and it was. It was a bill for a. How am I supposed to look?

Sorry. So, Robin, look at the camera or me.

Sorry, you'd have to edit that.

There's no editing. We don't edit the podcast. We go straight through.

So that's a good question. Because, you know, sometimes we don't. We don't tell people where to look. Jeff. And then all of a sudden. So what you really want to do is, is get the people involved.

Okay, people, here we go.

Okay.

2016, I got a dermatologist bill in the mail. It was 16, 17 bucks. And I thought, I've got to pay this. I opened up and I think, okay, in order to pay this, I've got to find a stamp, a check, and an envelope to send it back. And so I promptly set it down and walked away from it.

Yep.

And six months Later, I'm getting. Yeah, that's right. And it wasn't that I didn't have the intention to pay it, and it wasn't that I didn't have the money to pay it. It's that all the steps that would require me to pay it were a pain. And that's the problem with bill pay. That's the problem.

100%.

We've all been there.

Yeah, I'm there every single day. Do you have any bill? We get in my. I get so many bills, and it's so confusing to just be like, do I have the login? Do I have it saved? Is it on this browser?

On that browser, you got to log into your iPhone and all of a sudden it logged you out. For some reason, your app logged you out. Now you can't figure out how to get back in.

Password is.

And you don't know your password is. You don't have your laptop. Just, just all this. And, and truly, it's a rub with, especially with our clients a lot of times is that for one, nobody uses stamps. Nobody has stamps anymore. So if you wanted to mail it, you have to do all this. So a rub created. Created the idea of let's pay, right? A problem, a solution. And that's what all of us are. We're solution providers. Right. And by your pay, your case, it's a solution of somebody that has no credit. And probably a lot of times with. With payment processing people who don't have credit or unbankable, it's hard to. To do this process and. But, you know, let's, let's. Let's rewind back to 08. In 08, you were in the mortgage business, and you were killing it in the mortgage business. And in the financial crisis happened, right?

We were, and then we were not. And we've seen that happen in different industries over time. But yeah, the mortgage industry changed pretty dramatically, and the United States changed pretty dramatically at that point. Yeah, most people were, yeah, go, no.

No, I want to know. You know, it was a tough time. You got through it. You decided this needed to be solved and fixed. I don't understand how you say, hey, you know what? I know all the entire world is doing this wrong. I'm gonna be the one to fix this payment issue and make it easier for people. What did you do? How did you not. Just because we get hit up by merchant processors all the time. There's a million. I mean, once a week, I get someone that comes by the dealership and says, I want to run your Credit cards. You said, hey, I'm going to be more than just a credit card process. I don't want to just take your business because I'm going to have a lower fee or be nicer or friendlier. You said, I'm actually going to build a technology that makes it easier. How do you do that?

Good question. It was. Processors are dime a dozen. Everybody gets hit up regularly about credit card processing and it's a race to the bottom. If we're talking about basis points, if we're talking about a few basis points, to be competitive, what happens is you lose a lot of value in what could be provided. And so initially, literally, I'm the most non technical person you'll ever meet. I sat down with a piece of computer paper and I drew what was an early wireframe of what could be and what I thought should be in a similar fashion to Amazon.

Right.

That was, that was pre pandemic. But the engagement, the idea of engagement, nobody wants to download it out and you want to get in and out something. A term that we use lovingly in our, in our product world and as we discuss, you know, and solve problems as a company is shut up and take my money.

Yeah. And that's, I mean, really and truly, that's what everybody wants. I mean, I won't, I want everybody to shut up and give me their money.

Right.

I mean that's, that's really and truly, if it's, if it's hard to pay somebody, you're not going to be paid. Yeah. It's what you find out. Right.

And I think we. I'm going to ask you some more questions on that in a second. But how did I still don't get like, yeah, I don't understand how you.

Build a credit card process.

I'm going to make this easier for everybody by using this whole. Because your system and the way you do it is just so easy. Was it out there? Why don't more people do this?

Yeah.

Why out of the 500 bills that I get a month does none of my vendors use a system like yours?

So it is out there and it's out there in about six different ways. Right. I've got a text message platform, I've got a credit card processing platform, I've got an engagement platform, I've got a sales platform, I've got a billing platform, I've got a collections platform. Every everything is bifurcated and you get all of these little pieces. Nothing is really together. And so giving merchants the ability to give their consumers the Ability to take immediate action, to communicate and then take immediate action. Whether it's, whether it's a payment that's being made to a commitment on a contract or it's rent or whatever it is and new, you know, something new. The faster people want things now, right? The immediacy and the urgency goes away if it fades. But if you give people the ability to take that immediate action, you see results. And that's what we've seen in our, that's what we've seen in our new virtual.

Because I think, I think a lot of people have the notion that our customers don't want to pay when really they do.

Right?

But they want it to be done convenient. And I'm the same way, right? So when I go and if I scan a QR code or if I click on a link that I'm going to go pay a merchant and it takes me to a login page, I'm done.

Your eyes displays over.

I don't have the password saved. Something happened. I don't know what it was. I don't know what my freaking this bad or the other is. So even that little hurdle creates a huge obstacle. And 99% of other payment processes, I'm pretty sure that's how it works with them is you've got to log into some sort of secure thing. How did you get around that? Or how, how does it not have to have some sort of a 20 digit password with ones and zeros and special characters?

So we do. First thing is, and the both of you probably know this, but Maslow's hierarchy of needs in 2024, what's the first thing that people are going to pay?

Food, alcohol, Cell phone. I would have got there. Drops cigarettes, Internet.

Internet.

So that's their phone. Second thing they're going to pay is their transportation, their car. And then other things fall in line after that.

Right?

So you're right, most people want to pay because they need their transportation to get the work to get to school. Right. That's how they're gonna, that's how they're gonna make their living.

You can sleep in your car, but you can't drive your house to work.

That's exactly right.

I don't even know how many times we have to say the Buckeye dealership consulting is the way to get your reinsurance done. Jeff, we've been talking about getting reinsurance pretty much from the beginning of this podcast. And if you haven't gotten it now, I don't know what the heck you're waiting for. Call the guys over at Buckeye, get it done, get set up, sell your own products, sell cpi, make money, build wealth and save some taxes.

And I'm going to add the great thing about switching reinsurance providers, which I've done just recently, is it does make you look at every product you're offering and just reassess your strategy, right? Do I have the right product? Do I have it priced right? How's my penetration? How are we going to remarket it? You know, so I'm going through all my marketing material and it's refreshes it in the salesman's mind to say, hey, this is a good product, this adds value. And I can relook at the economics and say, hey, did I have this price right? You know, am I offering the best service contract? I don't need to put a 36 month service contract on my loans. They don't go that long. In fact, I don't want them to go that long.

You know what I'm saying?

Like if you're at month 33 and your car breaks down, I don't want to tap my reinsurance company to put an engine in that. I want you to park it and get into a new one. So that's something that I changed by reassessing as I switched to this new provider with Buckeye. So anyways, definitely recommend it. Guys, get your reinsurance going.

Now.

When we, when we authenticate we do a couple of things differently. So there is no real regulation. There's regulation around the way that credit card data is stored, but there's no real regulation about the way that you authenticate. So there's lots of groups that will send just a regular link and it'll take you straight to the payment page. The risk that they run is risk, the risk that they run is chargebacks. And so we have an authentication method where it's easy to remember it's a link that's being sent directly to you, not an app that you have to download. So it's not time consuming, it's easy to get in and engage. They're going to enter their information. If that information matches the information that you've got, they validate their relationship with you and then they're able to move to the next, to the next step and make a payment.

And it should all seamlessly go into my DMS post and off we go.

We have integrations with both IDMs and AMs.

I remember that was, that was the theory back in the day. It was like as a dealership you needed an App. Right. Remember, there was a phase where it was like, well, I need my own app that people are going to download and in there they're going to have ways to contact me and it's going to have their payment portal. Whereas all it really was was a miniature version of your website. Right. It was just a mobile version of a website. They still had to go and log in. So it's like, hey, Mr. Customer, please go download our app in order to log into our website, in order to add your card in order to make a payment. Right. So what you've done is you've taken that out with a simple text link. Right. Because everybody gets their text messages.

Everybody. Yeah.

Way better than push notifications to an app.

Yeah, I turn all that crap off. Yeah. Don't be pushing everybody else, but I'll read every text.

Yep.

So, you know, we were talking last night about why you decided to do this, and I thought it was interesting.

That.

There, you know, you care. I think you care about us as dealers, but you really care about the consumer on the other end.

Why?

I mean, really, really and truly.

Why does that matter?

A couple of different reasons I have had. You know, I'm a founder. Founders have a little bit of risk tolerance. And so I've been through some things personally that have left me in embarrassing financial situations. But definitely from when I was growing up, my parents went through some hardship, and I was one of those kids that got sent to school to pay their school lunch with, you know, nickels and dimes and quarters. And it. I understand the other side of that, trying to pay the water bill and the power bill and all those things and not having the ability to be able to do that in a digital manner. And that's. That chasm is growing. As the world becomes more digital, cash is becoming more expensive and more cumbersome to deal with. And the bottom 25% of the population is unbanked or underbanked.

And you, and you talk about it in your presentation to us today, you talked about people who are unbanked spend almost 10% in fees to pay their. Their monthly payments in different ways. That was an interesting stat.

Average average salary for the unbanked or underbanked population is $41,000. And statistics show that 10% of those wages go monthly to pay fees and surcharges. So if I don't have a bank account, I have to digitize my cash, meaning I have to go cash my check at Walmart or a check casher. Right. And there's a fee that's associated with that. Average American consumer has between four, six recurring bills a month. So if I'm even paying $5 for a money order.

And how many. I mean, how many of our. I mean, I still take a lot of money orders. Do you, Jeff?

Not as many.

Not as many as you used to, but I mean, still a good many.

That's because I accept cash at the dealership I would like to get rid of. And speaking of getting rid of people, getting rid of.

You're getting rid of me.

What are you doing?

When you talk about technology and using it to run your processes more efficiently, I think that's one of the biggest things that I've noticed, having been on your platform for only three weeks now, is the way to systematize and automate a lot of what your collectors are doing. Because, man, I'll tell you what drives me the most insane is it's a busy Friday morning. We're trying to sell cars. We've got customers in the showroom. The phone is ringing off the hook with people just like, hey, can you run my card? Can you run my card? Let me give you a new card. Hey, can you run my cardigan? That drives me just crazy. And so I'm like, dude, I could, I could, I could get rid of an entire position.

It's so inefficient.

I just didn't have to be an order taker.

It's so inefficient for our collectors. They don't on a busy Friday when they need to be touched on. People that aren't going to pay. Yeah, they're stuck. They're in such a warning that are going to pay.

Yeah, it's people who are trying to pay us. They just haven't been given the right tools to do it. Right. Yeah.

So what does your platform do differently that that allows us to. To cut that out.

So 30% of collectors time within the industry is said to be spent cashier.

Dialing for dollars.

Well, it's not even dialing for dollars. I want to give you. And I've got it in on two different cards or I've got it on three different cards. I've got to bring you $100 in cash and then I've got two cards that I'm going to run it on.

And then this one fails and let.

Me try another one.

Yeah.

And can you waive the convenience fee? Because I've got three. All of the things that come with that. And so, you know, the flip side of that is your consumer doesn't want to be on the phone with you anymore, then you want to be on the phone with them. Shut up and take my money.

I don't want to be on the phone.

Here's my obligation. Let me get out of your way. So what we've done is created a digital experience that reaches people where they are via text message and gives them tools. You know, typical digital engagement today is I can pay with one payment method, typically a card, sometimes. Ach. But I can pay with one payment method and that's the end. Which generates a phone call. We have created a multi paying tool. We've created, you know, our cash product is, is just launching. Super excited about that. We've created multiple ways for people to pay and engage with you so that you don't have to pick up the phone and they don't have to pick up the phone to talk to you.

Yeah, I mean there's still a lot of people that, that pay with cash. Brought up your, your cash product. But so, so many other people don't want to take cash in the office because it creates.

There's risk involved.

Yep.

Risk of robbery, risk of theft in your store.

Well, even just human error.

Human error all the time checking for counterfeit bills.

Absolutely.

And so how would that, how would that work? If I have a customer that wants paying cash and they, they have moved two states over, but they're still unbankable and they get paid in cash. How does that work in this whole arena?

So they'll get a text message, they'll authenticate their relationship with you and they'll go to our cash. It's Blitzcash. Click. Blitzcash. They'll enter the amount that they want to pay. It'll pop a barcode with a GPS locator. It's going to take them to the closest participating retailer. They go to the closest participating retailer. 96,000 locations. Walmart, Walgreens, 7 11, Family Dollar, all a dollar. They go to the cashier, they hand the cashier, the cash cashier scans the barcode you paid.

So my customers can go in with this barcode, buy their cigs, buy their vapes and then scan the barcode and pay for it all in the same transaction.

And the lottery cards, milk and cereal for the kids.

That's pretty cool because. So when we talk about time savings. So you're saying my collectors won't be picking up the phone and running credit cards and then they won't be counting out cash at the end of the night and taking it to the deposit every single night?

That's right.

I can just get rid of that.

That's right.

So I've saved.

Yeah. You know, and, and back to the other thing I like is that you're able to automate a lot of the. We're big on promise space.

Right.

Somebody's going to make a promise to pay. To me, that means they're going to pay. We've called them, they're late, they're going to pay next week on a certain day. And I know you have a way that they can, they can set up that promise debate.

Right.

Then while you're on the phone with them.

Yep.

That's.

Their card's already there, they'll run it. But if they, if for some reason they don't set that up or if they're. Their card doesn't work on that day, you can automate it so that they are reminded the next day, hey, you didn't make that payment.

You need to contact us immediately.

Full blown communications platform. We want to give dealers and merchants the tools to communicate with their merchant or with their consumers, rather in the way that they do. If you want to wait for a few days before you reach out, you have the ability to be able to do that. If you want to reach out the day before to remind them that they've got a payment due the next day, you have the ability to be able to do that. That communication piece again. Reaching people where they are and giving them the ability to take immediate action is how you're going to create efficiencies, how you're going. And it's not just, you know, I say this and it's not just efficiencies, but it really is reputation management. The number one people complain online and go to regulators is billing.

Yeah.

So you give people a pleasant experience, you give them a decent experience, you make them feel like they're valued and respected. And that goes a long way when you're trying to deal with people and you're trying to get their commitment to get them to pay you.

Can I ask you what. So one of the banes of my existence with credit card processing is the chargeback. Right. Drives me. We don't have a ton, but when we do have them, like it's, it's freaking Greek to me. I don't get it. I log into the portal, this back end, whatever, and I got to submit all these documents and copies of signatures and all these other things to some who knows where. And then some person in the cloud just decides, yes or no, Jeff, we are going to take Your money back or. No, we're keeping it. Giving it back.

It could be scary, too.

Lied to you.

I mean, that could be scary.

100% lied to you. Right. So has Blitzpay found a way to make that easier for me, the dealer who doesn't want to spend their time chasing chargebacks?

Absolutely. So the first thing that we want to do is we want to capture a record of your engagement, of your digital engagement. Okay. These are all Internet transactions, right? Unless somebody's at your dealership and scanning a card for a down payment. In this instance, we want to capture the consumer coming in and registering his release, his or her relationship with both of you. Right. And then once we've captured that, we've got that record. And then as they go through and they engage, whether it be through text message or whether it be through adding a card or through multiple payments, you're going to keep a record of that. So if there is ever a chargeback, we can pull that record. And that record goes to the issuing bank, who is inevitably the group that's going to make the decision on the chargeback.

Okay. And this is something I do easily through the portal.

It is something that we actually do for you. So we reach out to you and do.

I can charge the fee for that?

You do.

Okay. When you go out and process the charge back and go get it back for me, you're gonna charge me a percentage of what we get back. Or a flat fee.

We charge you a flat fee. And it's not 500.

Okay, less than 500. More than five.

That's a. You know, all those things are scary. I mean, because if you sold a car to some idea and they had the car a year, and then all of a sudden it was repossessed for, you know, whatever, and then they charge back your down payment and every payment they made in that year, I mean, that could be some serious money, right? Yeah.

Well, what happens with us? And it's. It's the boyfriend that breaks up with the girlfriend who made the car payments, who then challenges all the transactions.

I mean, is that fraud? Because I feel like if a consumer does that to me, and I know it's that consumer, I mean, I think.

That should be put in jail.

I mean, that's just my opinion. But of course, I mean, you know.

Different jurisdictions are going to have different. I mean, good luck trying to deal with that. But yeah, it is. It's fraud and it's friendly fraud, and it's. It's been facilitated. You know, there's all sorts of regulations around card brands trying to make it harder for merchants who don't do a good job. Right. The goal with that is to protect the consumer. Right. So it really is. The onus is now back on the, on the merchant to make it clear that the consumer was actually responsible for those payments. So it's double sided. But you know, what we see in our industry is a lot of present. It's a lot of I'm mad because of X, Y and z reason and I'm using somebody else's card or I'm buying myself some time to get back on my feet. But we take care of all of that at blitzbay. As part of your engagement.

Yeah, that's helpful because it happens. It happens more often than you want it to happen.

Yeah. Yeah. Luke has so many chargebacks. Right. I mean, you're always paying for people's stuff. No. They don't know about.

And then, you know, what happens most, you know, fraud's gonna happen. What happens mostly is what you're talking about a girlfriend or boyfriend paying for something, then that happens, or a customer somehow getting a credit card on the black, black web or whatever and, and using those numbers. And then all of a sudden you get a phone call from somebody in New York. Well, there's, oh my gosh, there's fraud.

And then there's, I'm mad because, yeah.

They repoed my car last month and so I want to charge back the last payments because they have the car.

And flat out fraud. You know, I stole somebody's card to make my payments. You're not going to be able to do that.

You can't buy that.

Yeah, but, but this, the stuff that we do want to address is friendly fraud. We want to make sure that people are accountable to, to the agreements that they make.

You know, what people really care about is, you know, the expenses associated with, with payment processing. And you know, we're all kind of in that mindset that it costs 2 to 3% for payment processing and those can be offset with, with customer service fees. What do you want to call it? And you know, what should we be looking at when we look at our, our current vendor processing fees?

Yeah, what?

I mean, how do we figure this number out?

The easiest way to figure out your costs is to take the amount of money that you're processing and divide it.

By which fee was what your fee was. Right.

Period. And then look at your transactions. Right. And you can break down what the cost of each transaction was. And there are, you know, different, there are different ways to different businesses, have different needs. And what we've done is we've built a platform to cater to different needs of different businesses, and we've got pricing models that accommodate those.

It's a good point. You say that because when we talked about Luke's numbers earlier, he has a very large convenience fee because he has large payments. Right. And he has no auto pay penetration. So his processing fee per dollar is minimal. Almost nothing, because the customer bears that in the convenience fee. Mine's going to be about 50, 50 in between. What I find interesting is we had someone in our 20 group where we looked at his processing fees, and they were astronomical fees. But he also knew that his customers were getting charged a convenience fee, and he was still paying processing fees. That's the kind of stuff that dealers don't realize. And it could be. I mean, you could be with this merchant for three or four or five years.

And that's exactly right. How long has that gone off?

How long has that gone on where. Where a merchant, a processor did not give you direct.

And. And the.

And the. The dealership didn't know or they didn't. They didn't register the fact that their customer was also being charged a convenience fee.

And these are. These. This is not a small expense. This could be four to $10,000 a month, depending on how big you are.

Right.

So this could be a large number.

Yeah.

So you really. This is really. You know, we talk about the big expenses in. In our dealerships, and those are employees. Number one.

Right.

Advertising a lot of times. Number two, in the buyer pay here space, this is one of, like, it could be number three.

Yep.

And so you've got to be aware of this number.

And it's deliberately confusing when I look at my statements, if I can't identify what's happening on my statements, it's opaque. Right. We really. We're big on being very transparent, making it easy. And we want to educate. We want to educate dealers and merchants as to how this works and why there are costs that are associated. Right. But there are costs associated, and then there's also service that's associated with those costs. And then oftentimes you get what you paid for.

Yeah, I mean, we had, before we switched y', all, the company we were with at that time, We've been with it for a long time. And what we found that. What we found started happening is we could never get a problem fixed when.

We had a problem.

And service is a huge factor in this. Y' all have enough staff to make sure that you can handle us. If we call you, It's.

We do. Yeah, you can ask, you know, you can ask our.

I've not had a problem.

Ask our dealers. And it's I pick up the phone. Our sales staff picks up the phone, and we've got a phenomenal customer success team that's growing and that matters to us.

We'll put Robin's phone number at the.

Bottom of this video, her cell number.

At the end of editing. But you say that and it made me think about when my. My previous processor. They're a credit card processing company that has used some technology to try to communicate with me as the dealer. Right. I have a very rudimentary portal. It makes absolutely no sense. There's numbers everywhere. I don't know what they mean. I can't find a transaction because there's 50 different dropdown menus and ways to sort of. You guys are a technology company first and you've got the credit card processing attached to it, Right. I think that's the difference. You consider yourself a fintech where these other people are just financial companies that.

Well, they're processors that blew up a dot com. Yeah, they're payments processors. And we are tech first. We are engagement first. Those things are. Those things matter to me. And you know, you talk about convenience fees, we actually make it convenient.

So.

So it's not just a fee that's associated with a pay to pay right here. I don't want to pay my credit card fees, so I'm going to charge a fee to offset.

That's a really good point because, I mean, you're right. If it's unconvenient and you're still getting charged convenience fee, that kind of sucks, right?

Well, it does. And there are a lot of our customers that had a tough time wrapping their head around a convenience fee until they recognized that the technology was reaching their customers where they were and making it so they didn't have to drive across town to make a payment or to buy a money order. Whatever that engagement was, it was actually saving them time and money. And that is. That's a big deal.

And I don't know if I can. We've changed a few things in our collections over the last. Over the last year since we switched y'.

All.

And I don't know if I'm sure yalls convenience of paving has helped, but my delinquency has actually gone. Gone down. I have more people current year over year by about 5% compared to the previous year. You know, maybe it's Some of our automation, maybe it's some of the convenience of paying, but it's truly, I believe it's helped my place.

Hey guys, real quick. Want to make sure everyone is planning on attending buy here, pay here, United States Summit 2024 down at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. Right down that way from where I'm at.

How well did you say down there? I'm like, it's across there.

So it's going to be a great time. We're going to have a lot of fun. April 23rd, 24th and 25th down in Las Vegas. April is a great time to visit. You're close enough to me, you could come up here to my neck of the woods. We'll take you hiking, we'll go boating, we'll do some surfing, you know, stop in, whatever.

The, the main reason everybody's going to come, Jeff, is to see us. We're going to do the closing wrap up every day. We're going to be there, we're going to be jovial, we're going to be exciting, we're going to be fun. We're going to teach you all new things. We're going to wrap it up for a bow every, at the end of every day and give it to you so you can take it home and put those actions in place.

So we talk about self service. You're at about 80% self service, which means I don't have to pick up the phone to have a conversation with someone. I make my payment or if I do have to engage, I can engage digitally and it's quick when I'm in and out.

Yeah. And I said probably the other 20%. There are people that for some reason are not willing to pay their full due. Maybe they're two babies behind or whatever. There's a reason why that extra 20% is calling us. And we set it up that way because you're able to set up, okay, if you're not making 100% of your payment, you've got to call our office.

And the solution in the past has been drive everybody to auto pay, drive everybody to auto pay. But the reality is auto pay doesn't fit everybody.

It doesn't fit unbankable people at all.

When people are managing paycheck to paycheck and they need the convenience, they want control of their money and they need.

Control of their money.

Our technology reaches them where they are and it gives them control of their money to pay in ways that are convenient to them.

I remember sitting at a convention and somebody talking about they had 96% auto pay penetration, but they had, they had delinquency.

Yeah, yeah.

How does that work?

Right. Doesn't make any sense. Well, that, what illustrates that point is when you, when we put people on auto pay, it scares them, right? Because it's like, well, no, no, I have 15 different credit or debit cards. I don't know which one's going to have money on it this Friday. Right.

And I don't know who I'm going to have to pay this Friday. You know what I mean?

And they do feel trapped.

And so I think that's it. Because when I look at some of those customers, when I look at their drop down menu of the credit cards they have on their account, people that call in on Friday morning.

Yes.

Well, which card should I run? Oh, do you have the one ending in three, five, six, three? No, I got 15 other ones. Well, let's add this one. And you're like, what in the world is going on?

Well, to that point, you don't care, I don't care. But you want to make it easy for them.

I want them to be able to do it, but I want them to.

Be able to do it. And that's why they don't want to be on that auto pay.

You don't care how they pay as long as they're able to pay. And they need special, I mean, the unbanked and underbanked consumer often needs special concessions. But even through the prime community, you know, you talk about rents or you talk about other things, it makes it easier for people to get in and get out. And that's, that's the goal of the technology. That's the goal of the platform. Yeah.

So I want to wrap this up with one comment. If you guys go back to September, our episode 291, right. We did the battle of the payment process, right? And I went through the three main processors. Repay pay near me, let's pay. And I interviewed the salesman on all three, right? So if you guys go to that episode, you'll see the breakdown. We talked about their models, we talked about, you know, chargebacks, we talked about fees, we talked about technology platforms. Because I was really looking for a payment processor, right? So I did this to scratch my own itch. Went all the way through it, looked at everybody. Some vendors got back to me in a very quick time with follow up and answers to my questions. Other vendors, not so much. You guys can listen to the episode, decide who was who. And I actually chose a processor based on a vibe, right? Like A feeling. And it had so much to do with their available cash network at the time. And I got a contract from them, and I was ready to sign up with this vendor with this contract. And then I started looking through the other fees that they didn't tell me in the three phone calls that I had with them earlier. And all of a sudden I'm like, wait a minute, I'm gonna have these other fees in here. And I had five conversations with you, and you never mentioned them until I had a contract in my hand. That was a big turn off for me. Right.

Can you explain fees? Can you explain what a PCI fee is? Because this is, this is, this is on everybody's statement. And I didn't know what this was until I was explaining.

Can you explain it? I will tell you, but then you're going to cut this.

We will not worry about that later.

Okay.

Anyway, oftentimes it's a junk fee they charge us. Typically our processing partner and our processing bank is going to charge us a fee to make sure that you are in compliance with pci. Meaning you do not have someone call you to make a payment and you take a note on a sticky note and then stick it on somebody's computer for you to run. Right. There's PCI training and there's.

Wait, what? Which is why I'm. Is why I'm converting over to self.

Help, which is why we're cutting this. But those fees can get pretty outrageous. And, you know, oh, well, everybody's looking to make a buck and I support that as long as it's reasonable. As long as it's reasonable. And as long as it's disclosed and ethical and upfront.

Yeah, but go watch. Go listen to that episode. You did a great job. And what's so great is that Jeff actually listened to me once and went with the vendor. I told him to go do the start with. Yeah, yeah, I did.

So to your credit, Robin and Blitzpay, and guys, as we have Blitzpay as a sponsor here on the podcast, you're going to hear their name over the next couple of weeks, months. It's a vendor that we personally use. Right. Which we try to stick to.

Yep.

So that's our kind of shout out.

And what was great, Robin said, hey, guys, I want y' all to make sure that the audience knows this. If, if you have any questions about your current situation, you will fill those calls. Your guys will fill that, that call and say, hey, you got a pretty good deal. I don't understand this. Hey, this explain this to us because, I mean, I didn't know what you explained to us last night and today. I didn't know hardly any of that stuff.

It makes a big deal. It makes a big difference when you understand the industry and when you've got people that you call and just bounce stuff off of. We're open for all of those questions. And we care about the industry. We care about our dealer partners. We care about the buying here pay space, and we care about the consumer. That's important to me, and that's important to us as a company. Yeah.

Cool. Robin, thank you so much.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

We'll get some Peter Coladas.

All right. Thank you for listening. Please leave us a review. We'll catch you in the next episode.