Video Transcription

Hey, everybody Allen Kopelman here with the B2B Vault: The Payment Technology Podcast for business owners and merchants. So today, we’re going to dive into payment news. So we went in, we look every week or every two weeks, and we find the top payments stories that should be of interest to, you know, all business owners out there. If you’re processing credit cards in your business, this should be of interest to you. So let’s get into it.

I’ve been following the first story now for a couple of months. What’s going on with this thing called tap to pay? So the picture’s a little that’s telling, tap to pay. The thing is crazy. Google on the Android phone, and then apple on the apple phone are in development. And soon to be released where you can take a phone up to another phone and make a payment. So phone the phone payment, but is that can you know, who, what merchants are going to use that, you know, there is a big safety, you know, there could be a good safe level of safety with those transactions because now I’m using my apple card or wallet. Okay. It’s, it’s a little off the wall, but are apple and Google going to play together, right?

So are you going to be able to tap an apple phone up to an Android phone and do a transaction? Right. That’s what I said, you know, but who should be shaking in their boots? Like I look at it, and I go, well, maybe some small merchants might start using that, you know, start using that. But it could be limited because when you look at the market, we used to make phone apps a few years ago, right? So when we looked at phone apps, we saw how many people downloaded the apps on which platform. So how many people downloaded the HTML five version, which is just like a stat, a mobile website, how many people downloaded the Android version, and how many people did that? Apple, the apple Android and the web five. So web five, there wasn’t too much of that, like one or 2%. And then basically you would say like one mark, one would dominate the other. Right. But it was pretty much like very close to like 50, 50. It’s hard to believe. Right.

You would think from the number of commercials on TV about Apple that apple is the, you know, the biggest part of the market now from podcasting; 40% of podcasts are listened to on apple. Okay. And then beyond that, you would think, like, oh, Google podcasts would be next, right? Nope. Google is not next. Spotify is next. Many other podcasts networks make up the other 40%. So there’s a lot of smaller networks, Amazon Music, iHeart Radio, Stitcher, Spotify, Pandora, you know, overcast. We were looking at a whole list before, right. And there’s like 20 or 30 of these like networks. Many of them pull the feed from Apple or Google. Whoever, the person who’s listening, is the preferred app they use. Right. You know, so everybody’s got their preferred app, but you know, on the apple side, apple, you know, definitely people with apple phones, most of them are listening through the apple podcasts. I can see how this could work for like peer to peers. Like, you know, your little brother wants $5. No, that’s not what this is for. This is for a business consumer-to-business.

I have a business phone just sitting there. Like, I don’t know how they would do it. Maybe like, you know, the one that I would think like the companies who should feel threatened by this would be square. PayPal and Stripe should be pretty much threatened. They should feel very threatened by this because this could impact their market. You know, not so much Stripe, but PayPal and, and square. This could affect their market share of the business. And I did read that. So you’re saying like, They’ll have like a little machine where No, no, no phone. Just use a phone to make make a payment. There’s going to be able to take their phone, go up to your phone, tap phones, and pay the business. I don’t know. I know you can Go to Walgreens and pay with your phone right now. That’s an NFC. Yeah. That’s an NFC payment. Near-field communication. That’s going on right now. That’s what’s in the picture of her And everyone’s phone. Yeah. That sounds like a horrible way for people to steal, yeah. It could be because it could be dangerous from that perspective, but who knows?

You have to hold your face up to do like if you use apple pay. So they knock you out and there over your face, scan your phone, transfer 1.25, whatever interest count. I know it sounds a little, I’m not sure how it’s going to work, but it’s going to, but like, let’s say you have merchants and that instead of having a card reader, now they don’t have a card reader and they can just take the person can wave the credit card or wave their phone over the phone and do a transaction. It might work for mobile businesses because we have somebody with like a hundred air converts, like a hundred air conditioning guys driving around. Right. I worked for a company. They don’t buy the readers because now, as we tell them, oh yeah, you want to buy a hundred readers. It’s a hundred bucks apiece; it’s ten grand. And they’re like, forget that. We’re not doing it. Well, this key enters $10,000 too much money to spend. But now, with this, there are gateways like gateway NMI. We work with them, and they’re integrating this into their gateway. So it’ll be interesting to see this tap, to pay like how this will work. I’m always paying attention. When I’m in the grocery store, I pay attention. Like, how do people pay? I’m telling you, most people stick their cards in the machine. They’re not waving their card. They’re not on any of the phones. Yeah.

Some people use the phone. Well, If she, like, if she’s got money in apple pay, then that’s all she’ll use. Right? Most of the people from the cleaning service @SupremeClean are paying her with Apple Pay. Well, that’s why I always talk about the consumerization of payments so that businesses have the payment methods that the consumer wants. Eventually, you’re going to have to have a tap to pay because people will want to do tap to pay. So what’s going to happen with it. Hey, we’re going to be following this and see, you know, when it’s, when is apple releasing? When is Google releasing crypto and real estate? I’ve done a bunch of podcasts about cryptocurrency being used in businesses that came across this story and another story yesterday. But we included this one from the real deal. They follow real estate transactions in Miami. I was reading this. I was like, wow, these companies, if you did this tree, any of these transactions mentioned in the real deal, call me, you can get my link in the show notes. I had to contact him because they described it as Justin’s real estate transaction. Some guy wanted to pay a few million dollars for some house in Miami or a condo. I read this, right? So the guy took the crypto, the Bitcoin, and then he sold it, sold the Bitcoin into some stable coin. And then they took the stable going and transferred it into dollars. So they sold the Bitcoin, paid somewhere five to 8% and fees to transfer it into the stable, and then sold the stable coin so that it paid money for that. Then that would get the money out of the wallet, wherever that was into somebody’s bank account.

Right? So most of these platforms only transfer $25,000 a day. So, you know, unless you’re calling upon the phone going, I need more money, more money, more money, but I don’t know-how, you know, maybe even if you could get a hundred grand a day, a million would take ten days, we could have done that transaction. And one transaction, they probably paid about 10% between the three transactions that they did to get that money into a bank account. We could have done it for 2%. I know the real estate agent I talked to about this said they have a situation with an attorney. He wouldn’t disclose it, how it works out. But, and I said, I asked him, I said, well, how long does it take? And he said you don’t even want to know. Yeah, well, we can do it. I spoke to a title company and an attorney who does closings. And I explained to him, I said, we can get this done for you. Someone can; you could send them an invoice. They pay with the crypto; the money would go into your Oscar account. And 48 hours. They were like, wow, that’s insane. They were like, that’s crazy. And I was like, yeah, I said, and it’s way cheaper than cashing out all the crypto and then doing it into a stable coin and this and of that. So if you’re in real estate and want to simplify the way you take cryptocurrency, let me tell you a cryptocurrency is not going away.

Large transactions are being used for crypto as to price. A Bitcoin is going to start going up. There are going to be more people wanting to do crypto transactions. So luxury items, jewelry, cars, everything, you know, what are the trends in retail? Okay. So buy now pay later. That’s going to, that’s a big trend. Square is rolling out its Buy Now pay later service, like many other point of sale companies. I see emails from them rolling out for their retail customers’ Buy Now pay later. There has been some fraud associated with that, but you know, the business doesn’t have to deal with Buy now pay later. How do they, the application process to me seem so weird? I just don’t understand it. How they can just Is approved. Somebody goes, well, let’s say you’re buying an item for $800. As long as you got 800 open on your credit card, they’ll approve you. The thing is if somebody goes if somebody is a fraudster and they go close the credit card down, and maybe they’re not an up and up person like they don’t have an actual address. I mean, today I see all these people, like it kind of cracks me up. There’s a big trend on Instagram of all these people having like van life and RV life. Like all these people. One of my friends went to a national park. He was telling me, he goes, the national park was packed with RVs and vans that people like to live in.

He was shocked to see that many people in the national park, but he said, you know, with COVID going on, a lot of people just said, Hey, I’m just going to go on vacation. And they went on, they went on this in America, right? Yeah. But some people like to have a mobile lifestyle. Like they’re a social media influencer, or they’re doing some kind of, you know, online work, you know, and then they take off, and they ride around. I ride around the country. I met this woman, and she does like social media for businesses. And she just travels around everywhere. And she’s got like a special satellite dish on a van. And she’s, you know, all different spends about a week or two and a different location. She’s been doing that for a couple of years. She said she started before the pandemic. She wanted to travel all over the United States. So that’s what she’s doing. Contactless payments. This is continuing to grow. As you know, people doing all kinds of contact, close things, you can get a credit card. Now you can wave it over the machine; wave your phone over the machine soon. It’s going to be the phone to phone. Right. So that’s gone QR payments. Okay. So now this is we’re going to talk about QR payments and text payments and just getting texts in general. But first, let me touch on QR. We should’ve put text on the list, but let’s talk about this QR thing.

So there’s a lot of fraud going on with these QR codes. Now people will go to a business or see a sign, and everybody’s gotten so used to using these QR codes. When we started doing QR codes with the apps, nobody knew what a QR code was. About ten years ago, a pandemic woke the QQ QR code up. I remember getting like a few phone calls from some restaurants. When the pandemic started, they went, Hey, we need to make a QR code so people can scan it. How much will you charge us to do that? And I was like, felt bad. I go; I don’t want you to think, like I said, don’t take this the wrong way. But I said I’m just going to send you a link to a free website. You can make your QR code. You just go to a QR code maker website punch in your URL. Boom, you got a QR code. They were like; we don’t have to pay for that. I was like, no. They said no. Some company was trying to charge them like $800 to make a key marketer. I was like, man, if you paid 800 bucks for that, click on this link. I sent the person a link. They couldn’t believe someone was charging them 800 bucks. I go; maybe they’re making it look fancy with colors and your logo and all that. But you don’t need all that. You can do that now for free. Yeah, you probably can. I’m just saying, but a basic, you know, there’s probably a hundred websites that make QR codes, but there’s been a lot of fake QR codes out there. People scan them. Then they end up going to a website.

That’s asking them for personal information. Like they think it’s their bank and it’s not their bank. You get a fake letter in the mail and says, oh, your bank account, scan this and log into your bank account. Well, you think you’re going to the bank of America website or chase or Citibank or wherever you bank instead, it’s taking you to some bogus website you’re putting in your username and password for your bank. And then that person, the scammer, is getting it. They’re logging into the bank, and then they Zell themselves some money off of your bank account. So be very careful when you’re doing stuff like that. There’s also been text messages going around saying, oh, there’s an issue with your bank account, click here. Don’t touch that. You know, when your bank sends you text messages, what it looks like and all that. So don’t be, you know, you have to be very careful with these transmit QR payments. That’s growing tax payments where people can text you or email you a link. So you can pay that’s growing, you know, and read and retail also loyalty programs. This is something that’s going to start. They’re going to start lighting up like crazy. There are many companies now developing it, developing inside their retail software. So if I come in, I use the same credit card all the time.

Then my loyalty points that I get loyalty points from that restaurant. And then it’s linked to that credit card. And then you get you, you get loyalty points, and then you can redeem those loyalty points for, you know, get money back in store. So that’s going to be, that’s growing like crazy. You know, the next thing that’s going like crazy. And I saw Publix is doing this. You know, they’re like the biggest grocery store in South Florida. Although they were probably like, you know, it was Publix for years. And then when Dixie and then a couple of other little places, everybody sells, target sells food, Walmarts L’s food, Costco sells food, all these ELLs, you know, all the grocery stores, fresh market whole foods, sprouts, sprouts. I think Publix owns sprouts. And then perhaps GreenWise is, yeah, I don’t know who owns spreads. I thought sprouts was also a public site. I think it’s like a smaller version of whole foods. I don’t, I’m not certain I’m not sure who owns that, but you know, there’s a lot of competition. So I was in Publix, and they were like, oh, you got to download the Publix app. And then, in the Publix app, you put your credit cards in there. When you come up to the front, you pay, and then for every $300 you spend, you get back 1%, which is three bucks, three bucks. And then you have access to all the coupons. Cause I saw in the store, there were coupons, but it said only a digital coupon, which you can only access through the app.

Cause that always confused me at poets, you put your phone number, and it didn’t do anything. Right? Right. So now they took it a step further. Well, they had something linked to your phone number and the app, but it never really translated to like savings. Cause you used to have to go in their app and click a bunch of coupons. Then when you checked out, you put it in your phone number, and supposedly it linked up. But I tried it a few times. It never really worked, but now they have this app. They want you to put your credit card, and they want you to pay. And then who knows? Publix is probably tracking how many times you come to the store? How often are you there? What time are you there? They’re going to know everything about vacation. You like to go to the best. Oh yeah. They’re going to know they’re going to be able to buy. They’re going to be, if you buy organic or not, they’re going to know you, but they’re going to be able to send you offers now that you know, you might get better offers because now they’re going to send you coupons inside the app. I think we’re going to see a lot more of that because people like loyalty, people like points that you can double up, you have your credit card with cash back, and then you have your, and then you get extra points from Publix. Now you get double, double cashback, you know? So that’s rather crazy. So this next thing I wanted to include is all the stuff going on with the IRS.

If you own a business, you know, and you know, you have an accountant get an account. If you’re using an accountant, make sure you talk to your accountant about this kind of stuff with the IRS. So the first thing is cryptocurrency. They don’t even know what they’re doing at the IRS from one day to the next day, and they have all these rules. And then the reporting rules the, from the wallet companies like Coinbase bit dance, FTX, crypto.com. Those don’t go into effect like 20, 23, or 2024. So I don’t even know why they have cryptocurrency on this current tax return. What kind of information do you have to provide to them? It’s a little bit convoluted. I would talk to your tax professional and ensure what you’re doing with that. With our product, we have NPSCoin. You can get information about how we do it, where you don’t take possession of the coin, you get the cash. So that alleviates the IRS problem with crypto. And like I said, anything you want to find more information about, I’m posting my link tree link in the show notes, and you can click on that. And that’s how you can find out information about what we’re talking about here. See the latest podcast episode and social media and connect with me or set up an appointment to find out more.

The next thing is a $600 reporting thing. Right? Okay. So that’s, everybody should be freaking out about that. I saw yesterday morning; news stories where senators and people in the house of representatives are putting together a bill, and they want to get rid of this. They like it. So it does. I mean, I think that if you’re a business and you’re using these, you need to be declaring the income because that’s, you know, I’ve owned a lot of businesses, and I was forced to declare all my income, but you know, this is something that’s, you know, becoming a problem. And you know, those apps should probably say, oh, well, if this person is getting over a certain amount of money a week or a month or something like that, okay, well this is no longer a person, you’re a business you need to register as a business. As much as I hate this, I feel this affects the servicer, the babysitter’s dog walkers, and stuff like that. Right? Yeah. But I mean, it’s also like for those same people, Hey, get your stuff together. Like if you’re making 600 bucks a month, right. To me, in your side hustle, that’s like a little light bulb. Like, Hey, if I take this a little bit more seriously, I might be able to double it. Right? Yeah. The business, you have a whole Business, the whole business. So I mean, it’s time to start, you know, you know, pull up your big boy pants, get yourself a Yeah. Go to the net take your business to the next level. You know, is it time to take your business to the next level?

I mean, this Is bad, right. But it’s going to hurt like little stuff like the babysitter. She goes, the girl goes and makes, or a boy goes to babysits and makes $30, $40. Okay. Stop paying them with these apps. Just give them some, can’t go to the ATM, give them some cash. Okay. Help these people out. But if you have a real business and you’re using this, you need to get it together, and you know, do it. If you don’t want to pay fees, sign up for a cash discount. I don’t want to pay your business with my cash app account. Right. I don’t, and I will because I support small businesses, but I genuinely don’t want who you pay. You People want to pay with their credit card because it gives them some proof, and it makes you look more legit as a business, you know? Venmo and PayPal are starting to integrate into some point of sale and stuff like that. And I think we’re going to see, that’s like another trend we’ll see with retail and restaurant as Venmo and PayPal decide to pay commission to the pig, you know, get into the ecosystem of payments. Right. So when they get into the ecosystem of payments, they’re going to pay commissions to the payment companies so they can access that network, you know? But I think businesses that are used, but I was talking to somebody I’ve mentioned servers at the end of the year. Right. Servers. So somebody said to me, they said, oh yeah, I was in a restaurant. And the server said, oh yes. Don’t leave a tip on the check.

Here’s my phone number cash at me. The tip. I was like, really? Well, that sounds like she’s just trying to scam all the other servers out of their tips. Well, I don’t know, I usually go into a pool, and you can’t pool tips. That’s against the law. If you pool tips that you can have like a problem. There have been many lawsuits about tip pooling against restaurants for pooling, tip pooling, and making the servers tip out the bartenders and all that. Because if I’m the server and I’m only making whatever $3 an hour and the bartenders making $15 an hour, right. They pay bartenders more. Why am I tipping the bartender? No. Yeah, you’re right. If you want to tip them voluntarily. Okay. Voluntarily you give them some money, and you have to tip the busboy, and he’s getting paid hourly, and you tip, but there have been lawsuits about tipping and restaurants and adding on you see the thing in an illegal jar. No, they can share the tips amongst all the employees. They’re going to split it up evenly. But those people are probably not making like three bucks an hour, like a waitress in a Chili’s now I get to difference. Right? Like, somebody was telling me they were in a bar, and the girl said, Hey, cash at me, the tip. Okay. Like, you know, the bar should be worried. Do you know? Like, I don’t know. I don’t know.

You know, we’re probably seeing some regulation or something, but those people should be worried. If you’re doing that, like let’s say you work at a business, you know, and you say, and somebody wants to give you a tip and then they don’t have any cash. And then you’re getting it in the cash app. Right. Let’s say you’re a bellman at a hotel. The guy goes, oh, I want to give you 50 bucks or 20 bucks. And it was that I didn’t have any cash on me. Right. So then the Bo bellman goes, oh, semi cash app. And the guy cash apps, the guy five, ten bucks. Right? Well, you could have a problem at the end of the year; you get a three, four, $5,000 in tips, right? Not in cash came to you for cash. Guess what? You got 1099, and then bam, that’s reported. And then bam, you’re paying a bunch of taxes on that. So I was like, Hey, you know, we have ATM. So go to the ATM, get some cash out, and give cash to the people you want to tip. Like you want to pay the babysitter, the lawn guy, whoever you’re paying, pay them in cash. Please don’t give them this money through these apps, and let’s listen. They should be; people need this. If you’ve got a business set up a business account, we did a podcast where Justin and I talked about how to start a business and all the different ways to do it. What, how to set it up. It’s not; I mean, if you listen to that podcast, you’ll learn a lot about how to set up a business. I mean, we talked for almost an hour about how to do it. The How to start a business episode contained a lot of great information and all that, but you know, like these IRS regulations, I think we’re going to see some pushback from Congress. People you know, who gets, you know, this year is 2022. There will be an election cycle at the end of this year. You know, who, what see, who gets into Congress? There are a lot of seats up for grabs for people retiring. There could be some changes to some of this crazy stuff.

Thanks for listening to B2B Vault: The Payment Technology Podcast. We’re available on all the major podcasting networks; you can follow us on social media. You can check out the B2Bvault.info website, and also, you know, you’ll see my link tree and the show notes. And that’s how you can get, find out more information about what we do at B2B vault and nationwide payment systems and about our products and the latest podcast episodes. Have a great day, everybody. Carpe Diem.