Video Transcription

Hey, this is Allen Kopelman with another episode from B2B Vault: The Payment Technology Podcast. Today, we’re going to do one of our news roundups. I haven’t done one in a couple of weeks, so there are four stories we’re going to talk about today. So the first one is Buy Now pay later, which continues to grow. More companies are offering it to merchants, but the faults are also growing. So there has been a ton of news stories about buy. Now, pay later more FinTech companies are getting into this space moving very quickly, quicker than the credit card companies can do it. I suspect that many card issuers will attempt to offer some hybrid solution to buy now pay later. Possibly letting people select longer payouts at lower interest rates to compete with the buy now pay later companies. But we’ll see how long that will take them to catch up because people into fintech can generally move a lot quicker than the banks.

But one of the things that have been in the news lately is that quite a few of the buy now pay later companies have been experiencing excessive defaults. So that means that the scammers slash, you know, the people who try, you know, professional scammers that want to rip off people that they’ve discovered some hole in somebody or one or two of these companies processes. But you know, a lot of merchants want to offer that. We offer it at Nationwide Payment Systems. We have programs for hard goods, programs for services, programs for CPAs and accountants, and programs for attorneys. So it’s an excellent product that allows companies to offer financing at lower rates than people taking out a personal loan or, you know, putting it on their credit card and stretching out payments. They’re paying anywhere from 10 to 19% APR. So buy now pay later is a great option for businesses to offer their customers.

Companies are now accepting Bitcoin are you ready to join the trend? There are tons of companies now, overstock.com, a couple of airlines. Some banks are considering accepting cryptocurrency for loan payments, a few retailers’ jewelry stores. Crypto is trending in the luxury markets. I think this is going to grow with high dollar goods jewelry, boating, yachts, automotive people putting a down payment on a car or buying a whole car with cryptocurrency, possibly buying a house. International business will be big with crypto. In the United States, I think a lot of people view crypto more as an investment. There’s a lot of trading going on of crypto and over in Europe and outside of the United States. Um, I think they view crypto as kind of a way to keep their money safe because maybe those countries have unstable currency.

We’re lucky in the U.S., we have a stable dollar, but in many countries, the money’s not stable. They take their money and buy crypto and get more money, but they use it a lot in business. And I think that that trend will come to the U.S. especially doing international transactions, because, with international transactions, you’re not going to have to deal with, uh, wires. You don’t have, which requires somebody possibly to go to their bank and sign many papers. You’re not going to have to deal with that and the currency exchange. You’re not going to have to deal with that. So if you’re interested in finding out how crypto can work for your business, you can contact us and go to our page npsank.com/cryptocurrency and get more information there.

Charities and nonprofits are joining the band bandwagon again, starting to except, cryptocurrency at, churches, synagogues, all types of nonprofits. You know, it’s a, it’s a unique way for people to donate to the not-for-profit. Now’s probably a great time of the year to get set up with it. Anybody who’s been doing day trading is probably thinking that they’re going to have to pay some taxes. They’re going to sell some of their cryptocurrency instead of giving it, paying the IRS, they can donate some of it to your charity. So it’s a great way to, you know, possibly attract somebody who would not normally donate but would with cryptocurrency.

The next thing is a crazy story, which has been bothering me for a while, but there’s a lot of these smash and grab robberies. We’re watching them on the news, and then what’s going on is now the retailers have had enough. The retail Federation has contacted Congress because what’s going on is these people are professional thieves. You know, they’re going in there, hitting stores and stealing many items. Some of it’s a lot of luxury goods. I think the other day, someone broke into a Lamborghini dealership in Chicago stole $2 million worth of Lamborghini watches. I guess that’s like something costly. I don’t know where they’re selling these watches because I’m sure there are serial numbers. And you know, they’re going to, someone’s going to, who knows that if that can even be sold, but some sure somebody in the black market will buy it.

But what’s been going on, especially in San Francisco, where they let people steal up to $990, and they can’t get arrested, they run into CVS, fill up whole bags full of cosmetics all that. And then it’s being sold on these marketplaces. So we’ve been contacted by, um, by the card brands. And they’re suggesting that we make sure that any of our merchants who are running marketplaces, so eBay, Amazon, Walmart, those are big marketplaces, but there are tons of other small marketplaces. Even Etsy is a marketplace. So people could be selling these stolen goods online. And, you know, they’re asking the CEOs of all these retail companies are asking Congress to crack down on this and do something about it because they’re losing millions of dollars is going out the door. Tons of places, especially in San Francisco, are closing up or hardly putting anything out on the shelves because people were stealing like crazy. And then it stuff’s ending up on the internet. So that’s some crazy, crazy, crazy stuff.

So that’s it for today for the B2B Vault news Roundup, you know, catch us on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform. We’re on Spotify, Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, and a bunch of others that I’d never heard of. I guess they pick up the feed from Anchor, which is part of Spotify, and they get us out there. So here’s another episode of B2B Vault in the books. You can also follow us on social media, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn; talk to you soon. Have a great day from B2B Vault.