Episode 40: The Death of the Locked-In Merchant with Viktor Popovic 

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Hello everyone. Good afternoon. This is Jay here with Social Literature Report

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and we have Victor. He’s a guest speaker here today. He’s going to teach us a

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little bit more about what he does. He’s building a fintech company and he’s got

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a lot of experience before working with something that’s not really related with

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fintech. So, um, Victor, you know, thanks for having thanks for joining us

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here. Do you have any do you have do you want to introduce yourself and tell them

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what you do?

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>> Yeah. Yeah. Hi, this is uh Victor Papovich and uh um I uh I’m in the

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fintech SAS uh business uh today. Um but I wasn’t in the payment world uh before

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this. My my background is really all e-commerce and merchant side and um but

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just from my my past experience uh kind of led me led me this way. Um but yeah

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uh thank you for having me today.

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>> Yeah, of course. So, normally this this podcast, this segment, we talk about

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crypto. I know um crypto is kind of like this new thing for many people. So, um I

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know you mentioned you’re building fintech SAS. So, you know, but this

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wasn’t the only thing that you’ve done before. So, why don’t you tell us a

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little bit about what you’ve done before? Like what led you to where you

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are today just to kind of set the tone?

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>> Yeah, absolutely. So, um I actually stumbled into the e-commerce. I it

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wasn’t it wasn’t something I I planned. But even before that, you know, my my uh

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life led me from from former Yugoslavia um born and raised there and then this

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when the civil war broke out in uh mid mid 90s or early 90s. I didn’t want to

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take part in the war. So I left uh to neighboring country Hungary and um ended

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up staying there uh initially as a refugee and then kind of trying to

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settle in uh for about four four and a half years. Then I had a opportunity to

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come and study in the United States in late 90s and I I chose to uh come to

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Florida and and end up graduating from Amber Aeronautical University with the

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aviation business degree. And then after 911, um there was a lot of challenges in

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the aviation industry, a lot of layoffs and people very afraid to to fly. And so

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it was it was I had a tough time finding a job. And uh a friend of mine um

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happened to ask me uh if I wanted to start an e-commerce business. And

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without even thinking or or asking any questions or what are we going to do,

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how are we going to do it, what’s gonna who’s going to do what, I just said yes.

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Like I was like, “Yeah, ready.” And so, um,

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>> that’s very appealing because not a lot of people are willing to do that. So, my

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respects for you jumping.

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>> Yeah. I mean, I don’t know if it was a desperation move or it just uh let me

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try something else cuz cuz like I said, I I’ve you know, I’ve gone through we

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have se seven airports in in Southeast Florida and I I remember knocking on

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every door. I would park a car at one part of the airport and I would just

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literally office to office. I was not going to enter my resume. I couldn’t

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couldn’t couldn’t couldn’t get an interview. Anyhow, we started this uh

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came up with the list of about 40 products. Um one of the products was uh

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these uh hanger cleaning floor uh machines uh for for cleaning airport

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hangers. It was a surface cleaner. And then my my friend ran a keyword

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analysis, hey, I I found out that anything with with word pressure has a

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very high number of searches online, but very few websites offering product. So,

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why don’t we focus on pressure washers?

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>> Uh, and if it doesn’t work out, we’ll go back to the original idea of aviation

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parts and and supplies. Well, it worked out.

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>> I love that. So, you mentioned this was like 200 a little bit after 2001.

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>> This is Yeah, this is this is two I started the business 2003.

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>> Well, my respects, man. I was a baby back then. So, so um you mentioned the

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the search words like on Google were very popular at the moment with power

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cleaner. Is is that what you pretty much said, right? Like how were you guys able

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to trace that back then? Because obviously the internet right now, all

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that stuff matters more than ever and it’s so much easier to track that today

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than ever before. I take it.

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>> Yeah, it it wasn’t easy. As a matter of fact, not many websites, there was no

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blogs back then. There was no podcast. you couldn’t just, you know, plug in

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into a a podcast or or read a blog to read uh the the information on this. You

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you really had to kind of like dig dig and dig and then trial and

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error. Uh I remember there was an it was an overture

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uh uh search engine that was powering Yahoo and there was a keyword tool which

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I found out from a friend uh that does this and it was kind of kind of ratio of

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however many traffic was feeding and it was just obviously it’s just estimates

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wasn’t exact science but this um ratio was very favorable with the keyword uh

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pressure but it didn’t it didn’t you know the rest wasn’t wasn’t n’t wasn’t

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smooth sailing. You know, I remember it took me six months and this is, you

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know, something to to really um share w with with with your audience is um it

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took me six months to convince the first vendor, a

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manufacturer of pressure washers to believe that we can sell pressure

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washers online. Because back in the day the they the was the way they used to do

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it is they would have these machines and they would load them into vans. They had

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um dealers in parts of the country and they would they would more they load

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load pressure washers they would drive around the city make stops at certain

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shops and stores and then they would pull them out hook up the gardens and

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then they would demo it physically would actually demo them and that’s how that

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was used to sell them. And so we came and they’re like what do you mean you’re

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going to sell it online? I’m like, “Yeah, people are going to look at the

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pictures.” It’s like it was unheard of. And uh which reminds me of of today, you

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know, just to kind of make that link and connection with the with the payment

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processing industry, which has been kind of entrenched into certain format of how

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they’ve been doing the business for decades now of onboarding merchants. And

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the the concept that we came up with as far as um

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having a real competition, real time per transaction is what we’re we’re about.

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Um they don’t understand the payment processors when you talk to them. It’s

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like, what do you mean we’re not going to get 100% of all the transactions from

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that merchant if we sign up that merchant? I said, well, no, it depends

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on what you know, what kind of prices you’re going to get. So it’s it kind of

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reminds me that beginning from 2003 going through those pains uh most of

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part of this year uh trying to get that mentality sort of swi getting the switch

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to click in their in their minds that yeah this can be done and you know why

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not.

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>> No so that’s fair. Um, I know I know we mostly talk about crypto here, but I

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think it’s so interesting that you went from

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pre selling pressure washers on the internet in the early internet to now

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doing payment rails. Um, do you think payments and and all this

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financial infrastructure that we take for granted because we don’t notice it?

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Um, do you think we’re kind of seeing this need to build new payment

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infrastructures because you know for whatever reason what we have is isn’t

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enough.

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>> Um, that yes, I would agree with that statement. Um you know again looking at

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the infrastructure we have and and a lot has

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happened uh over the years and and a lot of uh new entrance to the market have

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coming in with POS systems and uh ease of use and um a payments and you can do

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all kinds of stuff but one thing has not changed which is really the competition

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amongst the payment processors real time on transaction. ction purchase

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action level. In other words, today

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>> purchase level

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>> you as Yeah. So you if you if you’re if you’re if you’re a merchant, you you can

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do the shopping and choose your processor

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at this at at you know at the start of your let’s say business you okay here

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I’m going to go with so and so and once you have that company you are locked in

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and you don’t even think about there’s other options we’re changing that so the

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way our system works is we give access to uh merchants

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um to multiple processors. And the way it works is let’s say if it’s an online

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merchant, an online transaction, uh which is our focus right now as as as a

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company. When the consumer starts the the transaction, they enter credit card

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information in in their checkout page and click submit. We actually capture

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that card information with the rest of the order, you know, the the ticket

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size, the address and all that. And then we disperse that information to multiple

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payment processors and then dynamically they return their rates for that

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particular transaction for that card and then based on that information that we

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receive back from them. We make the selection for the best available

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processor and then we route that transaction to that one single

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processor. Uh that way now we have a true competition where it’s like okay

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real time here’s here’s you know here’s what we

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everybody can offer and then we we get to choose and uh it kind of gives a

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piece of mind to merchants that there’s somebody actually on their side uh

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looking um for their best my respect. So so you mentioned what the competitor

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landscape is and I was on Grock kind of trying to learn what does that look

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like. So there’s a few a few key areas of competition. It’s based on pricing

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and fees, target segments, features and technology and other factors like on

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boarding speed blah blah blah. All that pretty much seems familiar or seems to

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be aligned to what you were saying. So um it seems like other major comparisons

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or player comparisons would be like Stripe, Square, PayPal. Is that kind of

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like you know some of the when people ask you who are your competitors? Is

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that kind of like what it looks like? and on different segments.

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>> Yes, absolutely. Even though they they do not have the the routing

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orchestration that we have, but yes, those those these companies that you

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have listed, yes, they would be our basically direct competitors.

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>> I respect. So, so here’s um this might be a dumb question, but I’m just here

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trying to learn as much as maybe the audience is. Why do we need all these uh

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providers and what need is there to they’re all kind of doing the same thing

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but like you know like what why have all these providers I guess? Well, I mean,

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just like just like any industry, you know, like I would compare it to my

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e-commerce business. If I had to um when I was uh let’s say I wanted to to

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distribute uh pressure washer hose on Amazon, I had a I had a choice, right? I

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could go to this factory, you know, to that factory. Yeah, I I could have

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multiple factories come and say, “Okay, I want to order thousand hoses,

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this length, this pressure, and I would have an option to choose uh the price,

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right? Because different quotes, different prices, and this besides the

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quality as well as the shipping costs, um I would have that choice.” Today, you

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have the choice. you’ve you’ve shown the list of of few processors at the

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beginning of the of the onboarding, right? So, you can go to agent or you

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can go to world pay and stripe and all these companies and they’ll, you know,

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they’ll evaluate your your your business and they’ll say, okay, how much you do

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and, you know, per year and with your location and the risk factors, what the

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industry you’re in, but then they assign the rate,

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right? and you get that rate, you’re locked in. Like with Stripe, you know,

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they say, “Okay, for online businesses, because it’s considered high risk, card

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not present.” Um they’re typically around 3.2 or 3.3% per transaction. It’s

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a kind of flat rate. Got it.

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>> And um you know, a lot of times it’s not the case. It exceeds those numbers

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because uh the cards that are being used uh they’re different cards. You can have

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a debit card versus a credit card. You may have a consumer card versus a

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business card. So, uh the networks like Visa, Mastercard, they look at these uh

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cards differently and because the awards levels are different. So, there’s many

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many factors in between how these fees and I didn’t know this. I had to learn

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once I started this business last year. I thought I know about payment

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processing. I I knew nothing. I was zero zero knowledge. You know,

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>> you know what’s funny? Not to interrupt you, but I mean, I also didn’t know much

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about like finance up until late last year. And if if we’ve talked to some

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customers who are from JP Morgan, maybe they work at, you know, all these

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elaborate uh financial firms, they would have not done business with us. But uh

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the thing that I want to point out is I think everyone starts out not being an

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expert. you become the expert by doing by crafting what your solution is. So Y

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Combinator, this you know famous incubator program in the Bay Area, um

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they’ve said extensively that you know you don’t have to be an expert to get

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started. You simply just need to not give up while you’re building this. So

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my respects.

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>> Yeah. Yeah. I I I concur with that. You know, a lot of times us as business

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owners, we get sort of um in this mindset of that we need to have perfect

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information. And I always say we don’t need perfect information. We need enough

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information to make the next next decision. And so we don’t want to be in

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this, you know, paralysis situation of like, well, I can’t make the decision,

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you know, it’s still we’re going to make mistake. You know, business owners, we

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make mistakes. But you know how how quickly you react, how how agile are you

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and flexible because you know we’ve we’ve um faced many different um

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scenarios with payment processors uh when it came to contracts and you know

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like well this has to be treated this way or we have our obligations towards

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the acquiring banks or the networks. And so we had to adjust and be flexible

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still get to to our goal what we wanted. Um but we had to show flexibility and um

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and show that that we can we can work with them in different ways. So yeah um

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it’s just know knowing when you need to be uh flexible enough and when you just

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have to say and stand your ground. So it’s it’s a fine line sometimes.

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>> No, I love that. Um life is many life is very complex in many ways but I think

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people who survive the longest are the ones who succeed. So, you know, I love

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all this that you’re telling me, but I I am curious. So, so I know we’ve taken a

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while to talk about crypto more, but I want to talk a little bit more about it.

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So, you you know, we’ve discussed like what some of these payment providers

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are, like why they do business, how do they operate for the most part? Um, but

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you know, how how do you think this is all going to change once crypto

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continues to become more adopted? Say you can use a card instead of having US

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dollars that has some sort of you know currency like Bitcoin or even um stable

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coins like USDC. So you know you have all these cryptos and you could use them

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to make everyday purchases. How do you think this is going to change the way

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payment providers operate especially since settlements take like are almost

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instantaneous compared to the traditional banking system?

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You know every industry will will will have

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the flexibility to adapt where they follow

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where the money is. Right? And when we say that, you know, us as merchants, you

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always are looking to please and accommodate the merchants. So if the

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merchants are those that are going to drive the payments with crypto and

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demand and when the merchants start following that that trend and say yes,

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we want to offer payment solutions to our clients because this is their

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preferred method of payment. then payment processors will come up with

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different ways to accept those types of payments. So it’s not going to come from

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just the payment processor just poof and thinking yeah this is a great idea. I

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think the the driving force will be the demand for that business and demand for

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that type of payment and as that grows uh there will be there will be more and

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more solutions and uh I think that that’s where you’re going to have a lot

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more competition come in.

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>> No so that makes sense. So, so I asked because I wanted to kind of

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understand your perspective. So, one thing that I’ve talked about here in the

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podcast before is that Stripe and even PayPal have enabled payment. What is it?

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Um, you’ve been able to do payments online

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with stable coins. So, Stripe, you know, it has a partnership with Shopify where

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if you have a Shopify platform or a store, you can actually connect your

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wallet that you may have money with and make a purchase with your stable coins.

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So, let’s uh why don’t we I asked Grock this like, hey, you know, who else is

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accepting, you know, crypto or stable coins for payments? And right now, um

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we’re seeing a few of them. So, Coinbase Commerce, their fee is approximately 1%.

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And this goes across the board for Bit Pay, Coin Gate. Man, there’s like quite

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a few, including um PayPal and Stripe that I mentioned. But is this similar to

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how every payment processor works today? Like they

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support certain tokens, they have settlement options with US dollars or

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with crypto. Does that make sense? like

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>> yeah I mean it’s it’s it’s very different from your your traditional

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Visa and Mastercard obviously and so I myself very curious to see how these

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networks Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American Express, how will they

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handle this because

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>> yeah same with crypto it’s bypassing them. You you they’re they’re going to

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lose their fees. So I I again I think it’s going to all depend on on the

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demand side and how how much of a consumer will want to be in position to

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have more choices of payment methods um which is going to decide be a deciding

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factor how many companies um jump on this and whether it’s 10 u the ones that

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you listed or or or a hundred maybe next year. So I think that uh supply and

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demand is going to be the the the biggest driver of this change that’s

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coming.

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>> I believe it um in many ways I think right now there’s a I think that’s just

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how people operate in the real realistically like if there’s a lot of

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money to be made in in this certain sector everyone’s going to go there and

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try to find the opportunity to be the provider. Um, but how do you and and I’m

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not here trying to ask you difficult questions. I’m just very interested and

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very curious, but how do you I’ve I’ve talked to a few vendors like

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brick and mortar vendors. They have Stripe. Some have Clubber

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or um not well yeah they might have Stripe but if they’re online but if

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they’re more person they’ll have Toast Square you know all these different

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providers that I mentioned and at the end of the day what do you think

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gains the trust of a vendor and of a business or I guess a vendor would be a

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business like to use your payment provider.

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Well, there’s a lot of distrust I would say today um amongst the merchants.

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Again, my experience um in 21 years I’ve had only two payment processors. Um

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first seven years I was with Bank of America and then uh after that I

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switched to authorized.net because my friend was in payment processing. So I

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sort of you know I trusted that he’s going to give me favorable rates. Uh and

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that that says a lot. In 21 years, I only had two payment processors because

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as as business owners, we we kind of get uh entrenched with day-to-day operation.

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Uh we think about hiring and training. Where’s the next sale going to come

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from? And and and you know, you receive these complicated I mean, they’re

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complicated statements from credit card processors

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and you look at them these line, you don’t even know what they mean. uh the

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fees that they’re applying and you just give up and you just hand it to your

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accountant and they they record it in in in your in your bookings and uh you move

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on. And so we want to change that. We want to be obviously we want to be we

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we’re sitting between the merchants and the payment processors, but we want to

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have be you know frankly to both sides. We want to really accomplish something

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for merchants that they never had, which is again a competition on per

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transaction level. so that they feel that they’re getting

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the best rate at any time, not just being told they’re getting best rate at

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the time of underwriting, which is the very first time when you’re reviewing

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their rates. So, this kind of changes that that um mindset of of having

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someone that’s kind of having their back and looking at the rates and making sure

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that they they get the best available rate at any time.

22:34

Okay. So,

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>> and talking about, you know, you mentioned Stripe a few times now. We we

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we said, you know, I was last week, I was talking to one of the PR software

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owners and um and he he uses Stripe and and I said,

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you know, do you know what you’re paying? And I myself, I’m I never knew

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what my my total fee was if I was to convert, right, all the sales and

22:58

revenue into the the fees that I was paying. And and of course he didn’t

23:02

know, but then he pulled out a statement, he’s looking, he’s

23:04

calculating, and he says 4.2%. And I said, “That’s a lot.” Like a lot a

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lot. And here he wasn’t even aware.

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>> It’s in like 3% give or take.

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>> And that’s that’s the whole point, you know, we we miss that. We don’t know

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because

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>> again, as as owners, we we deal with other things. And and this is kind of

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one of those expenses where you take it as a default and you know it’s there and

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you try to build it into your your your selling price of a product or a service

23:32

or you know maybe you’re passing it on to to the consumer you know you see a

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lot of that or you if you’re a restaurant you’re trying to get the cash

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or a gas station you’re trying to get cash and um so uh yeah that’s that’s

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been that’s been the challenge that’s where this idea came from originally for

23:48

me u seeing that pain myself and um trying to come up with a painkiller

23:55

my respects.

23:56

>> No, I think I think that’s a good signal. You know, a lot of people start

24:02

businesses for the wrong reasons, but from what I’ve been told, the best are

24:05

those who started because they’ve lived the problem or if there’s it’s generally

24:10

just it has to be a problem that you care about. You know, there’s a there’s

24:14

a bazillion problems out there and if this is something you intimately care

24:17

about, then odds of success are higher. So, no, that’s amazing. Um but you know

24:22

I don’t think I’ve asked you enough about your business like how’s that

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going you know with your payment processing um

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>> so so yes thank you thank you for asking we actually launched um earlier this

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month uh which is this is yeah fantastic for us you know it took uh quite a bit

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of uh software engineering and developing the algorithm and the engine

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and back end and front end with dashboards because we have both the

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merchant and and cray car processor dashboard uh agreements and we had to

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read through the 400page uh PCI compliance documents and be you know all

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of that. So yeah, so um merchants are coming. Uh we’ve we’ve gotten a few uh

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referrals already from from uh business consultants. And by the way, this is

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maybe a good opportunity to um to share that we are looking for um um partners

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in three categories uh accountants uh accounting firms um uh business

25:18

consultants as well as the uh uh fractional CFOs because they deal with

25:23

they understand the numbers and they they directly deal with revenue and and

25:26

net margins. So they understand how um even 1% if we can save to a business can

25:33

mean to to the bottom line. And so um shout out to those that are interested

25:38

in in uh partnering with us. We’re available. So just uh give us a call or

25:44

email us.

25:45

>> Yeah. Do you have your socials that you know you can link? We we

25:49

>> absolutely they can they can find me. It’s very easy on on LinkedIn. Victor

25:53

Papa Victor with a K. Um, so yeah, by all means uh reach out to me. I’m I’m an

25:58

open book. And anything outside of payment, you know, even if it’s SEO or

26:03

if it’s uh you know, e-commerce or anything like that, just by all means,

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um I’m very uh available that way. I I can I can ask any questions that I that

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I uh have answers to.

26:15

>> Love that. Cool. So, we Okay, side note, we still have quite a bit of time, so we

26:21

can still keep talking if you’re interested. Um but don’t worry. Um, our

26:25

editor Cory can handle this. So, it won’t be this won’t be in the actual

26:29

show, like our conversation here. Um,

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>> are you still good? Um,

26:32

>> yeah.

26:33

>> Fantastic.

26:35

>> Okay. Uh, okay. So, I know we were talking about

26:39

uh how difficult credit card statements can be, and I was kind of looking at

26:44

this on my own, so you know, there’s a lot of jargon, and I think this has

26:49

probably improved significantly over the last years. For reference, my mom had

26:53

like a bunch of credit card debt when I was a kid. Um,

26:57

you know, like well over 60% what she would make like on a yearly basis. So,

27:02

it was quite a lot if I remember. Um, and right now I’m in a similar

27:06

situation. Well, not as bad, but you know, I do have credit card debt. So,

27:10

when you were talking about like the complexity, there’s like a lot of jargon

27:14

based on what Brock said. There’s like a lot of jargon. multiple balances and

27:17

dates, hidden or bur details, variable rates and fees. Is this kind of like

27:22

align to what you were saying about how complicated they can be like credit card

27:25

statements and

27:27

>> yeah influence you and you and you see probably the the tip of the iceberg with

27:31

consumers um when it comes to the the merchant statements. I mean this just

27:36

the the the terminology of the fees that is being used and

27:41

>> what we’re trying to do is really uh unify and consolidate the statement. So

27:46

if we let’s say have five payment processors

27:49

um uh that are that are processing uh uh transactions and you as a merchant you

27:55

get um you you’re not going to get five statements from five different we’re

27:58

going to unify that and and consolidate into one statement but when we look at

28:03

as a vendor when we look at these statements I mean the formats are

28:07

different some are just written vertically some horizontally the the

28:10

terminology is different so we want to we want to change that we we want to get

28:17

the payment processors um on the same page as let’s let’s use the same

28:20

terminology so people can use definitions they understand what they’re

28:24

getting and um like I said we’re we’re we’re sort of um cutting out some of the

28:32

referral partners that typically payment processors use

28:37

um because you you’ll have you’ll have network acquiring bank you’ll have

28:43

payment processors and then you ISOs and agents of ISOs and other

28:48

partners. So we’re we’re basically taking out probably three of these

28:51

layers uh which automatically will save money but then also the competition

28:56

amongst the the credit card processors will reduce the the fees even further.

29:01

Um where was I going with this? I don’t know but uh um yeah that’s that’s

29:08

basically the the whole idea. just uh get get uh get more uh transparency with

29:13

with the statements so that you know average person can understand it and can

29:19

can see what what they’re paying for.

29:22

>> No, so that makes sense. But I guess you know one thing I didn’t get to ask you

29:28

when we were talking about like uh all these things about payment

29:32

processing one thing that was that got me thinking was how does this how does

29:37

AI if at all influence this? Have you had any sort of influence using AI aside

29:42

from your productivity you know on the industry?

29:46

>> Um not in sense where it’s making the decisions for us yet. uh obviously our

29:52

our software engineers have have used it heavily on building you know writing the

29:56

codes and and building the uh fallback strategies and all that. Um we I as as

30:03

us as a company uh we’re we’re in process of building several uh AI agents

30:09

uh for our internal tracking and analysis. Um but I don’t think we are

30:14

there yet where at least us as a vendor we we can trust fully on on some of the

30:22

decision making um to directly to to AI. I think we still need a little bit of

30:27

human uh to to look at the things and review things before um they go out. So

30:34

um but the things are going so fast that maybe next week this will be you know

30:39

old information. Maybe we’ll be all just plugging it in and running with it.

30:44

>> Yeah, it’s so interesting to me because um Claude, which is a tool that every

30:49

it’s very popular. It’s been creating like a claude for X industry, you know,

30:57

like recently it came out with especially in Q1 this year, but like

31:00

recently they created goo uh claw tac where it’s kind of like a team a team

31:07

member by member uh productivity tool which I found it very interesting. Next

31:11

thing you know it’s going to be like cloud banking like aenic banking or

31:15

something like that’s going to be so crazy to me. But yeah, processing I

31:20

realized talking to you, man, there’s a lot that I still don’t know, which is

31:23

very um it concerns me because we’re building aic uh finance at my company,

31:29

Midlock, but um you know, we don’t really are we’re not too worried about

31:34

the settlement layer for um I guess processing payments. you know, we’re

31:39

mostly using crypto, which is faster, and I mean, there’s a lot of ways to

31:43

improve it, but yeah, I mean, I’m just amazed at how complex payment processing

31:48

is.

31:49

>> Yeah. And and probably good good uh good episode for for for you and and other

31:54

guys that that are trying to build something um inside crypto and and that

31:58

world just to understand this side of the equation as well. what what is the

32:04

you know average merchant going through or what is consumer going through so

32:08

that you can kind of tweak and adjust that um whether it’s um the the the the

32:15

software solution or app that you’re building or uh just understanding where

32:20

they’re coming from and what the transition will look like for you. So um

32:25

yeah, again I I I thought that the idea uh was good but then we’ve seen a lot of

32:33

resistance from payment processors. I didn’t expect that. I thought the

32:37

hardest part will be getting to decision makers

32:42

amongst the credit card process and that’s not the case. Like we get them on

32:45

the phone the like the next day if they’re available. So that wasn’t the

32:49

issue. It’s the issue is them wrapping their head around like

32:53

you’re saying we’re competing now.

32:56

>> Yeah.

32:59

>> Yeah. I guess that’s fair. But I mean money is so

33:03

visa Mastercard. They’re so pervasive. They’re everywhere and you know they

33:07

have the largest you know footprint in in in the

33:12

industry. So even if you’re building competitor I don’t think they would

33:16

really care would they? like they wouldn’t give you any issues.

33:19

>> Well, no, because we’re we’re we’re not bypassing them. They’re going to get

33:23

their cut anyways, right? So, the the the the there’s, you know, the the

33:27

acquiring bank, the the the the Visa, the networks, they’re they’re always

33:32

going to get paid because you’re using their card, so they have to be involved.

33:36

>> Once you don’t use their card, that’s when they’re

33:38

>> that’s that’s when you’re bypassing them like like you guys with crypto.

33:42

>> Gotcha. So if we were to let’s say um we were to build some sort of network that

33:49

is outside of Visa Mastercard, that’s when they wouldn’t want to do business

33:53

with us because we would be taking their money.

33:56

>> Yeah. Yeah. Taking taking the business away that way. Yeah. Exactly.

33:59

>> Business and therefore therefore money or the fees that they’re charging.

34:03

>> Okay. That might be a dumb question, but I was just trying to wrap my head around

34:07

that. But no, that makes sense. Um, no. Because yeah, like I know if you’re

34:12

building a sometimes businesses when you’re building one, you can get away

34:17

with working around some providers, but if the provider for whatever reason sees

34:23

you as a threat, they’re going to not do business with you. So, I don’t know if

34:27

you’ve run into that similar issue whether you were doing your e-commerce

34:30

business or now with the uh payment processing one, but I know a few people

34:35

who had similar issues and it was just very difficult to continue moving

34:40

forward with the business.

34:43

>> It’s it’s interesting you asked that question. We were just at the uh at the

34:47

conference or trade show in Miami um Yeah. And um you would think that

34:55

you know people will not be talking to each other because they’re booth after

34:59

booth after booth of of all these uh credit card processors and ISOs you know

35:06

uh companies that are that are selling these services.

35:09

>> Everybody’s so friendly shaking hands going to lunches together like it’s like

35:14

party time. Um I don’t know if it was because of the Miami vibe or this is how

35:19

it is all the time. This was our first uh uh uh trade show for for this for

35:24

this industry. Um but people understand you know people understand that uh you

35:28

have to excel um with your service. Uh people have understand they have to

35:34

introduce other uh products to uh the services like we see a lot of um cray

35:40

processes getting into building these uh point of sale systems. they specialize

35:44

for uh hair salons or maybe uh uh I don’t know um restaurants or so so they

35:51

try to lure in um businesses either through software or offering uh cheaper

35:58

hardware or even free hardware for that matter. Uh so it’s it’s um that’s the

36:03

beautiful capitalism right there at hand. wrote the competition

36:08

um will enhance the quality of the service that the consumer or the end

36:13

user will receive and um and so yeah but that was interesting question so how do

36:19

they how do they behave no it’s it’s a business as usual

36:23

I mean I guess that makes sense uh like even on crypto like recently I

36:31

don’t know if you know this but uh Coinbase came up with a line of products

36:34

and features ers for their lines of products, but um they’re still working

36:40

with some of the other network providers. Even though Coinbase has its

36:43

own provider, which is very fascinating. I think that goes to show that even if

36:49

you’re building a competing tool, you can still find ways to work with other

36:53

people um or have your tools work with each other because if one person can win

36:58

or I’m sorry, if everyone can win, then you know that makes the world a better

37:02

place. I think when you’re doing business, if everyone who is making the

37:06

business together comes comes front and wins, I think that’s all that matters at

37:11

the end of the day.

37:13

>> Yeah.

37:14

>> Yeah. So,

37:16

>> yeah. So, before we wrapped up, you know, Victor, um do you have any final

37:21

thoughts? Maybe a shout out do you want to make about your business? Anything?

37:27

Um, yeah. I mean, if uh if if if if you’re a merchant and you’d like to save

37:32

some money on on on cray processing and uh um give give us give us an

37:38

opportunity to do that for you. The the process is is pretty much the same like

37:42

like you normally do it today. You fill out the application and uh the

37:46

difference is that you’re not locked in with one payment processor. We give you

37:50

access to multiple um processors and it’s always really seamless. It’s in the

37:56

back end uh as an e-commerce website. You just take the code, put it into your

38:00

checkout page. It’s uh these transactions happen u within seconds or

38:04

milliseconds. There’s no difference to a consumer. They don’t they don’t see any

38:09

change to the checkout process. And um you can find us on vendo.te

38:15

and um and yeah, you can reach out to me as well through um through my LinkedIn

38:19

account.

38:21

>> Awesome. Great. Well, thanks everyone for watching and we’ll be seeing you in

38:24

the next episode. Take care.

38:26

>> Thank you.