The Payments Experts Podcast
Expert payments attorneys discuss the electronic payments industry from a legal perspective.
The Payments Experts Podcast
Tackling Fraud and Chargebacks in High-Risk Sectors with Anthony Dominguez of AMP Payments | PEP032
Discover the surprising world of Bitcoin's early adopters and their unconventional use cases! From car dealerships to strip clubs, we uncover the intricate issues of chargebacks and fraud in these sectors. This episode features a special guest, Anthony Dominguez from AMP Payment Systems, who shares his unique Airbnb investment strategy and the recent changes in Airbnb's payment system. We also dissect the murky waters of junk fees in payment processing, particularly the complexity of interchange rates that merchants face.
AMP Payment Systems' innovative approach to merchant services is a game-changer. Anthony elucidates their mission to provide flexible, solution-oriented services for both low and high-risk accounts. We tackle the unique challenges faced by merchants on the TMF list and AMP's commitment to tailored solutions. Post-COVID, the credit card processing industry has evolved, and AMP's adaptability is highlighted. This episode dives into the criteria AMP considers when forging partnerships, emphasizing the necessity for flexibility and innovation.
High-risk merchant accounts, the future of cryptocurrency payments, and the importance of trust in business form the crux of our discussion. Anthony shares a personal journey from the mortgage industry to payments post-2008 market crash, underscoring the sector's unpredictability. We explore the potential resurgence of crypto under different political landscapes and why widespread adoption remains challenging. Finally, we shine a spotlight on AMP's mission to support businesses with dedicated customer support and strategic solutions, making this episode a must-listen for anyone interested in the payments landscape.
Visit our friends over at AMP Payment Systems: https://amppaymentsystems.com/
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A payments podcast of Global Legal Law Firm
you know, the first places that were taking bitcoin were like car dealerships and strip clubs, and you know the strip clubs is kind of you know, obvious of you know there's no stamp for it nobody knew chargeback.
Speaker 1:We knew you were there. Chargebacks are less. I actually just learned this in uh litigation cases that people do chargebacks like crazy at strip clubs. Oh yeah, they have you sign these for them. I just went through this file and it was they charge back after they went back into the room like five times with their license and stuff and they tried to charge it back. So that will be an interesting deposition.
Speaker 2:There's a professional athlete who was on a podcast or something a few years ago and he was telling how he would have his friends sign his credit card form and then he charged it back, you know, on his Amex Like so he's on there being like I do fraud with hookers.
Speaker 3:Welcome to the payments experts podcast, a podcast of global legal law firm. We hope you enjoy this episode. Welcome to the Payments Experts Podcast, a podcast of Global Legal Law Firm. We're very excited. Today we have in studio managing partner of the law firm, james Huber, as well as special guest joining us in studio Anthony Dominguez. Anthony Dominguez of Amp Payment Systems. Gentlemen, we're excited to have this conversation. Welcome.
Speaker 1:Thanks, jeremy, and thanks for joining us in here.
Speaker 3:Yeah appreciate the invite.
Speaker 1:What do you find? You know we don't get too many. I mean, we always joke. Our dress code here is I think I've described it to people as offensively casual, because none of our clients ever come in. Our clients are all over the country and, you know, very few of them find themselves in North County, San Diego. What are you doing up here?
Speaker 2:So actually we spend a lot of time in La Jolla, so my wife and I have done some Airbnb investments, and so what we kind of do is we buy some real estate in places that we want to travel to Perfect and we remodel, we hold on to it, we rent it on Airbnb and VRBO when we're not there and then we get to use it when it's available.
Speaker 1:Yeah, great For Airbnb. How are they doing their payments, Because I pay on a credit card there. Do you know who's doing that?
Speaker 2:You know what? I think they switched it in the last like two years or so, but I think they were literally just using Stripe or somebody for quite a while.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, because I mean that's a huge account. And are they doing surcharging and discounting at Airbnbs?
Speaker 2:No, they're not. And actually Airbnbs, especially from California, is doing a big push to make sure that all the fees and everything are included in your initial quote. Right, Because before you know, you used to build in a cleaning fee and some other, you know some other expenses which was an advantage to travelers if you were staying, you know, for a longer time. Yeah, Because you know one flat fee versus you know two weeks or three weeks.
Speaker 1:Right, you know it was more expensive if you staying, you know, two nights or three nights. So now it's just you got to build into your price. So, yeah, I don't see them doing a surcharge anytime soon. Yeah, yeah, and the air, the, the, the junk fees. I mean it was kind of like ticket master with the b&b you had no idea what you're going to get charged. You sign up, you pay your deposit, then you're leaving and you're like what do you mean all these fees? So, um, junk fees is a hot topic that we can certainly delve into, because some of the legislation coming down, I mean you could call interchange a junk fee, because you have no idea the rate you're going to get charged. Now the consumer is not getting charged that, the merchant is not really getting charged, that because most of them well, what about the merchants that are on Interchange Plus? Yeah, couldn't they make an argument? I mean, the last time I checked and it's been a while there was 147 different interchange rates.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's insane.
Speaker 1:So any merchant on Interchange Plus. I don't see what would stop them from going. These are junk fees.
Speaker 3:Hey, james, before you get into that for our audience, would you talk about what is Interchange Plus versus just Interchange?
Speaker 1:Okay, so Interchange is the rates that Visa and MasterCard and, as I said, I think there was a. Last time I checked there was 147 of them. I'm guessing they didn't eliminate any.
Speaker 2:No, they're usually adding yeah, they're adding.
Speaker 1:So those are the rates that Visa and MasterCard charge, based on how the transaction is. If it's a rewards card and I do it on the internet, that's one rate. If it's a debit card and I don't punch in my debit, that's another rate. So you put all those scenarios out and you end up with a gajillion different rates. So some merchants are charged a flat rate 3.5%, everything or some of them are charged 2, you know two. 3% for you know really secure transactions, and then a higher rate if it's online or it's riskier. Some merchants are put on an interchange plus. So whatever the interchange rate is, they'll just add a fee to that.
Speaker 1:So if I was a merchant, I might go these are junk fees. I have no idea what I'm getting charged and you know they might be coming after someone like you and you're going. Well, that's not me charging them, I'm literally just passing these through to you. So be interesting to see how this junk fee comes down. I don't think they're really looking at that right now. They're mostly looking at like Ticketmaster, where you buy a ticket and it's all this, and sometimes it's 50 bucks, sometimes it's 150 bucks. So are you guys hearing any chatter from your end about junk fees?
Speaker 2:Not a substantial amount. I think it's one of those things that there's so many other pressing issues right now for a lot of business owners and so delving into the minute details of they were charged 10 basis points, 20 basis points here or more. I think that's not something that they're focused on. That's not something that they're focused on, but everything I'm seeing is that it's focused on the consumer end and what the end user is seeing and being charged. Are they aware of that when they do a transaction? That's kind of what we're hearing more of.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I remember when cash discounting or dual pricing or surcharging came out, nobody liked it, because I'm buying a $2 cup of coffee and all of a sudden it costs $2.25. Everybody hated that. Once COVID came around, it kind of went nuts because everybody's going look, I understand, businesses are struggling and I have to use my credit card. There's a benefit you know I talk about it all the time. Prior to COVID, we would go into court and you'd get a judge that had way grayer hair than me. He's going huh Credit card Like I don't even use that.
Speaker 1:I don't use it for anything. I use the big wad of cash that judges. I mean they use piles of it in their houses.
Speaker 3:But yeah, they're like just use cash. They're like well, no big deal if you can't take credit cards.
Speaker 1:We're at ATM. Excuse me because we're arguing. You know, these are the rules. You know the visa rules, these are the laws. And he's going huh, you know that's a privilege, not a right. And then COVID came around and he's going oh my gosh, I had to order, you know, my ivory backscratcher online and I had to use my card. So it's not an option? Yeah, but we're ahead of ourselves. You're CEO, is that your title? Yes, yeah, I mean, you're the top dog?
Speaker 2:Yes, I am. I'm not a big title guy. I try to be accessible. I try to be available. So I'm definitely not a name dropper, title dropper kind of person. But yes, that is my title when you're talking to merchants.
Speaker 1:I see a lot of people. You don't take the title CEO necessarily, because why am I talking to the CEO? I'll see a lot of people that are owning the company and they're the VP of sales or something, so it's more approachable or you don't look as ragtag. But I have clients that process a billion dollars a month. A merchant has an issue. They still get to talk to the CEO. It's AMP payment systems. Why don't you tell us a little bit about AMP payment systems where you're at now?
Speaker 2:Yeah for sure, amp payment systems where you're at now? Yeah for sure. So you know, amp is kind of a culmination of some ideas that we had about what we'd seen in the market in terms of, you know, being a solution-oriented ISO. You know, you deal with this all the time. You see, you know contracts from, you know all of the major players and I'm sure you hear all the same complaints is that some folks do some core things and they do it well, and then they don't do anything else and anything beyond that they could care less. If they're not getting the business, then they're not really there to guide you through it and kind of walk you through it.
Speaker 2:So we saw a lack of solutions available. People in the merchant industry love to say, no, we don't do that, we can't do that, right, and then you have to rephrase the question, rephrase the statement. It's like oh yeah, we can do it, yeah, okay, but you made me go through all these hoops to get the answer that I knew that you was available but you couldn't get outside the box, Right? So you know we wanted to offer that for both our ISOs and our agents, as well as our merchants just solutions. So we've been focusing on the low risk, which we've always done, the face-to-face transactions, the mom-and-pop stores, one to six locations kind of thing. But we found that there's a need for high-risk solutions, both for our ISOs and our agents. But some merchants fall under a high-risk category. Right we placed a guy who was an auto shop in, I think, north Dakota and his son had stolen his identity, like 10 years ago, did some fraudulent transactions, opened a merchant account in his name and he was on the TMF list.
Speaker 2:So, he had trouble running his auto shop Right Like servicing a community, so they'd get their cars fixed Right, and he had trouble getting a merchant count under like 7, 8%.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, so you know like.
Speaker 2:You know people like that. You know there's real people who have, you know, real need to find a solution. You know in situations that you know they're warranted, you know we found some traction and you know offering solutions for Canada as well solutions for Canada as well. So we've just been trying for both our ISAs and our agents to really be a solutions-oriented shop and for our merchants, we're focused on adding things that create value, that can help them drive revenue, make their business a little easier to operate. We offer for payroll, we offer different ancillary services that say, hey, we know that your business is hard to manage. Business is not easy. Being successful at business is even harder, right, and so you know we can help in all those little ways that you know can make things easier. Yeah, that's kind of what we're built on.
Speaker 1:Well, no, it's one of the reasons that you know we've been working together. I was telling Jeremy, I don't know, like five, six, seven years years at least. Yeah, and one of the reasons we like working with you is you're dynamic and you, in this industry, you have to be. You know, the credit card processing pre-covid looks nothing like it did. Yeah, I mean, when we got into the business, people were still running what you call knuckle bus.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I remember that that was uh, yeah, yeah you'd have to send that and then you'd have to mail that in. You probably got your money like what, a month later. I mean, now it's. You know I'm beeping my phone and you know they're saying you're not even going to have to get out of your car to get gas soon, but it's changed so much and you basically have to because your customers' needs are changing all the time. And you said it a lot of companies they're. You know they've got their bread and butter and they just stick with it and they stick linear.
Speaker 1:So it's really fun working with people like you that are really merchant-focused, looking to help the merchants and going oh geez, no, I don't do that, but tell you what, I'm going to go figure it out.
Speaker 1:It's a lot like our law firm, especially early on, when you know nothing and you're going yeah, I can help you with that and I'll just go figure it out. Now on the front end we actually say if we don't know, hey, I don't know, I'm going to go figure it out, and if it turns out this looks like something that somebody else should do, I'll let you know, I'll get you on the right path and everything like that. I think that's probably a lot of what you do because in the payments processing industry, I mean AMP payment systems I don't want to say you're a cog in the wheel, but you guys are one piece of the ecosystem and there's all these other players that you have to bring together. So let me ask you that this is something we haven't really gotten into before in the podcast is what do you? What do you do when you're looking for a partner like a bank or a processor or a technology company, like? What kind of things are you looking for?
Speaker 2:That's a great question and you know you mentioned that flexibility. You know, like you know, you guys are very flexible. I've thrown, you know, a variety of weird situations, non-payment related, Houseboat yeah, houseboat business. That was a failure, but you know what we live and we learn.
Speaker 1:I really wanted one of those houseboats. I know, I know Me too. There's these luxury houseboats. That were they not?
Speaker 2:movable? No Well, it had like a small engine, but it was essentially a floating condo.
Speaker 1:Floating condo, Sensei, floating condo was floating condo, but you, I want it's gotta be able to move. That was my thing. Sure, but it was like luxury or on a lake in the middle of nowhere, which I thought was awesome. And then you've got this luxury houseboat and then you've got like what Five, six, seven, eight other ones was the idea? Yeah, and I thought that was cool, cause then your buddies can have their own houseboat. You know my mother-in-law she can be over, you know, eight houseboats away it's not getting there anytime quick because the motor is so slow.
Speaker 2:Anyway, sorry, I digress but what are you looking?
Speaker 1:for uh in partners yeah.
Speaker 2:So for us, uh, what what makes the most sense is, look, you know, obviously the numbers matter, right, you know, in terms of you know, revenue share, you know things like that but it also matters, can you get the job done Right, because there's so many people you know, and and especially when you talk about technology who have great ideas for technology and then they're out there selling it. You know, trying to get you know investment, trying to get you know early adoption, I don't really have anything. And then you know, you try it, you're like this is nothing you know. Or you know you look at AI, where you know it's been, uh, last 10 years we've been hearing about AI. Everyone's like, oh, we integrated AI, yeah, and it was all BS for the most part, like it wasn't really AI.
Speaker 3:Some of it still is. Yeah, we'll talk about that later. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:And now you know there's real legitimate AI being introduced to products and to services. Right, and you know. So now it's. Now it's a matter of, you know, evaluating partners, evaluating tools and seeing, like you know, an educated guess of hey, are you actually going to be able to accomplish what, what you said you're going to accomplish? Cool, the numbers make sense. If that is the case here, the numbers work. But are you actually going to be able to to to get that done, and does it work with what we do? Right, because you know a tool can be great, but if you have to totally revamp your system, then it's not worth it.
Speaker 1:I mean, maybe it is, but it's got to be worth it.
Speaker 2:It better be really worth it. How do you?
Speaker 1:judge, if somebody can deliver what they say they're going to deliver to, because we run into this In our firm in the legal work, we end up picking up a lot of cases that are halfway down the road because they're going look, they're just not getting it done. They're billing me like crazy. I really like the guys, but like I just don't know what's going on. And how do you you know? Similarly, when you're looking, let's say you're looking for an attorney, and I'm going yo, anthony, I'm gonna help you get these boats and we're gonna get it done, and obviously your judge of character was spot on for me. But how do you pick it? How do you pick it with, like, your processing or technology companies? Like, how do you get that vibe? Or is it just instincts? You're like, nah, this guy's full of smoke.
Speaker 2:So it's a combination of things. Definitely some, you know, time in the business. You know there's a lot of great people in our industry, but you know there's a there's that handful of great people in our industry, but there's, you know, there's a. There's that handful of just you know, slime balls that people run across, right. And so you, you start to get your you know your, you know your uh, your ears open for those keywords. You know, look over promising If, when everything is perfect, then I know you're, you're hiding something from me, right, right, like you know, if I ask you, you know, let's say we're talking about a processing partner, and I say, hey, what merchants are you guys looking for? What should I bring to you? And they're like, oh, we like everything. No, you don't.
Speaker 3:Nobody likes everything.
Speaker 2:So what don't you like Tell me? Oh well, okay, actually we sometimes have trouble with this or this. Okay, cool, let's get down to it. But someone who wants to continually tell me that they're, they're amazing in every way, like, look, you work for an organization. You know nobody is perfect and that's okay right but be up front with me.
Speaker 2:I was like, hey, if we, if we melt, if we fit in, yeah, then we can make. We can make money together, yeah. But if what we need isn't covered by what you can offer, that's okay. Right, like, just let me know, yeah, just just tell me yeah. So anyone who doesn't can't tell me, hey, this is not my field, this is not my expertise about anything, then it's usually someone I can't trust.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a good point. So if somebody's going, you know here's what I can do and here's my limitations, yeah, that's a good idea.
Speaker 2:So that's a good good idea, so that's a good for anybody that's looking to what about you, like, you know, you guys kind of you know, you guys obviously want as many customers as possible, but you have to evaluate, you know, whether you know some people are just worth your time, and yeah, I mean jeremy, does all of our, most of our client intake on the front end.
Speaker 1:Jeremy, how do you, how do you pull out the people that are just not going to work? Because we we've had it before where, like I said, we pick up cases and it's rare, but I can think of there's one time this year where the guy's going hey, the way this is working just isn't working. I was going, absolutely, it wasn't my case, of course, but he's talking about another attorney at our firm and I'm going yeah, absolutely, I think you should go somewhere else if you're feeling that way.
Speaker 3:I think you put your finger on it, both of you. It has to do with transparency, right? You can get that sense when people are just being straight with you. It sometimes happens merchants approach us about matchless, about match TMF very often, and it turns out we find out later they gave us 30% of the story, right? So you know those. You try to just get a sense for it, james. You know, in those conversations you can, as you were saying, anthony, the more experience you have, the quicker you start picking up on those types of ones where you're like, hey, this maybe is probably not the greatest option here, right, or you're like turn it, like, okay, I need to see all your emails and stuff, and they're like, no, you don't need to see that, Right.
Speaker 1:Right, we had one where Bryce, who does the podcast, often he's like I think this guy must be having an affair or something. You know he won't give me any of his emails. We started speculating about who will. Who was it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, all right, all right. Yeah, we have a lot of fun over here. Anthony, as you can tell, I've got a quick question. Maybe you guys can segue this what percentage of your guys' work is high risk? You said you do bring in some. How much of your work is that yeah?
Speaker 2:So your work is that, yeah, so right now it's a. It's a small percentage, so it's about 10% of our overall you know merchant accounts, but we kind of foresee that growing. You know we're investing in some, some you know resources to. You know, find more of those high risk deals, because what we've seen so far is that you know the ISO that has a high risk deal or a couple of high risk deals, they have low risk deals too, right, and once you can show that, hey, look, we're going to take care of your high risk stuff, right, we're going to take care of the stuff that's hard, some of that stuff that's easy as well. And we're going to, we're going to be able to do an even better job on that because that's simple, right, that's cut and dry, boom, let's get job done. We're willing to find you a solution and you know we're going to go through that, that extra you know legwork and that extra you know bit of effort that it takes to sometimes, you know, get a deal placed.
Speaker 1:Right and nobody wants just just high risk business. So you've you know when agents and ISOs are. You know finding merchants that need the business. It's nice to have both. And from a merchant's perspective, if you're selling stuff online and it's all CBD, free trial or whatever, I mean you can't really do free trial that much anymore. But those business there is an art to it of you've got this stuff where customers are disputing the transaction. Try and sell something that they're not disputing as much easier to balance your own portfolio out.
Speaker 1:You know there's all these schemes going on. We're seeing more and more of them where they're setting up these fake businesses and you know they're running stolen credit cards or prepaid debit cards to balance out the amount of transactions that are disputed versus not. And these people are getting popped. You know the DOJ just did another one um chargeback surety of this business. So when you're out there looking for high risk, you know I used to say to clients, like, do not put that on the internet because those got. Those are the guys that are going to find you. Yeah, so I think it's the same thing of when you're looking at these people. You have to, you know, feel them out and you know they're going. Oh, you know, my chargebacks are zero. Yeah, you know you're selling CBD online, so you're perfect.
Speaker 2:So you're perfect?
Speaker 1:I don't think so and they're at 20%. But how'd you, you know know, getting I won't say back on top, I guess off on top, how, what? How'd you get into the payment space? What attracted you about it?
Speaker 2:uh, honestly, like I tell people it was just dumb luck. So, yeah, I was. Uh. So, uh, my old business partner and I were in the mortgage business at the time and so this was like 2008, beginning of 2008, and, excuse me so, if you remember the uh, the market crash was like I think october, november, you know where things just like the rug fell out, yeah, but this is like january, you know, and you know we can get a deal done today and, like you know, credit, down payment, you know all the same specs. And then tomorrow we go back to submit the same, essentially the same deal and they're like, oh, we don't have that program same specs. And then tomorrow we go back to submit the same, essentially the same deal and they're like, oh, we don't have that program anymore, right, and then that happened three times and we're like, okay, the writing's on the wall yeah, this is like I'm a firm believer, like you know, once it.
Speaker 2:Once is a fluke, twice is a pattern, three is like hey, you're, you know, like you better be on on the lookout.
Speaker 1:So you cause the how the mortgage single-handedly that's the takeaway.
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, okay, but yeah, so, uh, I was doing a mortgage for a guy at the time and I saw his bank statements and at that time, you know, it seemed like a lot of money going through his bank account. And so I just was chatting with him about what he does and he happened to run an iso out of oregon and he was moving to Arizona. He's like, hey, I'm actually starting a you know, a new company, you know, so we learned more about it and we're like, hey, this is, this would make sense, and where it was clear that the you know, something was happening in the mortgage industry.
Speaker 2:You know, we were at a you know at a level where we couldn't see the let's you know, let's learn more about this, and we like the idea, and then the residual income made a ton of sense. So right jumped right in, yeah, and he ended up being one of those slime balls that you know that I mentioned. Who was it? Uh, his name is, uh was, john cargill. No, he, uh, he was a small player, but he ended up getting busted. Uh, years later we saw, like on the news, that he was running some sort of scam where stolen identities and opening merchant accounts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, darn, yeah, so basically, after six, eight months, we realized we didn't know anything about the industry. So we had to learn everything and realize that he didn't know anything. So we learned custom service, we learned deployment, we learned sales, we learned everything, yeah. And then we're like, what is it that you're doing here? Like, and he was trying to, you know, take the portfolio and leave it under his old business name. And you know, yeah, and kind of be able to cut us out. So we, we said, look, you know, like we can't do business like this, we're gonna go do our own thing, yeah, good, yeah, and it was fortunate because the guy got desperate later and you know, yeah, I was doing all kinds of shady stuff perfect, yeah.
Speaker 1:So your instincts are pretty sharp. So you know we kind of talked of where you're at now. Where do you see the industry going in the next? I wouldn't even say five years, I'd say what do you see in the next one or two years going?
Speaker 2:on. Well, I mean, it's going to be interesting right. Like you know, you mentioned all the litigation that's happening, so I think we're all kind of waiting to see how that might affect us, how it might affect our merchants, the consumer. Obviously. One of the big ones is threatening rewards credit cards. That's half the reason why people upcharge. They do the extra transaction, they spend the extra amount so they can hit their miles.
Speaker 2:They can get their rewards. So that will be a game changer. I'm definitely interested to see how alternate payments know like alternate financing. Alternate payments, you know might finally take hold Like crypto. Yeah, so you know, I feel like you know, I feel confident that you know some sort of crypto is going to find its way as a day-to-day transaction at some point. Yeah, you know it's not going to be Bitcoin. You know, to me Bitcoin is more of a storage of you know. It's kind of like gold, right, it's like we're owning stocks.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Or even if you own gold, like most people, don't have the gold in the house it's. You know, I own some gold. It's in Jeremy's house.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Under the floorboards yeah exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I feel the same thing. And look, we all got into crypto. Uh, I don't want to say big time, but we were. You know, it was all the rage. We were basically playing shark tank of people calling us up, being like, look, I want to raise some money here, I've got this project. I don't want to follow any of the rules, so I've heard you can do it with crypto.
Speaker 1:And we were like, yeah, that we're not your guys for that, actually you should be following the rules even more and turns out we were right because most of it imploded. Yeah, but I always liked it, you know, particularly when we got into it, even with Bitcoin is you know, the first places that we're taking Bitcoin were like car dealerships and strip clubs, and you know the strip clubs is kind of, you know, obvious, of obvious of you know there's no stamp for it. Nobody knew charge back and we knew you were there. Chargebacks are less. I actually just learned this in uh litigation cases that people do chargebacks like crazy at strip clubs. Oh yeah, and that's they have you like sign these for? I just went through this file and it was, you know, they charged back after they went back into the room like five times with their license and stuff and they tried to charge it back.
Speaker 2:So that'll be an interesting deposition there's a professional athlete who, uh, was on a podcast or something like a few years ago and he was like he was telling how he would have to have his friend sign his credit card form and then he charged it back you his Amex. So he's on there being like I do fraud, yes, with hookers.
Speaker 1:Wow. So the crypto and then the car dealerships. I thought was cool, because when crypto is in its bull cycles, free car. Yeah, because I bought one Bitcoin. Now I have the equipment. I've made 50, 60, 80k People are buying Teslas like crazy, especially with, I think. Did he take Dogecoin? Did Elon take I?
Speaker 3:think he did. I think he did. He backed it for a while.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that thing went nuts I remember he appeared on Saturday Night Live. People were like over, you know over nights.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's making a Doge, but I think it just became too volatile to price against a car. Well right.
Speaker 1:It's because you could be sitting there and it was changing.
Speaker 2:That was back then, when it was going like this this, this Like 20% a day sometimes, I think it still does once in a while.
Speaker 3:There's still some dramatic shifts now and again. That's certainly for some of the smaller coins. Yeah, I think that is.
Speaker 1:I mean, the one thing is, you know the JD Vance. He's apparently, you know, owned by Peter Thiel and the Silicon Valley guys, and Trump's coming out and saying, you know, pro crypto. So I totally see that happening. And then Trump, you know it's deregulation across the board. I think crypto probably go nuts again, even those little coins, and we'll probably be playing shark tank again because, yep, you know he's going to unwind the cfpb, um, and he probably can't unwind the sec, but he can certainly tone it down, he can certainly tamp it down and he will and cut, cut budgets and cut enforcement. So I could see, you know, a golden age of payments for Trump.
Speaker 1:And you know I don't have a problem speaking my political views here, but I, when the guy gets shot in the ear and gets up, and then last night Hulk's ripping his shirt off, it's looking pretty likely that we're in for another four years. I mean we were talking before we got started. It was like the only way we could beat him is Oprah Rock ticket. In which order, I don't think it matters. What do you think? You probably have Rock president, right, he's the Rock. I mean, if you, oprah, I would think, is probably more qualified.
Speaker 3:If you believe all the sexism stuff, you'd want to put the man first, right In today's day and age. I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, yeah, yeah, but I think deregulation will be. You know, I don't want to say a golden age for payments, but I think there's gonna be a lot of opportunities for, you know, alternative payments, crypto, and then you know all this. You know, surcharge caps, this, that the other thing. I think everything might go out the door, and so I think for small businesses, you know, or middle sized businesses, you know, there's going to be some money to be made.
Speaker 3:Is it? Is it just the volatility, like, what's keeping it? Next, we're talking about all these surcharges surcharge plus all these fees being thrown in. You know when you go to Ticketmaster or you know you're doing your Airbnb. Why haven't people just jumped over to crypto? Now Can you guys talk about that? What's the? Is it just a volatility or is there something in addition to that? That's a hurdle Still.
Speaker 1:I mean it's still hard to buy. You know people I mean people don't need to buy it. I mean I talked to Chris, my partner, and he's like, can you even sell any of that stuff? I was like, yeah, you sell, I can't sell it anymore.
Speaker 2:Transfer it over here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know, what do you think?
Speaker 2:I think honestly yeah, I think it's. You know what you mentioned. It's volatility is a huge factor, but I think it's also that you know we haven't decided, like, which coin is going to be the most useful, right? Like you know, if you know, if you were trying to trade with 25 different currencies in one place, it's like people would be confused too. They would just pick one and say, no, just give me that one, I don't care, leave me alone. But we actually partnered with a company who allows merchants to accept Bitcoin and other cryptos. Which one? I forget the name. It's Ethereum, I'm sure. Well, no, no. So it allows you to use your crypto wallet and pay in multiple forms oh, multiple, yeah, so you like.
Speaker 2:Syncs with coinbase yeah, so you like you use a, you scan a qr code and then, at the merchant's location and then for the for the amount that's you know that's owed, they scan it through, they open their wallet and they make the transaction you just push through.
Speaker 1:I mean coinbase, you can do. They have a, they'll give you a debit card. Right, yeah, I mean that's different.
Speaker 2:That's using the existing rails to transact, but this is like using your actual Bitcoin or Coinbase wallet to make that transaction, and so we're not seeing volume yet, but I know it's coming. So we're to, you know, push it, make it available for our merchants as something is. You know, at the very least it's a. It's memorable, right? You know, when someone sees that sticker in the door next to visa and mastercard and discover of, hey, we accept, you know bitcoin and other forms of coinbase, yeah, whatever, it's just it's memorable, at the very least well, it's interesting because I've always been like oh, you know, visa and master, visa and MasterCard will never let crypto happen and they're kind of going bring it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how do you get your money into the wallet? Yeah, you use your Visa card. How do you take it out? How do you spend it? Who owns the rails between Coinbase and Merchant? Oh, guess what we do?
Speaker 2:So, you know, I mean, that's kind of nice for it and eventually I envision there will be downloads built into the terminal to where you can accept Bitcoin by scanning the QR code in the terminal or something of that form.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's already. I mean Chase. The big thing Chase was didn't they buy XRP, one of those coins? I'm not sure. I think they bought a part of it or something, or they invested in part of it. So you know, I think it's pretty incestuous. But I agree, I think that's one reason that bitcoin won't be more than you know, an investment tool. Yeah, money I mean. Yeah, I mean it's like gold, I can't go and, you know, drop a little bar.
Speaker 2:But I could, one of my I could see being used for, you know, large transactions, yeah, at some point like, uh, like buying a car, especially international transactions, payments that you don't have to deal with with currency exchange rates and things like that.
Speaker 1:Don't movie theaters take it? I remember hearing that I thought they were going to.
Speaker 2:I think you might be right. I thought Harkins or somebody was talking about it, yeah, but I think it makes sense for kids too.
Speaker 1:I want to say millennials, because I think I'm a millennial actually, but I think I am as well. Yeah, but they got a bad rap, so I'll stick with gen x, jeremy's, straight up. Gen x, that's right, that's right. Gen x proud, proud, proud okay, oh cool, this has been a good conversation. Any closing words? I mean tell us how people get in touch with you.
Speaker 2:Well, so AMP Payment Systems amppaymentsystemscom we have a great team. You know we have Arizona-based customer support. We have salespeople all around the country. You know we have we're solutions right. We're trying to help you make more money. We're trying to, you know, help put you know, improve your bottom line and make running your business easier. And for the ISO, same thing. You know it's. Our goal is to help you be more successful, help you close more deals and make more money. That's kind of the bottom line Great.
Speaker 3:Awesome, Sounds great. Thank you so much for listening to the end of this episode of the Payments Experts Podcast, a podcast of Global Legal Law Firm. We've had in studio with us James Huber, Managing Partner of Global Legal Law Firm, as well as our special guest Anthony Dominguez of AMP Payment Systems. Go tell them you found and heard him on the Payments Experts Podcast. Thank you so much. Have a good one. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Payments Experts Podcast, to this episode of the Payments Experts Podcast, a podcast of Global Legal Law Firm. Visit us online today at globallegallawfirmcom.