Hey, what’s up, everybody? It’s Justin Live from B2B Vault, the Payment Technology Podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems and GoDaddy with your host Allen Kopelman! And we’ll be providing you with educational information about small business, FinTech, payment processing, and the technology businesses are using in the world today.
And today, we have a special podcast. We have a guest by the name of Bob Wesley from GoDaddy Poynt. We just entered a partnership with them, they’re sponsoring the podcast. Good way to incorporate the new relationship into the podcast. And, we thought we had a bunch of stuff to talk about.
We invited him to the podcast, and he was eager to show up, and so he’s here! And without further ado, let’s welcome Bob Wesley to the show. Thank you, hey Bob. Thank you, Justin. Hey Bob. Nice to see you today. So today we’re going to be talking to Bob about the program that Nationwide Payment Systems and GoDaddy Poynt have partnered with to help banks digitize merchant services because banks are trying to digitize their banking and we want to bring the digitization.
Wow, that’s a long word! of merchant services into the banks. Because one of the things when we talked to banks, and there was also a recent article that we, Me and Bob were discussing earlier from the financial brands’ website about how PayPal and Square specifically are, a threat to the banks, community banks, credit unions, and so on and so forth, and even FinTech because a lot of them are starting to offer banking services. That’s right! So, what’s your take on that, Bob? We do see FinTech companies starting to erode traditional banking services. They’re issuing debit cards to their customers. They’re giving them out loans and they’re even setting up their own banks.
And so, what they’ve really done is moved to a high-tech online type of environment, which we know that consumers strongly want and so do merchants. They want to be able to do things a lot easier than they used to. Yeah, so what we’ve done at Nationwide Payment Systems is we’ve leveraged the system that GoDaddy has, and we created a brand new website, nationwidepaymentsystems.com, which has a solution finder on it, which enables businesses to come in to go through the different solutions that we offer! Right.
Figure out which one they need and select it. Then they answer basically 10 questions. And then artificial intelligence takes over, and most of the time I would say about 90% of the accounts are approved almost instantaneously. Some take up to 30 minutes. Some require an email asking for additional information, and we’re going to partner with banks to bring this to their banking platform so they’re not losing.
Banks are losing revenue now cause their customers are going to PayPal, Square, or Stripe for their merchant services. Yeah, I signed up yesterday for the invoicing. And when I say it was probably the easiest signup process, I’m pretty sure that, in comparison to the others out there it was very simple, and straightforward.
It was easier than PayPal. That’s what I’m saying! It was way easier. Like I didn’t have any issues and I was approved within seconds. So that’s cool. That’s what we’re really trying to do. A lot of banks have been saddled with manual paper processes and they just really can’t compete against the FinTech companies like this.
But what we’ve done is we’ve introduced a fast and easy signup process. And we do think it’s probably the fastest and easiest in the industry. And we continue to make improvements there. So that really you can sign up from the comfort of your home or your business quickly and not spend a lot of time filling out additional paperwork.
Yeah, and the other great thing about the program is basically, you got hardware and software as a service, so this enables businesses to get a credit card terminal that does way more than just a traditional credit card terminal does. We don’t even call it that, we call it the smart terminal! And that enables businesses to get a lot of really cool features plus the addition of the dashboard and an app for their phone, giving them the ability to run their business no matter where they have the internet connection.
It’s amazing! Yeah, that’s our mantra that we want to help small businesses sell anywhere and pay anywhere because that’s what the consumer is really demanding. Whether you’re delivering something at home or to a business or they’re coming to your store, that’s what they want.
But being able to provide an account quickly. Now a branch manager, if they’re sitting with a client, can actually sign them up right then and there and give them that instant gratification or not even bother, to send a whole bunch of paper to them. Just send them a link through an email and have them sign up or just click on their website and get an account instantly!
So, many different ways that we really help them bring on new clients and retain existing clients! Yeah, so we’ve developed a system so the bank can advertise their, partner with Nationwide Payment Systems and GoDaddy. We give them a link, they come into the website, and they fill out a form and register under the bank that they’re with, so we can track the lead.
And then they go to the solution finder. So, we created that tracking system so we can have accountability for the leads and different things. Plus, we offer as we start, as we grow, and we offer more and more services through the Poynt system with GoDaddy. There are amazing things that you can do, and it keeps your merchant’s cost down.
Like I was discussing with Justin yesterday, we were discussing with a merchant about e-Commerce. So, it’s yeah, you pay, we have a small monthly fee. You get the dashboard, the invoicing, and then you get a free gateway. You’re not paying for another gateway, authorized.net or NMI monthly fees, transaction fees, PCI compliance fees, non-PCI fees, regulation fees, this fee that fee statement fees, or monthly minimums, which can add up to 50 to hundred dollars a month! Easy.
So, we’re offering very affordable merchant services. Yeah, most people don’t know what they actually are paying in the merchant account. They need a Ph.D. to read the statement. And the approach that we took was just to have three simple rates. One for an in-store card present, one for e-Com, and then the other one for using a key in a card number.
So, it’s great for when people take in telephone orders, have any other fees, then because we didn’t want to confuse the consumer. There are too many other confusing things in the payment industry.
One of the things that we’re getting merchants to use a lot with the system is the invoicing feature where they can send the customer the invoice, it has detail in it, and the customer can click and pay.
And then when they’re doing that, they can also have a conversation with the customer. So, we have a few clients, who’re actually getting feedback from the customer—adding a link to their Google reviews in there so the person can leave them a review. So, there are a lot of useful tools that you can use when you’re using invoicing for all types of businesses that do an invoice.
You can also do recurring invoicing and you can set on a very flexible basis to send out a recurring bill monthly, or weekly, and you could even set custom dates and you could have a start date and an end. It works really well for a lot of different industries from an orthodontist who puts you on a payment plan to if somebody was doing some building or some construction or maintenance at your house, put them on a regular maintenance plan, lawn care, etcetera.
That invoicing feature keeps the card on file if the consumer decides to elect to do that and makes it very convenient and you can always monitor. People are paying on time or not.
Yeah, it’s great for all types of companies! Me and Justin always talk about companies who make websites, WordPress companies where they’re making WordPress sites for small businesses. Small businesses.
And the small business wants to have payments on their website, instead of sending the customer to PayPal or Stripe, they can just partner with Nationwide Payment Systems the same way we’re partnering with banks. And then get their merchants, their customers, to get a merchant account through us. Right. Quick and easy, no gateway to pay for, no plugins to buy, and all that, which alleviates a lot, some expense.
The one thing that I’m interested in I’m trying to get my fellow developers interested in because there’s just been so much money left on the table when you think about, me as building websites for small businesses and set up e-Commerce stores and all the time, like all those businesses have to get paid, right?
PayPal doesn’t give you that option. Square doesn’t give you that option. Stripe doesn’t give you that option to where when you set up one of these businesses under your, let’s say, the main account you don’t get any, incentive from that. And what you guys are doing with that is a game changer.
And one, when my peers get onto the bandwagon and start understanding. Let’s stop being lazy and just putting this on to your client. Let’s get this little bit of money that’s left on the table, for gas money this month, or, whatever it is.
And so yeah, I really think that it’s really cool. And I think that within the next couple of months when we get when we really roll out this site and start doing some marketing for it and hitting up some of these trade shows and getting these people aware of the product it’s going to be a great thing.
Yeah, Web agencies really have a great opportunity, and you’re right. They typically stop when the shopping cart gets added and they don’t participate in that particular role. And they are really handling a lot of the maintenance and ongoing work and doing and working on that.
And obviously, GoDaddy is one of the leaders in the WordPress area. So, we have a lot of easy WordPress plugins, etcetera, that can work quite well and make the developer’s life very easy plus. They do have an advantage of earning an ongoing new revenue stream.
And so, we’re seeing a lot of web designers coming on board with us. Yeah, we’re enabling everybody to get you. Like we’re taking over the heavy lifting! Banks when I talked to banks, I was at a convention. There were several community banks, there were a couple of Neobanks there.
There was a state bank and a credit union, and I was discussing with them, I go. What do you do for merchant services? And they’re like, Yeah, we had, they either don’t have a merchant service program anymore, or the merchant service program they have doesn’t work because it’s just a phone number to call up and the customer has to call.
And when they go through their bank, and they can check who’s processing where? They see that most of their customers have gone to PayPal, Square, and Stripe, and now we’re going to give them a chance to participate in that. We’re going to handle the heavy lifting. We’ve created a solution center for them to use and we are going to handle all the heavy lifting for the bank.
So, the bank doesn’t have to do all that, and they can give that digital on demand. You could get, the person can be in the bank or on the website opening a bank account and say, hey, get your merchant account right now. Be approved in less than 30 minutes!
You’re right, if the banks aren’t careful and they allow the PayPal’s and Stripes and all these other FinTech companies to come in and start with merchant service.
It’s already been proven. Look at what Square has done. Look at what PayPal’s doing. They’re definitely creeping into the rest of the banking business. Yeah. And they’re using that as a wedge to get in there. Now, on the other hand, there’s a lot of AI, a lot of intelligent information that a banker can get and understand about their client by just looking at the processing information that’s going on.
We offer that capability with the back end type of portal that they can monitor and see what’s going on and gives them an opportunity to understand where the business is in their life cycle. Like restaurants traditionally, they have a very slow month in, January, great opportunity to maybe extend a short-term loan out.
Other they have other opportunities and other services where they can possibly extend services to their employee’s other banking services. So, it’s a great source of information and real-time information on what’s going on with the business. And that’s what the FinTech are using. And community banks are certainly well positioned to start to leverage that as well.
Yeah, I think especially when you look at the underserved communities, we spoke to a couple of banks that are concentrating on that and they can’t get anybody to convert to merchant services. I was explaining to them what we were working on at the time that we were going to be introducing this.
They were very excited about that because they need to, they’re trying to be in the digital age and also another thing. With banks as they reduce their footprint, right? Let’s say you’re a small community bank, you only have a couple of branches. We can also add Nationwide Payment Systems and help them with their footprint by helping them with an ATM program to give them some presence in the community.
So, let’s say they have a large, let’s say they loaned money to a mall or something like that, or a big office building. They might want to put an ATM in there and we can help them with that because we have ATM-managed services through our company. So, we are offering a full end-to-end solution for the bank.
Not just the credit card processing, but also giving them, managed ATM services. Because let’s say you’re just a small bank, but maybe you want to have an ATM outside somewhere at the mall to service your customers. Or you want to have an ATM at a big business in the area where you’re doing all their banking and you want their employees to bank with you.
We can help them get an ATM in that location and then have it all serviced where they don’t have to do anything. We provide, and we help them get the ATM installed, service it, and keep it full of money. And all that, and ATMs are becoming like financial kiosks now. And so, it’s important for them too, to be able to do that.
And customers want to do things from their website of the bank, right? So, when they go to the bank, they go, oh, I need a merchant account. Click the button, come into Nationwide Payment Systems, register, and get your merchant account. And then, we let the bank know. Oh, by the way, Justin’s Bar and Grill got a merchant account. Bob’s Auto Repair got a merchant account today. Yeah, we’ll be able to track where the leads came from easily.
Also, the additional value services that you offer beyond, it’s one thing to offer a credit card solution, but what you really can offer is ways to help these businesses grow.
From a, a restaurant now maybe enables them to place an order and pay at the table, right? To a dental office where you can help them integrate into their practice management system so that they don’t have to do double entries and stuff like that. And they can collect bills a lot easier using things like text to pay.
And then other retailers, like they can spin up a quick social media ad where they can have somebody make a purchase over social media. GoDaddy is known to be a leader in helping businesses grow. Their digital capabilities and what we do is we help bring those services to your company and offer them to the right company at the right time, the right merchant at the right time.
The other big thing is you read about people don’t know, me and Justin always discuss, crazy terms that come out. So, one of the terms is Omnichannel, Omni commerce, or FinTech. FinTech is the big thing, right? Yeah, FinTech! So, we try to say Hey, we’re the Nationwide Payment Systems website.
We’re bringing FinTech to the merchant world! Right. We’re bringing you, a FinTech experience instead of a merchant service experience. So, we’re bringing you the newest technology, right, cool terminals! You don’t have to worry about paper. Oh, we need rolls of paper.
Rolls of paper. You can just text and email the receipt, and you’re getting all that information to use for your marketing program! Right. You can also message individual customers through the invoice. There are so many features in the GoDaddy dashboard and we’re hoping to bring more. Over time, more GoDaddy products and add to things that merchants can do, like offer consumer financing, and ACH, there’s going to be more products coming into the platform as we discussed earlier, payroll and different things because this is what businesses want.
They want to have one portal where they can do all of their business. And like with them, our partnership with retail time with the point of sale. Someone can, a retail store, load all their items into the point of sale, and then they can additionally get a website and now have e-Commerce.
Yeah, compete. You got to compete with the big box store and have e-Commerce for your store so people can order online, pick up in-store, or order online and get it shipped or order online and pick it up curbside, you, like the smaller businesses, we’re giving them an affordable way on how to develop an Omnichannel experience for their customers!
You bring up a great point, Allen one of the real benefits that you offer to banks and merchants is you become their trusted advisor. You’re the one out there looking at new technology and we’re able to. GoDaddy’s able to bring that to you and you’re able to identify the right situation, the right need, and take that product that we’re offering and provide it to them and explain it in such a way that they don’t have to go to M.I.T or Stanford, in order to know how to use it. So, banks really are gaining a lot by using you as a trusty. That really understands it has a deep understanding of the payment industry.
The other thing is like our competitors PayPal, Square, and Strike, it’s not like you can call them up on the phone and ask a question. If a merchant when you come to the website, you don’t want to sign up and you say, oh, I want to talk to somebody, you can hit us up on the phone. You can start a call, you can make an appointment, and then we’ll discuss it with you, to find you the right solution for your business.
And if there’s something wrong, you can contact us. Right! And you can get in touch with somebody, and we’ll try to problem-solve with you and, work it out. A lot of those companies you can’t even get in touch with.
And Nationwide is backed by GoDaddy in terms of service that we provide special servicing to our partners like Nationwide and help them give you the best possible service that you might need and so that you can, no, you don’t have time to wait for somebody, someone.
You, you’re going to lose a lot of business on Sunday if you can’t get ahold of somebody or at 12 o’clock at night when you’re trying to close down your business. We’re here to support you 24 by seven. And Nationwide is beat on the street experts in their industry and able to leverage some great technology and bring it to you when you’re ready!
Yeah, one of the really cool things about the GoDaddy support is, there’s a chat on the terminal. There’s a chat in the app. There’s a chat in the dashboard, so it’s easy for them to chat. Plus, we give people our email addresses. If they’re having a problem or they have a question, they just shoot us an email.
We have a customer service team. We get the email, then we’re able to either contact the merchant back and explain what they need to do, or we get in touch with, reach out to GoDaddy customer support and get the situation straightened out quickly.
You even have the ability to reach directly out to the terminal and take a look at what’s going on, and not ask somebody to give you an interpretation of what’s going on.
We can look right into the, we can look at what’s going on in their machine and everything. Ourselves, we don’t have to wait. Yeah, we don’t have to wait! That’s amazing. That’s a really, that’s a big thing. Yeah. Hey, Bob, if there’s one thing that you could say that, God daddy is doing differently from all these major things, what do you think that would be?
A lot of people just sell processing, and they’re always interested. Just, providing a basic accountant, I’m sure you’ve all, most merchants have had somebody come in and say, Oh, please gimme your statement. I’ll do an analysis. But you never know whether that analysis was correct and whether the rates will change after a short period of time.
And really, most companies, in order to grow, what they need is solutions to help them live in this digital world. And let’s face it, a lot of companies started with GoDaddy even getting their domain registry, and then their website. And now we’re excited that we can really service any need that they have, in order to reach their customers.
And as we bring together more and more of these services so that we can create more of a seamless out-of-the-box type of scenario we’re not going to be talking payment rates and different things we’re going to be talking about: How do we double your business next week and is there another way you can go out and sell today?
Oh, there’s a great little fair and event I want to go and. Get to, oh, there’s this wonderful new social media I want to be able to sell over. Oh, gee, what about some scheduling that I want to do? There are so many different things, and the great thing is that GoDaddy also has an open ecosystem where we invite creative developers to come in and develop the latest and greatest applications, and that’s a way we can accelerate our growth.
And accelerate yours, as well as bring you some really creative things that, make you put you on the same plane as a Walmart and a Target. Nice! Or some of the other big chains. The technology we bring really helps you reach your customers at the right time, at the right place.
And no, that’s why I was saying, we’re bringing businesses and banks and agencies a business solution. It’s not just payment processing, it’s a complete solution that has so many tools in it, right? You have all these tools at your disposal to help you grow your business, manage your business, and promote your business.
That’s like on our website, one of the big things, how to sell, how to promote, and how to manage, and those things, that’s what’s going to help a business increase their sales. By being able to communicate with their customers and have a loyalty program. There are all sorts of things that you can do that you can’t do with a regular basic credit card machine.
So, it’s more of a Nationwide Payment Systems and GoDaddy business solution to help you with your business.
So, we’re going to be in Vegas, aren’t we, Allen? Yeah, we’re going to be at the Financial Brand show. What booth number are we in? I don’t remember what number. But we might be by the front door, right?
Right by the front door. You can’t miss it, as if you walk in the front door. We’re going to have a big kiosk with a big screen tv. What is the name of the show? It’s the Financial Brand Conference. Yeah, we’re going to be there. And banks are going to be there and we’re going to be there to talk to you about our program that we’re offering, basically monthly residuals for the bank.
No liability. Bonus programs, we’ve talked to you about our full Omnichannel solution, the fast approvals, you get dedicated, if you’re a bank or you’re listening, you’re from an agency, you get a dedicated representative. We are the alternative. PayPal, Stripe, and Square to help you keep your customers, and grow your bank.
You can leverage us. We can leverage you maybe in some cases. We can also help you get a presence in the community with ATMs because that’s also a struggle for a lot of small banks. How to leverage their presence in the community, of. And especially now, all the ATMs have to be upgraded, and things like that.
And we servicing all types of businesses, retail, restaurants, services, invoicing, and e-Commerce. With 24-hour support and easy sign-up and yeah, come meet us. Come meet me and Bob at the Financial Brand Conference and stop by the booth and we’ll talk to you more about our turnkey program.
Yeah. And we’ll help you grow your business and yeah, look forward to seeing you. So that’s I think November 13th, 14th, 15th, and 16th. So, four days, Yeah, I think it’s four days. Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday in the area. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday at the area in Las Vegas. So, in there, and if you can’t make it, you certainly can reach out to Allen, and we’ll be happy to sit down with you and talk about how we can help your business.
Yeah, you can book an appointment. We have our text thing. You can text the word B O O K to 9 5 4 8 2 7 9 8 1 8. Or go to B2B vault.info and click the Apply Now button. It takes you right there and you get and answer some questions. You hit the ground running. Bob, thank you so much for joining the B2B Vault podcast.
We appreciate you. Thank you for everything that you’re doing for Nationwide Payment Systems. We’re excited about our partnership. Very excited. As I said, I can’t wait to start, getting these different agencies getting in their ears and trying to get them away from the other big three that we mentioned.
Yeah, there’s a lot of opportunity and we’re excited to be working with Nationwide. We think you’re one of the best and a great trusted advisor to help a lot of businesses thrive and grow. Yeah, we’re looking forward to meeting a lot of banks at the convention and introducing our program and showing you how we can help your bank grow by digitizing.
Take care. Have a great day.
Thanks. Thanks, Bob. Take care, man.
So, we have, oh, let’s we’re going to stop now. No. So, thanks for listening to the podcast today. We thank Bob for being on from GoDaddy. We had a great conversation with Bob today from GoDaddy. We’re looking forward to our partnership. Visit the website, nationwidepaymentsystems.com. You can click on the partner page to find out more about our partner programs that we’re offering in conjunction with GoDaddy! You can also get a merchant account 10 questions! Justin told you earlier how quickly he got approved. It’s very easy. Yep, it’s very easy. You’re answering the questions and artificial intelligence is working in the background.
And boom, if everything, if all the information matches up with the internet world, right? It’s crazy. Then you’re approved. So, everybody have a great day. Catch us at the Financial Brand Conference in Las Vegas. Come by the booth. We’re right by the front door. Big GoDaddy booth, come by.
Peace out.
