PEP Episode 008 — What’s It Mean For You? With Allen Kopelman

Podcast Description:

Visa and MasterCard are the two biggest credit card companies in the world. But a potential competitor could possibly knock them both down, along with banks, and crypto companies. But who could possibly have this much power? On this episode we have guest Allen Kopelman of Nationwide Payment Systems and also podcast B2B Vault alongside with James Huber, Managing Partner of Global Legal Law Firm to discuss what FedNow is and how it possibly could affect you.

 

Jeremy Stock (00:00):

Welcome to the Payments Experts Podcast, a podcast of global legal law firm ISOs, FinTech, pay fax agents, merchants, processors, acquiring banks and card brands. If these terms mean something to you, this podcast is for you. If these terms aren’t so familiar, this podcast is even more for you. We hope you enjoy this episode of pep, the Payments Experts podcast.

Jeremy Stock (00:36):

Welcome To this episode of the Payments Experts Podcast, a podcast of Global Legal Law Firm. Today we have the special guest, Allen Kopelman of Nationwide Payment Systems and also the podcast B2B Vault. Alan, welcome.

Allen Kopelman (00:51):

Thank you guys.

Jeremy Stock (00:53):

We’re here with James Huber, Managing Partner, Global Legal Law Firm. Gentlemen, jump right in.

James Huber (00:58):

Good morning, Alan. We’ve, we’ve known each other quite some time, I think at this point. Uh

Allen Kopelman (01:03):

Oh yeah. At least a decade.

James Huber (01:05):

Yeah, it’s been fun. Uh, before we, we got started, we had this topic we wanted to discuss, but we got kind of caught off by, I’m calling it a conspiracy theory of Fed Now. And you agreed that, I mean, I don’t, I’m not even calling it a theory at this point.

Allen Kopelman (01:27):

Oh, it’s definitely, uh, the government is trying to take out all the banks, the crypto companies, and take out Visa and MasterCard in one fell swoop.

James Huber (01:39):

How are they gonna take out Visa and MasterCard?

Allen Kopelman (01:41):

Because they want to come out with Fed Now to move Money Central Digital currency, and they’re gonna, and, and, and that would basically decimate the banks. I mean, no, no bank is gonna integrate Fed Now, so you can go into the grocery store and pay with FedNow. Can you imagine how much money First Data, Chase Global Payments, Tsys, they would lose billions of dollars in revenue and the card issuers, any bank that’s issuing cards would be cause billions of dollars in losses.

James Huber (02:17):

I know, but

Allen Kopelman (02:18):

Would be business.

James Huber (02:19):

But who, who’s gonna, if it’s the government, who’s gonna, what the, do you think the lobbying will work? Do you think they’ll be able to stop it?

Allen Kopelman (02:27):

I don’t think consumers will go along with it. I mean, basically I’ve listened to it. I mean, basically if you look at China, China has WeChat. Everything you do is on your phone in China. Right. And they basically surveil everybody. Okay. That’s what Fed Now is basically designed to do.

James Huber (02:47):

The, uh, the scariest thing that I’ve heard so far, it actually was from Dale at the Green Sheets. She was saying, what if they put an expiration date on your money?

Allen Kopelman (02:58):

Yeah. They do that. Now, in other countries, they give you have, they give you negative interest. Oh, James has too much money, Allen has too much money, and they start taking away your

James Huber (03:08):

Money, better go spend it

Allen Kopelman (03:10):

Re redistributing wealth. Yeah. I mean, how long have we heard that?

James Huber (03:15):

Right? Right. Well, yeah. And where does it get distributed to? I mean, back into the economy. Isn’t that good?

Allen Kopelman (03:23):

Yeah. It’s gonna go to whoever they want to give the mo our money to.

James Huber (03:26):

Right.

Allen Kopelman (03:27):

Take money away from the rich and give it to the poor. It’s like, you know, modern day Robinhood.

James Huber (03:33):

Well, I don’t think, I don’t think the average consumer card holder has that much of a problem. And at this point, I think everybody knows what Bitcoin is and Yeah. You know, e let’s say you are, you know, living in wherever and you, you know, have no idea how to buy it. You heard it was the rage. You heard it crashed, but you still know, Hey, this exists. And the government’s doing it now. I mean, what are there gonna be public interest groups? You know, I see it most, I, I see it mostly probably coming from the left, even though it’s kind of a more right issue of, you know, don’t tread on me. But, I mean, who’s, who’s gonna be, who’s gonna go to go to bat on this?

Allen Kopelman (04:18):

I don’t, I’m not sure. But, you know, you have this big push for this central digital currency coming out of the Biden administration. Janet Yellen, they’re trying to push banks into doing it. I mean, right now, uh, P N C Bank has a number of branches in South Florida where you can’t get any cash. There’s no ATM there, and you can’t withdraw cash out of the bank.

James Huber (04:43):

What do you get?

Allen Kopelman (04:44):

Nothing. They won’t do it. You have to go to a different P N C. Hmm. It’s a cashless, uh, p c I mean, they’ve been lobbying, lobbying for the last couple of years to get rid of ATM machines. They want to get rid of ATMs Completely.

James Huber (05:00):

And what they’re giving you a token.

Allen Kopelman (05:03):

Yeah. They’re getting, well, no, they’re not doing anything at P N C. If you want cash and you go into one of the cashless branches, they send you to a different branch. They don’t have, they have no cash in the bank.

James Huber (05:16):

Okay. I mean, that makes sense. I remember I got, I flipped out on US Bank when I was in, uh, law school. Cause I went in there and I was so angry that they wouldn’t like cash a check and give me the money. And I was like, give me my money right now. And it was like $11,000 or something. We’re like, we don’t have it. This is downtown San Diego. So. Right. Are they, are they trying to, I mean, what’s the benefit of going cashless for a bank? And we know that there’s

Allen Kopelman (05:46):

No benefit. They want to, well, you know, you got tons of people. They got cash and safes, people have cash stashed in other places, you know, and it’s become a, it’s become a hot mess. I mean, even now I get questioned by my bank. I move some cash to Betterment because they’re paying 3% and Betterment pays four and a half percent interest. So why shouldn’t I make another point and a half interest on my cash?

James Huber (06:15):

Well, I, I mean, absolutely. I don’t, I don’t even know a bank that offers 3% still, unless you’re at like a, you know, Morgan Stanley or something. I mean, US Bank, I think the, the Morgan or the, excuse me, the interest in your savings account is like 0.0, zero zero 3%.

Allen Kopelman (06:33):

Yeah. Well, they, you know, I’m at, uh, I work with, um, truist, which used to be SunTrust and BB and t, and they have Money. Market is like around 3%. You can get a CD for about 4%, but you get four and a half percent at Betterment. Charles Schwab is paying four and a half percent in their money market too.

James Huber (06:55):

Yeah. Well, why, why don’t, well, we jumped in a little fast, I think. Why don’t we back out? Can you explain what Fed Now, um, totally entails, like what, you know, high level umbrella. What are they trying to do here?

Allen Kopelman (07:09):

So Fed Now, basically they want to have a app on your phone. So you walk into a store, you are able just like Zelle or Cash App, but except it’s fed down exactly what they’re trying to do already exists with Cash App, Venmo, PayPal, Zelle, all of those things can send money back and forth. But it’s a nightmare if you’re a merchant because you’re gonna get a deposit for each transaction. You know, can you imagine a grocery store, everybody’s paying with Zelle, how many transactions they would’ve flowing into their bank account, the, uh, reconciliation Nightmare. But Fed Now basically is just moving money from your bank account to my bank account, or my bank account to a Merchant’s bank account. And the problem with that is, is cons. You know, you compare it to other countries in the world, right? So in the US we enjoy unsecured credit and a ton of benefits for using a credit card.

Allen Kopelman (08:08):

We have consumer protection. We could do chargebacks. We could, we have control over what credit card we want to get from what bank and all that. With Fed, now, you’re just gonna have one choice. Oh, fed now, just like WeChat in China. And then the government, what ha they can decide, oh, sorry Alan, you put too much gas in your car this week, we’re not gonna let you buy gas. Right? Or James, you’re going out to eat too much. You know, you can’t, you can’t pay, you know, we’re not gonna let you pay. I mean, how much There, there’s gonna be government oversight on what you’re spending, how much you’re spending, where you’re spending. I mean, basically the app would be able to track whatever you do and have a footprint on you. And the government would control that and Fed. Now, basically, if they pass that, when you, you have to look at all the things that they’re doing. So you have Fed now, then you got the central digital currency, and you couple those two together, that’s central digital currency to get rid of cash, get rid of ATMs, and get rid of credit cards. Boom. And then everybody’s stuck with Fed Now. And then, I don’t know what would happen to all the banks and everybody’s money and who would control all of

James Huber (09:29):

That. What about a credit card? But I mean, they still wanna have credit

Allen Kopelman (09:32):

Cards. Cards would be gone.

James Huber (09:33):

Well, I mean, isn’t the, you know, our, our economy is 70% based on consumer spending. Right. And most of that, yeah, I wouldn’t say most of that, but a big portion of that is people on credit. So why would they get rid of credit cards?

Allen Kopelman (09:48):

Because they don’t understand Congress. There’s one saying that I hear from every meeting that I monitor from the financial committees in the house and the senate, innovation businesses, business innovation, outpaces regulation. They are so upset that they don’t control everything. Right? So because they don’t control it and they don’t understand it, they want to just get rid of it. I mean, here, I went to Bitcoin 2023 last year. There was 10 times the exhibitors, the, the convention was three, four times the size. 15,000 people showed up the year before was over 35,000. Not one crypto exchange was there. No, no booths for blockchain.com, Coinbase, none of those companies showed up. Wow. None of the crypto processors showed up. They, they decimated the industry in the United States. So that’s what they did in one year to cryptocurrency drove the price from 70 grand down to 25 to 30,000.

Allen Kopelman (11:00):

I mean, it’s alive in, in Europe, Asia, they’re using, uh, crypto all the time for payments. But it’s dead in the us. And the tax laws is part, is the biggest reason for that. Those tax laws. I mean, there’s another law in this. Uh, you know, what’s this? Uh, the debt ceiling, right? So now they’re trying to add a 3.8% to 5% tax to small business owners. I mean, how, what are, I mean, that’s just gonna cause prices to go up. Right? You know, and all this stuff, you know, fed down stuff. All this stuff is tied together. The bank failures fed now cryptocurrency going down the two central digital bank currency. If you have central digital bank currency, what do you need a bank for? Do we need a bank?

James Huber (11:55):

Yeah. No item. I mean, I don’t think you do. I think you, yeah. You need the digital wallet and your, you know, payroll goes to that through them. They’re watching it. You know, if you owe child support, they’re taking that right out. If you’ve got a parking ticket, utility bill, all of that, they’re just swooping it. And I think it’s scary. And, you know, I see it as it’s happening and we’re all kind of sitting here being like, it’s nev No, that would never happen. You know? Yeah. And then it does, because it is happening. But wouldn’t, wouldn’t crypto survive, you know, as the underground, when we all go live in the sewers and, you know, I carry like a light wand

Allen Kopelman (12:35):

<laugh>,

James Huber (12:37):

You know, wouldn’t, wouldn’t crypto be the saving grace for the resistance?

Allen Kopelman (12:41):

It could. But if they had control over everything, including the internet, how would you use crypto?

James Huber (12:46):

Sure. Now we’re, you know, now we’re, you know, we’ve warped past, you know, me living in the sewers now, it’s just a full, you know, Marshall law, state government controlling us. It’s

Allen Kopelman (12:57):

China. Yeah. That’s what we would have. We would be left with what they have in China.

James Huber (13:03):

So who, but who’s pushing the agenda? I mean, we’ve got, you know, Joe Biden in there, who’s, you know, supposed to be, you know, the people’s people on, you know, on the left ish. Um, but this seems more like something, you know, uh, uh, red, you know, government do.

Allen Kopelman (13:22):

Don’t think so. I think it’s a lot more sinister than that. I think there’s a lot of out, and another thing that I heard when I was at Bitcoin, Robert Kennedy spoke, I was like, is this guy a Democrat or is he a Republican? Or what is he? Because he was going nuts. He’s like, all this stuff the government’s doing is to set up a surveillance state in the United States. And he goes, Dick, people need to fight back. And, you know, I’m not gonna put up with that. I mean, everything they’re doing, you know, we’ve heard redistribution of wealth that’s from Obama, when Obama came in office. Oh, we need to redistribute wealth. We need to redistribute wealth. Well, the only way they’re gonna be able to do that is to have central digital currency and take everybody’s money away.

James Huber (14:09):

Yeah. I mean, I can see it. And I, I, I agree. I think it’s bigger than, you know, a party line here. But then maybe this is

Allen Kopelman (14:19):

The this’s definitely bigger than a party line.

James Huber (14:21):

But maybe this is the great unifier. You know, you and I can, I can, you know, take off my Bernie Sanders t-shirt and you’ll, you know, retire your, you know, whoever, DeSantis, <laugh>, whoever, you know, you flag, you’ve got waving. And we’d come together and go, Hey, this is not gonna work for anybody. Let’s just get somebody in the middle. Maybe this is the great unifier of let’s fight against actually becoming, you know, a big brother state.

Allen Kopelman (14:48):

Well, everybody needs to realize what’s going on. They’re doing it in all these little pieces and everybody’s being fooled.

James Huber (14:56):

I agree. I mean, I think the, the banks collapsing, you know, there is the very real explanation of, okay, their, their rates were too high. They’ve got all these underperforming assets and their, you know, people want their money. They have to sell it. But what triggered those bank runs for people to sell? It was investigations. It was bad news about the bank. And the first three banks to go down were crypto banks, right?

Allen Kopelman (15:24):

Yep. Exactly. They were all heavily involved in crypto

James Huber (15:29):

And

Allen Kopelman (15:29):

All three of those banks.

James Huber (15:30):

And they just happened to go down. And now we have all the findings and everything, and they’re going, oh, you know, these guys are just mismanaging assets and this, that, the other thing, well, it didn’t get, it still shouldn’t have collapsed. You know, I know Wells Fargo is humongous, but you remember seven years ago when they’re opening up fake accounts for people and stealing money from their customers.

Allen Kopelman (15:54):

Well, that one la that one lady who was in charge of that, she’s I think, going to jail now. But meanwhile, Sam Bankman free to rip people off for Billions is sitting in a beach house over there in California by you guys.

James Huber (16:08):

Let’s go find him. Um, <laugh>. So what, but what does that have to do with any, I mean, why are, do you think that they wanted, they’re trying to help out, you know, him? I mean, I know he did a ton of lobbying. I think he, you know, that was kind of his,

Allen Kopelman (16:21):

They’re not helping him out with anything. They’re just not doing anything to the guy.

James Huber (16:25):

Right.

Allen Kopelman (16:26):

He’s just sitting there in a house. That’s it.

Speaker 5 (16:29):

He must know where some skeletons are.

James Huber (16:32):

Yeah. Maybe. Um, well, I think Yeah, but kind of seems like he kind of paid his way to,

Allen Kopelman (16:39):

To keep his freedom

James Huber (16:40):

Preferential treatment. Yeah. I stole all the money and then he re he re redistributed the wealth straight to, uh, Congress and presidential candidates. So, um, alright, well, what are we, what, what should people be doing about this? What, what should, what should I be doing about this?

Allen Kopelman (16:59):

I think we gotta figure out what’s going on and lobby Congress say, we don’t want central digital currency in the United States, and we’re not for, you know, all these increased taxes because these increased taxes that they’re doing, especially to small businesses, it’s gonna come back and it’s gonna just drive inflation through the roof. I mean, you had a three, 3.8 or 5% tax to a ru you know, to a, a business, a retail business today or any big business, they’re just gonna either raise prices or add the tax on checkout to pay the taxes. Yeah. So the consumer’s gonna end up paying for it.

James Huber (17:38):

Right? Right. And it’s interesting because three years ago, we’re all, you know, touting small businesses as our heroes. And we, you know, we’ll do whatever. I’ll keep spending money, you know, I’ll spend all my, you know, stimulus check to keep this place alive. I’ll pay, you know, surcharging and discounting, boomed over Covid. Cuz people are going, you know what, I’ll pay for this. Because it’s a luxury to be able to buy things online and have to support these, you know, people are going out of business. So it’s interesting to see it go the other way. And I wonder if it’s like retaliation, you know, you know, everyone shouldn’t have done this. Well, during Covid, the companies that survived, you know, everyone that survived, thrived, you know, it was, it was like, uh, you know, forest Gump, you know, getting all the shrimp,

Allen Kopelman (18:28):

Right? Yeah. It was either get survive and thrive, or go out of business, you know?

James Huber (18:35):

Right. So what,

Allen Kopelman (18:37):

Sink or swim.

James Huber (18:38):

So what, what is it, what’s the rationale behind cranking small businesses right now?

Allen Kopelman (18:44):

I think that Biden’s policies have been very antis, small business, medium sized business. They’re, they’re all the policies that they have regarding tax and, you know, 80,000 i r s agents. I mean, they’re basically targeting anybody who has any type of pass through income from a business. You know, that that’s who they’re targeting.

James Huber (19:11):

I, I, I thought of something when you, you know, I, I glazed over it because one, I think, I think we can all agree Visa and MasterCard could use a little competition. Um, they’ve got, you know, way too much authority and they’re not regulated really at all. And they make their own rules, but then they don’t enforce them. And, you know, all

Allen Kopelman (19:31):

Collective enforcement.

James Huber (19:33):

Collective enforcement. Sure. But

Allen Kopelman (19:35):

So selective, selective,

James Huber (19:36):

Selective. Absolutely. And you’d be surprised when I go into a courtroom and I’m going, your Honor, this merchant is money laundering for all of these sub merchants. And he’s going, well, what law did he break? And I’m going, he’s violating the Visa and MasterCard’s rules. And he’s going, you know, those aren’t rules until I get, you know, an expert up on the stand. And he’s going, no, these actually are the only laws. And he is like, oh, okay. Gotcha. Um, but you know, they’re so, they’re, they’re making their own rules. They’re selectively enforcing them. They’re wiping out, you know, the surcharge industry with a single backhand slap.

Allen Kopelman (20:18):

I don’t think they’re wiping that out at all. I, I, let me tell you, I was at a, I was at an event. They had a 20% surcharge on all the food you bought.

James Huber (20:28):

Well, that would be, that would be, that would violate visa’s new regulation, the three, 3%

Allen Kopelman (20:34):

Cap. Obviously the merchant didn’t care. Yeah.

James Huber (20:36):

Well, yeah. They might care. Why? Because I mean, I’m seeing people get fined on these things. But, so that’s

Allen Kopelman (20:42):

Only, I think the fi anybody, and I think if enough merchants get fined, we’re gonna end up in a lawsuit. It’s gonna go before the Supreme Court, and then the Supreme Court’s gonna have to rule, oh, what rule did they break? Durban is a law. Right? Right. And this is a rule by Visa, not MasterCard. MasterCard said they didn’t agree with Visa for the first time ever. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> MasterCard said, oh, our, we’re staying at 4%.

James Huber (21:11):

Right, right. So, well, so, you know, I, I like that Visa and MasterCard are, you know, I want, I mean, they’re saying they’re not worried about Fed Now. They’re going, we’ll embrace it. We’ll adapt. I’m guessing that’s because they’re gonna be giving a seat at the table. We know that Visa and MasterCard’s lobbying budget is humongous. Um, you can’t look it up anymore, unfortunately. <laugh>, but, um, when you could, it was huge. And it’s still, I’m sure it’s got even, even larger. So what, you know, and they’re lobbying in every state. How, how would they get wiped out by this?

Allen Kopelman (21:50):

Well, they would get wiped out cuz there would be no more credit cards.

James Huber (21:53):

Yeah. But

Allen Kopelman (21:53):

Then why they’re gonna be paying with Fed Now,

James Huber (21:55):

Why aren’t they sweating it though? I mean, I’ve heard them say, we’re not sweating it. We’re gonna change and adapt because

Allen Kopelman (22:00):

They’re not gonna do anything. Do you think you’re seeing, uh, first DA F Fis, Pfizer, TSIs Global? I haven’t heard anybody say, oh yeah, we’re dumping millions of dollars of development into Fed now. They’re not doing anything. I’ve talked to two large ACH companies. Are you guys doing anything to help with Fed down then? They said no. They said we’ll lose a ton of money,

James Huber (22:28):

So they’re just gonna die on the vine. I mean, I, I think that Visa and MasterCard are gonna be given some role in

Allen Kopelman (22:35):

This. I don’t think, I don’t see how they’re gonna do it. First of all, the, the, what people don’t understand is, is that the US has a credit system of mostly unsecured credit. Okay? So that’s our credit system. It’s unsecured. Right? If I have a line of credit for a hundred grand, I didn’t sign over my house or whatever. The bank just decided, Hey, this guy puts up enough charges. He pays his bill every month. He’s good for a hundred grand. James is good for a hun 200 grand a month. Jeremy’s good for 50, whatever it is. Yeah. That’s not how it works in other countries. In other countries, it’s set up where it’s your ability to pay. So you can only, you only have X amount of credit and you have to pay your bill. That’s why when there’s international credit cards taken by a merchant in the US and they get a chargeback, they can’t fight it. The, the bank and another country does a charge back. And that’s the end of that. The merchant here loses their money. So all this BS that Visa, MasterCard discover Amex puts out and says, oh, we have a global economy. There’s no global economy when it comes to chargebacks.

James Huber (23:52):

It seems like it would have to be somewhat, somewhat of a slow transition because, you know, for example, you know, fed now you’re probably not gonna be able to buy your illegal online, you know, mushrooms that you’ve been taking every day and probably took a bunch this morning. Just kidding, <laugh>. Um, but you know, what, are we gonna go back to seashells for that type of thing?

Allen Kopelman (24:15):

I don’t know. That’s what I’m saying. Like, what are, what are they fed? Now they could decide, Hey, we don’t want porn anymore. Right? So there’s no more porn, there’s no more c b, there’s no more marijuana. There’s no more cash. You can’t put an ATM in a dispensary, get cash out and go buy marijuana. They could do what? I mean, they would have the ultimate control. Oh, we don’t want you to drive on a a gas car. We want you to go get a Prius. Right Alan?

Jeremy Stock (24:42):

What? Alan what about all the, uh, Bitcoin believers, the guys that are saying, Hey, Bitcoin is the only one, not the Altcoins, but just Bitcoin totally decentralized. You can never shut it down. What do you say to those guys?

James Huber (24:54):

Well, how would you buy it?

Allen Kopelman (24:56):

You won’t be able to buy it anymore,

Jeremy Stock (24:58):

Bro. Rogue internet like they do. And the guys that know how they can

Allen Kopelman (25:01):

Buy it with what, what are you gonna buy it with?

Jeremy Stock (25:04):

Right. That’s a good point.

Allen Kopelman (25:05):

And, and you got people now, I get emails all the time. Protect your future. Buy gold, buy silver, buy platinum, you know, and put it in a safe in your house and have gold coins

James Huber (25:20):

So that you can go around and barter.

Allen Kopelman (25:23):

Yeah. So I mean, I mean, what are they gonna do? I mean, you know, if you’re, if if they lock it down where everything’s essential, digital bank, I mean, what’s gonna happen to the stocks that you have? You own a stock and a bank. Oh, sorry. You own a hundred thousand shares of Chase. Sorry. Let’s go on now. Bye. Your money’s gone. I mean, this is a take down to turn the United States into China. That’s what I see. Well, <laugh>, it’s a crazy theory to think about, but that’s what it is.

James Huber (25:56):

Well, I, I like it because I I I’m on board. But you’re actually taking it quite a few steps further than where

Allen Kopelman (26:02):

I Yeah, but look at what’s going on in China. Go look up WeChat. If you, if you’re in China and you, and you’re going to go, let’s say you live in an apartment complex. You have to go up to the gate with your phone. The phone opens the gate, somebody knows where you are. You have to go open the front door, you gotta go to the elevator. Why did you press floor six James instead of eight? You live, you don’t live on six. Who’d you go visit on six? They know who you visited because the person needed to open, put their phone on the door to open it up and let you in their apartment. Right? I mean, this, it’s a surveil. China is a surveillance state. Okay. Fed now is a way to surveil. And it, and I’ll tell you something else. Somebody mentioned this guy, Robert Kennedy mentioned it when he was speaking.

Allen Kopelman (26:50):

And I said, you know what, this guy’s right on. What did he say? He said that whatever the government has not been able to do in the last couple years with Biden and the White House, they have done their bidding through private companies. So Facebook, you know, they’re not happy that Elon Musk owns Twitter cuz he’s not their puppet. Right? But Zuckerberg is their puppet. You know, the guys at Google are their puppet, right? The people on TV are their puppets, right? So they’re doing their bidding. I mean, they shut down a bank, right? They shut these banks down. Oh, we don’t like crypto. Let’s get rid of these banks and decimate them. Right? So what did they do? They decimated who was banking at these banks to tons of crypto companies. Yep. Right? Those companies are now out of business. You don’t see…

James Huber (27:48):

These guys. Oh no. They bailed them out.

Allen Kopelman (27:50):

No, they did not bail them out. They’re not processing, they don’t, the new owners of the bank are not letting them have bank accounts. So therefore…

James Huber (27:58):

Oh, right, right.

Allen Kopelman (27:59):

They can’t operate their business. Where before, before Biden put his taxes in, we had merchants that were, that were transacting in crypto. Oh, so you want to buy jewelry? Okay, give me a hundred grand of Bitcoin and I’ll give you the jewelry. And they’re getting a hundred grand in their bank account. That’s shut down right now. That’s done. You’re not, that’s not happening now. Any kind of big, any kind of transaction involving crypto creates a taxable event. They’re even taxing what? You have your crypto holdings. Didn’t I get own any crypto? Didn’t I…

James Huber (28:34):

Get cut or it made it back in?

Allen Kopelman (28:36):

What? No, that’s, that’s in. Oh boy. That’s not, Hmm. That’s in, you gotta pay taxes on your crypto holdings. Listen, if it was up to them, whatever holdings you had in your stock account, they would tax that too.

James Huber (28:50):

No, I didn’t mean that. I meant the, uh, the paying with crypto.

Allen Kopelman (28:55):

Yeah, it’s done. Because they’re, none of those companies can operate. They don’t have banking.

James Huber (29:00):

Right.

Allen Kopelman (29:01):

There’s a guy local here, they’re not operating. I mean, none of, none of, you know, none of, and and all these companies are moving offshore, right? So you got Bance moved offshore. I think Coinbase is moving off out of the United States. They can’t operate in the United States. The SEC’s coming after Coinbase,

James Huber (29:21):

Right.

Allen Kopelman (29:22):

With a whole bunch of charges. They’re just gonna move out of the country.

James Huber (29:26):

Right. <laugh>, right. I, I’ve said that

Allen Kopelman (29:29):

That’s what’s happening.

James Huber (29:30):

We’ve, I’ve defended people accused of white collar crimes and they’re, you know, we’re in San Diego and they’ll live in Mexico. And I kept going, why don’t you just not come back? And it was interesting. And they couldn’t, couldn’t, I was like, you haven’t, like you’ve told me you have money buried all over your property. Just, you know, that they, they liked it here, I guess, but yeah, no, these other companies, yeah, we’re out. Um, yeah.

Allen Kopelman (29:55):

Yeah, they’re out. Look what FTX tried to do. They tried to, you know, move everything offshore, whatever, they arrested this guy and they’re liquidating all the, all the, uh, real estate that guy owns and all that. And, you know, but I’m sure that these political campaigns are not giving the money back.

James Huber (30:16):

Yeah. I mean, I I guess from a, from our perspective, and, and I, I’ve gotta wrap us up here. You know, we’ve talked about what, what should people do? Because this would entirely wipe out the industry that we love and flourish in. Um, I don’t see it happening overnight, but I mean, what, what should people be doing? I think, you know, reading about this and

Allen Kopelman (30:43):

Lobbying, you should study what, what Fed now really is look at what digital central digital currency is done in other countries, namely China. Okay? Everything has been stripped away there from the public. Everything is run by the government. You don’t have any, there’s no real private business going on there unless you own some kind of mega company, right? I don’t know if you know the stories about, you know, 3m, you know, it’s a US company, right? They do a ton of manufacturing over there. They wanted to ship a bunch of stuff to the US during the pandemic. And China said, no, Nope. You made it here, staying

James Huber (31:26):

Here. Right?

Allen Kopelman (31:28):

And that was the end of that. And then we had a pp the, the nightmare of not having masks and all kinds of stuff that we needed that’s made by 3M over in China. I mean, we cannot let China, China has the ultimate control. They’re, they’re trying to grab control of the world right now. And then you see all this stuff fed down. It’s all points that it’s the next WeChat,

James Huber (31:54):

Right?

Allen Kopelman (31:55):

When you look at central digital currency, what happened to Bitcoin, these banks and Fed Now, and you put all that together, that spells out a road to WeChat.

James Huber (32:07):

I I totally agree. Um,

Allen Kopelman (32:09):

I mean, it sounds crazy, right?

James Huber (32:11):

It it does. But it it’s happening in front of us and it’s one of those things, you know, we’re, you know, looking around going, huh, this seems to be happening. And you’re saying Visa and MasterCard are just sitting out in their hands. They’re gonna die on the vine. You know, what do they care?

Allen Kopelman (32:27):

No, don’t know what they’re gonna do. Like who’s gonna, first of all, fed Now, there’s no system if you go read about it online, they’re looking for people to, in to, to program into Fed. Now, I don’t see credit card processors unless somebody takes a gun to their head <laugh> and forces them to do it. Just like Durban, he wants to have this third network, right? Yeah. The third network doesn’t exist. The law was passed in 2010. Uh, James went away.

James Huber (32:59):

I’m still here.

Allen Kopelman (33:00):

Oh, the law was passed. Durbin was passed in 2010. We’re in 2023. Right? Right. And then the FTCs gonna rule, oh, we need this third network. What? Third network. MasterCard. I mean, uh, Amex doesn’t have a, didn’t step up, discovered, didn’t step up. Shazam didn’t step up. You don’t see like some bank buying Shazam or any of these other small regional debit networks and going, okay, here we’re the third network. There is no third network. So the FTC thing, they slapped MasterCard on the hand yesterday. There it, it means nothing, you know? Well,

James Huber (33:38):

I gotta

Allen Kopelman (33:39):

Say, now,

James Huber (33:40):

If I owned X R P or one of these companies, and the government said, Hey, we’ll give you a trillion dollars, James. I mean, I’d probably give it to ’em.

Allen Kopelman (33:50):

You’ll give ’em what?

James Huber (33:51):

I’ll give them the whole program and they can have their Fed Now system right there.

Allen Kopelman (33:55):

Right, exactly. I’m for

James Huber (33:56):

Sale. Alan,

Allen Kopelman (33:58):

You’re for sale? Yep.

James Huber (33:59):

Yep. Trillion dollars.

Allen Kopelman (34:01):

Okay. Just take care of me. What’s moved to like Bora Bora or something?

James Huber (34:05):

Yeah, perfect. All right. Sounds good.

Jeremy Stock (34:07):

<laugh>. Yeah, gentlemen, I was gonna say, after this podcast, I think I’m gonna go find a cave to live in, in Montana or something. Yeah. Um, Alan, why don’t you tell us a little bit about, uh, nationwide Payment Systems. What, what do you guys do? And maybe a little bit about your podcast as well. Where can people find you?

Allen Kopelman (34:21):

Okay, so Nationwide Payment Systems, uh, has co-founded the company in 2001. You know, we provide customized payment processing solutions for businesses. So it’s not just like out-of-the-box type of solutions. So we deal with anything from low risk to high risk, which was the original topic, but we got into Fed now, so that’s cool. And the podcast, B2B Vault were 192 episodes. N the first episodes were really horrible, but now it’s caught its legs. I mean, we’re providing educational information for people that own businesses want to own a business or thinking about starting a business. And we talk about all the different subjects, and we talk about a lot about technology and how technology can change the game, make your small business look bigger, and how it can help you run your business smoother. And how it’s important for businesses to really embrace technology today because, uh, you know, the cash register and a piece of paper, it doesn’t cut it anymore. There’s technology out there that’s inexpensive and can help businesses run their business more and build customer loyalty and all that good, all that good stuff. So we, I, I have literally been doing this for 24 years, 22 years for my own company. And my mission is to help business owners the, you know, solve the payment puzzle.

Jeremy Stock (35:57):

Excellent. Thank you so much for joining us today, Alan Kopelman, check him out at B2B Vault podcast. Thank you for being with us. James Huber, give you the last word.

James Huber (36:07):

That’s it, Alan, thanks for coming on. We look forward to connecting again soon.

Allen Kopelman (36:11):

Y’all. See you soon. And Hollywood, right? There you go. All right, thank you guys for having me on the podcast today. Peace. Sound alright, parfait Dion. See today.

Jeremy Stock (36:21):

Thanks, Alan. Bye-bye. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Payments Experts podcast. New episodes first and third Thursdays. If you’re interested in learning more about PEP and how Global Legal Law Firm may be able to assist you, please visit us at global legal law firm.com. To schedule a free consultation, give us a call at (888) 846-8901 or email us pep@attorneygl.com. And once again, thank you for listening.