PEP Episode 021 — Trailblazing Payment Solutions | Coastal Pay on the Coast with Travis Chrisman & James Huber

Podcast Description:

Get ready to navigate the transformative landscapes of the payments industry with our special guests, Travis Chrisman from Coastal Pay, and James Huber, Global Legal Law Firm’s managing partner. Their unique stories of career transitions reveal the evolving heartbeat of payment processing, from the adrenaline-pumping ‘smash and grab’ tactics to the intricate dance of legalities surrounding non-compete clauses. As we recount the steps of launching a business from scratch, you’ll discover the crucial role of industry relationships and strategic sales in driving growth, and how a dedicated focus on sales fortifies every branch of a burgeoning business.

As the payment industry races towards a future where customer-centric services reign supreme, listen in to how companies like Stripe and Square set new benchmarks for accessibility. Our guests unveil the art of retaining merchants through value-added services, such as SEO and social media management, and share the bold maneuvers that positioned them as pioneers in niche markets like CBD payment processing. This episode peels back the layers of innovation that pave the way for success in a sector where staying ahead means embracing change with open arms.

Finally, we step into the fast-approaching world of cryptocurrency and its growing influence on business transactions. The conversation illuminates the perspectives of industry leaders on the integration of crypto, the hurdles and potential of blockchain technology, and how Coastal Pay is trailblazing through the development of software and integration solutions. With a commitment to service that outshines giants like Fiserv, Coastal Pay’s stellar reputation and lack of litigation speak volumes about their reliability and trustworthiness.

Plug into this episode for an insightful foray into an industry that’s rapidly reshaping the way we think about money and commerce.

Podcast Transcription

Speaker 1 (00:00):

Only talk about what you can talk

Speaker 2 (00:01):

About,

Speaker 1 (00:03):

Or at least try. Here’s the thing. This is not live.

Speaker 2 (00:05):

And Jeremy, he can edit. Edit it. Exactly. And we’re not allowed to swear because I put in a different categories. It ruins my whole I know your whole

Speaker 3 (00:15):

Stick. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:16):

It’s like, oh I God.

Speaker 1 (00:19):

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. Today we are very, very fortunate to have in studio we have with us Travis Chrisman of Coastal Pay, as well as Global Legal’s own James Huber, managing partner. Gentlemen, welcome. Thank you to the conversation.

Speaker 2 (00:52):

Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you Jeremy. Travis, good to see you. Good to

Speaker 3 (00:56):

See you too,

Speaker 2 (00:56):

James. So I always find it interesting. I know your story. I think I was actually right there with you for a lot of it. But how’d you, I guess I don’t know how you got into payments. What were you doing before? Payments actually probably shouldn’t talk about what you were doing before payments. So what got you into payments?

Speaker 3 (01:22):

One day I read a book called What Color Is Your Parachute? And it basically directed me to go after what I was passionate about. So I kind of broke it down where I love sales and I love to travel. So I went online and I was searching for a job in travel and sales, and I was living in Carlsbad at the time, and there was a company called Payment Systems that was, I’ll never forget, 1.2 miles from my house. And I applied to them and that’s the first company I started

Speaker 2 (01:54):

With. That was our first client in the payment space.

Speaker 3 (01:57):

Small world. That’s small world. That’s 13 years ago

Speaker 2 (02:00):

For me. And I think, I mean payment systems, they were smash and grab selling leases, heavy, heavy name. And I certainly saw your name on a lot of paperwork and it was interesting because then I think we sued you guys. Is that how we really met?

Speaker 3 (02:23):

That was Kevin.

Speaker 2 (02:24):

I sued Kevin. Yes, Kevin’s your partner. So we sued Kevin. Did you go with Kevin right away or did you come with him later? I

Speaker 3 (02:30):

Went with him right away.

Speaker 2 (02:31):

Okay, great. So yeah, so Cabin spun off his own iso.

Speaker 3 (02:35):

We went to Securus.

Speaker 2 (02:37):

Oh, you went to Securus

Speaker 3 (02:38):

And that’s when the lawsuit happened.

Speaker 2 (02:41):

Oh, so we were suing Securus.

Speaker 3 (02:43):

You were suing Cabin

Speaker 2 (02:44):

And Securus. We were suing everybody. Everybody that left the

Speaker 3 (02:47):

Door, this guy

Speaker 2 (02:48):

Had to sue them. And then it was great because when those lawsuits were all done, this was non-compete stuff you’ve left and iso, he was smash and grab and everybody who left, he just goes, Hubbert dried and sue him. So he did. But I would say a hundred percent of those people we ended up representing because part of it was, well, we need a payments attorney. We’ve worked together for years. No hard feelings. And also those were just intimidation lawsuits that were So hopefully there’s no hard feelings. There’s none on my end, so

Speaker 3 (03:29):

None ours.

Speaker 2 (03:31):

Hey

Speaker 4 (03:31):

James, before you move forward from that, we’ve talked about this before and I think for our audience in general, smash and grab, what are you talking about there?

Speaker 2 (03:40):

What am I talking about? Travis

Speaker 3 (03:43):

Smash and Grab, that’s a good question.

Speaker 2 (03:45):

Selling leases. So you’re running in there, you’re going to be going, you need 20, VX 20, just sign this

Speaker 3 (03:52):

Form.

Speaker 2 (03:53):

I know you have one checkout, but you got to lease a whole bunch of stuff. Oh boy. That was the sales model. Gotcha. Okay. You guys still do that?

Speaker 3 (04:02):

No, no. That ended a while ago.

Speaker 2 (04:05):

Yeah, that was a fun time. So when you guys, you were sales agent, you’re out on the road making heavy sales, and then you went to another ISO that spun off of payment systems, and then how did you guys decide, let’s just do our own thing?

Speaker 3 (04:32):

One day I went to Cabin, the company put me in a super eight hotel and I was watching the owners buy Lamborghinis and Ferraris and I was like, I just broke their company record in terms of lease, and here I am in a super eight and these guys are buying matching Lamborghinis and Ferraris. And that’s when it dawned on me, maybe we should branch out and do it ourselves. So I kind of put the bug in Kevin’s ear, and I’ll never forget, one day, I think it was August 13th or August 23rd, Kevin said, I’m ready. And we were very methodical. We planned out for a good six months. We spent the evenings for six months building out a business plan. There was four of us, and that allowed us to get synergized and get on the same playing field and level and just build out the business plan. Then in January when it came time to execute, it was rock and roll time, it was go time,

Speaker 2 (05:33):

It was rock. And I’m always interested how you get it set up. I mean, you guys knew how it worked. You’re selling it. You knew the intricacies, you knew the parties to deal with, but with your processor, how’d you get with them? You just pick up the phone and you’re like, Hey, processor.

Speaker 3 (05:51):

Yeah. So you find if you want to register as an ISO, right, you find the processor that you go with, you reach out to them, and then you start negotiating contracts and that’s where Global Legal comes in.

Speaker 2 (06:04):

Yeah. Well, I mean the contracts are the contracts, but I do remember your pricing because back in the day we’d be at ETA and everybody’d be like, I got the sickest pricing, I got the sickest pricing. And then I remember being in a area where you guys are all taking out your tape measures and everyone’s like, what’s your pricing? And then you say what your pricing is, and everyone’s like kind of goes a little

Speaker 3 (06:34):

Dark and cold.

Speaker 2 (06:37):

Yeah, I always remember that was interested because it’s a relationship driven industry. It’s very large, but it’s so small. So when I bring up even still 13 years later, I mean nobody remembers that first one really. But everybody remembers the two guys in the matching Lamborghinis still or of them. I remember when we saw them at a conference, these guys are just dressed to the nines, quad fisting beers, and we’re just like, that’s a perfect client for us.

Speaker 3 (07:14):

They’re going to be in trouble at some point. Yes, yes.

Speaker 2 (07:18):

And so what were some of the challenges of opening your own shop? You guys have taken a risk. I mean, you’re making good money. I have to assume I breaking sales records. So what was the first step after you said, okay, let’s launch.

Speaker 3 (07:37):

So then it’s just building a sales team and selling. Right. I think if you get the sales going, then the rest of it becomes a lot easier. If the sales aren’t coming in, then you can’t hire the customer service. You can’t hire the managers, the travel department, the recruiting department, all the departments that we had weren’t possible unless we had sales. So luckily Kevin and I think our strength of sales, sales and service, and because we had strong sales, we could support those departments. I feel in our industry, one of the things that is not given enough attention is the service. You can have great sales, you can have great product. If you look at Stripe and Square, our prime examples, they’ve got excellent products, but when you look at them in terms of service, you can’t get in touch with ’em. You can’t call ’em, and this is your money. This is your business’s money that’s on the line. And so whether you’re an iso, whether you’re a merchant, right? It’s important to have those, to have that service.

Speaker 2 (08:43):

Totally. No, I totally agree. And even for your resellers putting you up in a super eight and driving a Lamborghini is not the best look and probably would’ve been better. Let’s say they put you up in a nicer hotel, their business would’ve been all that much stronger. The one thing, well, not one thing. There’s many things that you guys did that I was impressed with is I saw you guys were one of the first, if not the first ISOs to start going value ads. Let’s get some more hooks in our merchants and make it so that we’re their go-to, I remember you guys doing the website SEO Facebook page where mom and pop is all of a sudden I’m on Facebook, look at me and their two cousins are following them. And then you guys were even blasting stuff out to be like, look, you exist on the internet. And merchants love that. And then it was also like, I won’t say they couldn’t leave, but it’s like, okay, if you cancel, you’ll no longer exist on the internet.

Speaker 3 (09:52):

There goes your marketing. We wouldn’t want that.

Speaker 2 (09:56):

That was cool. So you guys have always been innovators and had your head on a swivel. I mean, you have to in this industry, you’re not going to make it. Let’s fast forward. What are you guys, well actually you started in your sales organization selling, doing value ads. What came next?

Speaker 3 (10:19):

Yeah, after the value ads, like the social media marketing, we had a department called, or a company called Social B that did everything that you talked about after that and kind of the whole lease approach. We were good at sales. We kind of took a step back and we know we wanted to help the merchants. And so instead of, I call it slamming leases down merchants’ throats, instead of that approach, we took a step back and we started listening to merchants and giving them what they wanted. And the first thing and the biggest requests we had was CBD. We had vape stores. We had a large retail presence or market target Market was retail nationwide. And one of the newer industries was vape stores. Well, vape stores carried CBD with our ISO registration with Wells Fargo. They did not allow CBD. So we went out and we found a bank, it was Bank of Albany six years ago at the time, and we started doing CBD payments. And that blew up. We went, think it was 2018 when we just signed select CBD, I mean, you name it, every CBD company in the us.

Speaker 2 (11:36):

So you found this niche industry that everybody was going, oh yeah, there’s so much money to be made. And again, you found the relationship to do it. So it’s something that everyone, to be successful, to go beyond just slamming leases or just selling to actually grow and scale, you’ve got to be sniffing around for what’s the next best thing. How did you get the idea CBD it? You just were hearing about it and then

Speaker 3 (12:13):

Yeah, so with the vape stores, we had tried out some other CBD solutions that were international, and I think they were paying $1,500 a month and they had 50% decline rate because the acquiring bank was in Mexico at the time. And so it just wasn’t a good product for the merchants. We were just keeping our ears open and trying to help our merchants. It was a blessing that we ran into Bank of Albany. Perfect timing. That just blew up.

Speaker 2 (12:47):

How’d you find the bank? That was the secret sauce for a hot minute there, right?

Speaker 3 (12:52):

Yeah, networking, right? Talking to going to trade shows, talking to other companies, calling around. At one point I created a list of all sponsor banks in the United States, and I would call every single one.

Speaker 2 (13:08):

Oh really? Cold

Speaker 3 (13:09):

Call and be like, are you doing CBD? And then I’d creep a list and who

Speaker 2 (13:13):

Would you call?

Speaker 3 (13:14):

You

Speaker 2 (13:15):

Name it. Look it up on LinkedIn. Go

Speaker 3 (13:17):

Any sponsor bank.

Speaker 2 (13:18):

How many calls do you think you made?

Speaker 3 (13:19):

So on the list, there was about, I think 43 sponsor banks that I’d talk to, and I would label ’em green, yellow, red. Green means they’re doing C, B, D or plan to do CBD. Yellow means they’re on the fence red. No way they’re doing C, B,

Speaker 2 (13:36):

1. Right?

Speaker 3 (13:37):

So typically it would start with you start with a call, you talk to the sales person, then the sales person says is out of my pay grade, you need to talk to our risk department. Talk to our risk department. Sometimes they would get excited, so they’d bring on their head of risk. And then after the head of risk would come on, if they liked it, then they’d get their board involved and then the board would vote yay or na. Yeah, a lot of nos until they got turned down quite a bit. But we landed a few.

Speaker 2 (14:06):

Yeah. Great. And you guys are still doing that?

Speaker 3 (14:08):

Yep. We’re still doing C, B, D. We’re using our primary bank is ax.

Speaker 2 (14:13):

You probably don’t want to say that, do you? Oh no. Oh, you do? Okay. Yeah, that’s fine. Great

Speaker 3 (14:17):

Axiom.

Speaker 4 (14:20):

Well, can I just say, James, as you’re thinking about where it’s going next is Travis, that’s quite a story, man. I mean you guys were kind of first to get there. You can imagine that, especially six years ago. And it comes down to tenacity. That’s what I’m hearing in your story, you could have been like, no, this is not my job. I’m at a position now. I don’t need to be on the phones all day. But there you were banging on the phones to these banks. I think that’s pretty inspiring.

Speaker 2 (14:44):

Were you guys processing marijuana too?

Speaker 3 (14:49):

No. Marijuana?

Speaker 2 (14:50):

No Marijuana? Nope. Are you high right now? Okay. That’s brought us pretty close to today. I know you guys have a bunch of new stuff that you’re rolling out, but before we get to today, you brought up that going to the conferences, how valuable do you think going to the conferences are for somebody in the payment space and are there some that are better than others or?

Speaker 3 (15:20):

Excellent question. So we’ve kind of tested out a lot of different marketing strategies. We started with a call center where we had 40 callers booking appointments for our outside sales team. Ran that model. Employees are expensive here in California. Margins were thin. And it’s an old school model. We’re a younger company, progressive, me and Kevin, our young progressive owners, and we started to think outside the box. So we’ve tested LinkedIn marketing, we’ve tested Facebook ads, Google ads. But what we’ve found is our favorite is the trade shows

Speaker 2 (15:58):

For getting agents.

Speaker 3 (16:00):

For getting agents correct. For bringing agents on board. And so it’s kind of a two step process. You go to the trade shows, you can learn at the trade shows, you network out the trade shows. And then what we learned about the CBD is that blew up like wildfire. We would send out emails like a simple email and my calendar or Vanessa’s calendar would be booked out every 30 minutes for two weeks straight. And it was mind blowing. And

Speaker 2 (16:26):

You’re just signing agents.

Speaker 3 (16:28):

You’re just signing agents left. And we’ve signed, in the last few years, we’ve signed 600 agents. Wow. Wow. ISO offices, three of ’em are publicly traded companies that are sending us business.

Speaker 2 (16:38):

And they don’t just send you CBD, it’s one of the beauties of finding this niche is they’re going, okay, I’ll send my CBD. Oh, working with you guys is great. I’ll give you everything. So finding those little niche offerings is huge. If you’re who’s got a booth at every single one,

Speaker 3 (16:58):

Everyone

Speaker 2 (16:58):

Priority, they’ve got some stuff, but it’s all kind of the same thing. So finding those niche things, and I find at the conferences, I mean one, the agents are the reason everybody’s there, but they know that they’re playing coy and being hidden a little bit. But to get that message out to them and let it be known. I mean, do you have to have a booth? You guys do a booth? You

Speaker 3 (17:25):

Do? Yeah, we do a booth. We’ve done both. In the beginning we used to just walk the floor network and that’s great. You get your name out there. But the booth is great because you get the email list

Speaker 2 (17:37):

And

Speaker 3 (17:37):

Then from the email list you send monthly emails and then eventually everyone sends up with you if you have good products,

Speaker 2 (17:46):

If you have a good product, if you have a niche product. Yeah. I mean I’ll get after those conferences. Thanks for meeting with So-and-So iso, it’s like I didn’t meet with you. And I’ll look at the marketing looking and being like, these guys probably need a lawyers, but I’m like, you didn’t say anything where I get yours. And it’s like, here’s what we do that’s different. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. And it’s impressive.

Speaker 3 (18:14):

That’s where it comes down to product, right? Elon Musk has a great story. If you look at his marketing, he doesn’t do a lot of marketing. His product kind of sells itself. And so I kind relate what we did with the CPD space to the Tesla model, whereas if you have a very valuable product, it will sell itself. So now our goal is to have product that no one else has and to solve those large problems in the space. What

Speaker 2 (18:48):

Are they now? What problems are you solving?

Speaker 3 (18:53):

The million dollar question, luckily having the agent base that we have in the referral partners that we have is we get a lot of feedback. And so it’s up to us to take that feedback and solve the biggest problems and then also look at other competitors. I would say Stripe and Square are two FinTech and payments companies that have scaled faster than any company in this space. And so if you take a step back and you really look at what they do well, and that’s speed of onboarding, how quick and easy is it to get on their platform? And when you look at a lot of the acquirers out there, it’s still a daunting process. You send a PDF an application, you have some online form, right? And it is, if you look at, I remember my first application took me 45 minutes with a paper app with a pen. Right now, a lot of ’em, it’s still going to take you 10, 20 minutes.

Speaker 2 (19:48):

I don’t have time for that.

Speaker 3 (19:49):

Yeah, no one has time for that in today’s A and h, not when you’ve got Uber and Stripe and these modern FinTech companies. So what we’ve developed, we’ve been developing what’s called our signup link for the last three years. We just launched our version three. It has not been public yet up until last week. And we just went live. We’ve been testing out with friends of mine that have signed up.

Speaker 2 (20:14):

Merchants.

Speaker 3 (20:15):

Merchants, correct friends that are merchants, just to make sure it’s working smooth. We get all the bugs out before we go live, but now it’s ready to rock and roll and we’ve got the onboarding process down in under two minutes.

Speaker 2 (20:28):

Wow,

Speaker 3 (20:28):

That’s great. Flying

Speaker 2 (20:30):

Driver’s license banking information.

Speaker 3 (20:33):

So you log in with either Facebook, apple, or Google, super clean and simple. You can go to cold spa.com and click sign up. You can see the user interface once you log in, then you enter 23 data fields like your name or social or EIN, all the stuff underwriting requires the minimal amount of data points required to pass underwriting. We’ve got a plaid integration to connect to the bank account to eliminate fraud. Couple clicks versus go find avoided chat. You send it back and forth. Take a picture of it, fax it over here, text it over email. There’s just so much back and forth, right?

Speaker 2 (21:10):

So do you need a driver’s license? Oh, you still do. Okay.

Speaker 3 (21:13):

Yeah, because you got to do KYC, right? So you still need a driver’s license. There’s just spot to enter your driver’s license number. Then upload supporting docs supported. Check your driver’s license. It’s a moderator or a high risk category. Then there’s a few more docs, but it’s super clean and easy. Right? Click the button, you can upload those documents.

Speaker 4 (21:32):

Travis, I got to ask, I’m so curious about this, and this is maybe getting a little bit in the weeds. Where and when is the match list inquiry taking place? One thing that we get calls all the time from merchants who are like, so-and-so onboarded us, we thought everything was great. And then a week later, two weeks later, they actually come back and say, sorry, we actually can’t onboard you. We found out you’re on the match list. Do you mind talking about that a little bit from your end?

Speaker 3 (22:01):

Yeah, of course. So the match list happens once the application gets submitted. So it goes, the first page is KYC or KYB business information. Then we go owner information, financial information, upload, supporting docs, and then a signature. So we did have it mapped out to DocuSign. With DocuSign. It was eight clicks, right? You got to initial this box, check here, do this. So we developed a one click signature where they sign the box and agree to the terms, and then they submit. And then once that application is submitted, then the match, the credit gets pulled and all the underwriting happens.

Speaker 2 (22:52):

For Jeremy’s question is Stripe and Square. They don’t check the match list before they load ’em up. A lot of ISOs and processors don’t either. So yeah, we get phone calls of, I was up processing for three months and then I got terminated because they said I’m unmatched. And then we go, Hey, why’d you put ’em on Match after three months? And then they say, no, they were already on Match. And I’m going, yeah, you’re supposed to be checking that Stripe and Square doesn’t necessarily need to, they’re payment facilitators, so Correct. They have the keys to the Castle basically. So, alright. What else are you guys working on?

Speaker 3 (23:32):

So we have an application in the approval stage for Clover. It’s a dual pricing application. So we’ll have our own application that will do dual pricing basically on a receipt on a Clover device. It’ll show a cash price and a credit price.

Speaker 2 (23:50):

And what about, I mean, we have the big lawsuit against Visa on this dual pricing. What about everything inside the store? My example is the bag of Skittles. So you have to go lay next to the bag of Skittles, put two prices everywhere.

Speaker 3 (24:11):

Technically you do According to Visa.

Speaker 2 (24:14):

According to Visa, right?

Speaker 3 (24:16):

According to Visa, you need a cash price and credit price. So

Speaker 2 (24:19):

Jeremy’s going to edit in every time we say Visa Boo.

Speaker 4 (24:22):

Yeah, exactly. Or what the fuck? Oh, I just broke

Speaker 2 (24:28):

The rule. You just broke the rule. Oh,

Speaker 4 (24:30):

I’ll edit it out. I’ll edit it out.

Speaker 3 (24:32):

You got to have two versions.

Speaker 2 (24:33):

Yeah, yeah. We can have the R. Yeah, that’s

Speaker 4 (24:36):

Right. That’s right. That,

Speaker 2 (24:39):

Yeah. So I mean, yeah, that’s a Coastal Pay app. Correct. Okay, cool. Because Clover has one that Fiserv did. Did they take that down? They had a dual pricing app on it. Did they? Yeah, they had their own thing.

Speaker 3 (24:54):

Oh, I did not see it on that.

Speaker 2 (24:55):

I was going, how come you’re letting them do it? Because what we’re seeing is basically in the surcharges, they’re just not letting anybody do it. New York just dropped a law that pretty much mirrors what Visa is saying of, but theirs is a little looser. They’re going to surcharge price can’t exceed the cost of taking the card in. But that’s not just your percentage. I mean, you know, what about my year end fees, my PCI, this, this, this, this. And that’s why we’re going to the surcharge of 3%. That doesn’t cover it. That barely covers interchange. It doesn’t cover all of the costs of acceptance. So Visa, who’s fighting our lawsuit, they’re going, we’re protecting the consumer from all the hidden fees. It’s not a hidden fee if I can just look and see it on the receipt or on the POS. I don’t see how that’s protecting the consumers. And the real reason is we had did a whole presentation of they’re going, we don’t want regulation, which I think everyone kind of disagrees with. A little bit of regulation is good for the payments industry. It gives us the rails to operate on so that you don’t all of a sudden go, whoops.

Speaker 2 (26:21):

The

Speaker 3 (26:21):

Guidelines. We guidelines. Right? Guidelines follow.

Speaker 2 (26:24):

Right, exactly. All we have are Visa’s rules, which it can’t even make sense. I always joke, I’m reading through and I’m like, oh, I found what I’m looking for. This only applies in the Crimea region, so it’s brutal. So I mean, we really don’t have rules. I mean, even CBD, when it really popped, it was up. Elon US Bank just opened it up for three months and it went bonkers and then just got shut down. Yep. Then you guys got real busy. We

Speaker 3 (26:56):

Got really busy.

Speaker 2 (26:59):

So what’s on the horizon for you guys? What’s next? You don’t have to give away your diabolical schemes, but what are you guys going to do next?

Speaker 3 (27:09):

Yeah, so about a year ago, we started focusing on, after our CBD boom, we started focused on software and integrations. If you look at Stripe Square, Fiserv, TSIs, Elon, they all have platforms and it’s their platform and that’s it. But if you look at cryptocurrency and alternative payment methods, buy now, pay later. What we’re seeing is there’s a future in having multiple options and who’s going to be integrated to what. So we’re in the position where we board on TSIs, we board on Fiserv, we board on Elon, and we have options. TSIs has 800 integrations. Fiserv has 800 integrations or so. Elon’s got a few hundred. And we want to be focused on integrations. We never know is it going to be Aloha, right? Is it going to be Lightspeed that’s going to incorporate or partner with a certain cryptocurrency or a certain payment method or some sort of integration?

Speaker 3 (28:16):

So we’re trying to corner the integrations market. Our dev team is currently building out the integrations to our gateway for e-commerce. So we’re starting with WooCommerce. We’re building a plugin and extension that’ll connect our gateway to e-commerce. Once that one’s completed in the next couple of weeks, then we’re going to build ’em all out. Anyone that’s got an open API, any shopping cart, Shopify or all the other ones that are out there, we’ll build plugins and extensions. So we have the e-commerce covered, and then we’re also going to go after the software integrations. So we’ll build out all the integrations to all the POS systems out there so we can control that code and have those integrations into our system.

Speaker 2 (29:04):

That’s excellent. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (29:05):

Hey, Travis, I am curious about this. We talked about the banking relationships right now. That was kind of a big deal in the growth of Coastal Pay. How did you find these tech guys? Who’s these software engineers, if you don’t mind? I mean, not details necessarily, but was that hard? Was that challenging finding? Excuse me. We often comment, Chris says, James says, payments is becoming a tech industry. It’s more than anything, and it sounds like you’ve got a good team over there. So how’d you guys get hooked up with them and how’d that work out?

Speaker 3 (29:37):

Yeah, same. It’s the same process, right? Hunting down good talent anywhere and everywhere is always the name of the game. Attracting, you’re only as good as your

Speaker 2 (29:48):

Team. They have to know payments though too, because I know some developers are like, oh, I can do that. And then they’re like, I built it, and you’re like, square. That’s not going to get in the round. Sorry to interrupt you, but yeah, no, we’ve run into the same thing.

Speaker 3 (30:04):

So we use a combination of both. We use a combination of developers that have payments experience, and then we use developers. I manage four dev teams, and so two of them have payments experience, two do not. So depending on the dev projects, we’ve done quite a few. We’ve done a lot of development.

Speaker 2 (30:28):

You said you guys are building out ways to accept crypto. Is crypto going to gain any percentage of the market share as far as a currency?

Speaker 3 (30:38):

So we currently have the ability to set Coinbase live, ready to go now.

Speaker 2 (30:44):

Any coin on Coinbase?

Speaker 3 (30:45):

Yep. Anything on Coinbase. That’s great. Wow. Wow. In a retail shoulda

Speaker 2 (30:48):

Held, Jeremy should,

Speaker 3 (30:51):

In a retail and e-commerce environment, we can do integration with Coinbase. Wow. One of the gateways that, not our own, but one of the other ones that we partner with called Sense Pass. They’ve got a Affirm, Klarna, Venmo, PayPal, Coinbase, all in one.

Speaker 2 (31:09):

That’s great. I always liked the thought when, well, it’s doing it again, but when crypto is booming, you can, yeah, exactly. You can look at it. Let’s say you bought at the bottom, you can look at it and be like, oh, well this is free because I’m just using two of these whatever coins. I’ll just go buy myself a little Tesla while I’m at it.

Speaker 3 (31:34):

I was at Money 2020 last year, and the CO of Coinbase spoke, and she said something that kind of stuck with me is they see the adoption of cryptocurrency on the business to business side, but it’s not. They’re on the business to consumer side. So I feel it’s only a matter of time until we start to see that adoption and the technology. I mean, I think everyone can agree that the technology and cryptocurrency is there, and that’s why it is valuable as it is now. It’s just adoption.

Speaker 2 (32:03):

I think the technology is there, but it’s more where it can take us. The blockchain’s great, but my understanding is it’s still pretty slow. So I think it’s a great idea. And one of the reasons I got so excited about cryptocurrency, I was like, look at all these companies that are pushing it and trying to make changes. Reminded me of the payment space, and then a bunch of them were selling crypto leases down

Speaker 3 (32:36):

People’s

Speaker 2 (32:37):

Throats. So this didn’t work out. But no, I think it’s exciting. So what do you got in closing? Anything you want to cover that we didn’t get?

Speaker 3 (32:47):

I think we covered quite a bit. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (32:51):

I think those integrations are great. And that what you’ve been talking about here, Travis, it sounds like you guys are on the cutting edge. James often says that one of the things he loves about his job here I am speaking for James, is working with guys. He talks about working with entrepreneurs, guys that have their finger on the pulse of the industry. And you seem like you’re right in that wheelhouse, and it’s a real pleasure to have heard your thoughts on the industry and how you guys built Coastal Pay. It’s pretty awesome.

Speaker 3 (33:21):

So the software and integrations, we track every software that comes in. And in Q4 of last year, we had over 200 requests for software and integrations in one quarter. So it just shows that we’re really dialing in our network. And sometimes it’s our products, sometimes it’s not. We’re creating the password for software and integrations for our partners.

Speaker 2 (33:46):

And it’s nice, I mean, to have your developers, because sometimes you got to do it on the fly or the merchants going, Hey, I want to change this, that the other thing. The ability to do that is a huge value add. And for the agents, I always say, it didn’t exist when you guys did it really where there was these big ISOs that will actually help you. So now when agents, they’ll come and they’ll bring me, Hey, here’s this agreement with this processor. I’m going, what are you doing? Just go work with somebody like you guys that will actually, one, you’re going to have better pricing, but two is just going to open you up to so much more. And then they’ll be like, well, I want to be my own thing. Can you speak to that a little bit of how being an agent for you is different than a priority of Fiserv or even some of the huge guys? I’d say you guys are certainly on your way up, but you’re not priority yet.

Speaker 3 (34:53):

Yeah, so when we started using Fiserv, they’re a large shop. One of the things we learned was services is very, very important. And so when you go to the big outfits like Pfizer, verti or Elon, you’re not going to get the best service. You’re just not, right? You’re not even

Speaker 2 (35:13):

Going to pick up the phone.

Speaker 3 (35:15):

And so that’s

Speaker 2 (35:16):

Where they’ll pick up the phone if you call, because they know. So that’s what I always say. I was like, if you sending great, you’re doing 10 merchants a month, that’s amazing. But these guys are doing hundreds a month. So yeah, they get the squeaker wheel or whatever, the more successful wheel.

Speaker 3 (35:38):

And that’s what we do a good job of kind of boxing everything where we’ve got te, we’ve got Pfizer, we’ve got Elon all in one place. And so instead of going all these different directions, creating relationships with Roosa and Rectangle Health and Iris and all these relationships that we’ve created, you come to Coastal Pain and you get everything that we’ve built over the last 10 years in one place on one. And then we can, I like to say our brand is built, so our goal now is to build our partners brands. And so we white label our CRM, we’re using Iris c rm, we’re pulling data from Fiserv, esis, and Elon, all in Iris, and then we white label it for our partners.

Speaker 2 (36:25):

I love it. I mean, the one thing is I’ve known you guys personally for 13 years and you’ve never once, unless you’re cheating on me, had an agent sue you, which is largely unheard of. I don’t even think you guys have had a merchant sue. You either. Nope. No, but I mean to not have any issue with how many agents you guys are bringing in, that speaks for itself. And then you’ll get people where it’s like, I’ve never had a ISO sue me. And it was like, well, yeah, because they know you’re just going to cut ’em off, so that’s not your guys’ model. And so it’s been impressive and fun, and it’s exciting to be on the team and see where you guys have come and where you’re going. So thanks for coming in. Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (37:19):

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 4 (37:21):

Hey, Travis, can you tell our audience listening right now? Where can they find you? Where can they find Coastal Pay?

Speaker 3 (37:28):

Yeah, so you can find us@coastpay.com. Just go to our website and there’s a contact button there and we will respond.

Speaker 4 (37:38):

Excellent. It’s been great having you. This has been the Payments Experts podcast, a podcast of global legal law firm. We had our special guest, Travis Chrisman from Coastal Pay in Studio, as well as James Huber. It was awesome. Thank you very much, gentlemen, and thank you for listening.

Speaker 3 (37:54):

Thank you guys for having me. Appreciate it, James. Appreciate it, Jeremy.

Speaker 4 (37:57):

Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (37:58):

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Payments Experts podcast, a podcast of global legal law firm. Visit us online today at globallegallawfirm.com.