Building a Better ISO Strategy

0:00It's how can we leverage AI to provide a truly value-add experience for the merchant and provide the agent and ISO with something that's unique in the marketplace and not just another app, not just another point of sale geared for an industry when it's becoming commoditized these days. Everybody, [music] James Shepherd here with another edition of the Merchant Sales Podcast. Today, I have got Dwayne Haskett from Nativa. So, new chief revenue officer there. He actually previously was with Define Payments. Um and so we talked a little bit about his journey in the industry. Super interesting. Um and then his thoughts on Clover. So, Define was a huge, huge

0:37Clover shop for years um partnering with Vlad um at Nativa and then now they've joined forces. And so talking about kind of the future of what that's going to look like um as far as the Clover thing. And I know that's a big deal for many of you that are selling Clover. Um so, very excited about that. We're going to dive into this interview here in a minute. Um and then we have Patty Murphy uh where we're talking about a bunch of different stats in the industry right now, where retail spending is at. Interestingly, checks are are like issuing checks are are declining by like 40%. Uh it's

1:05pretty crazy over the last 3 years. So, we talk about that a little bit. We talk about retail and get into some interesting things there and some of the trends around retail, mobile shopping, and things of that nature. Um so, yeah. It's going to be a great episode lined up for you today. Do want to mention our two sponsors. First of all, Nativa. So, not going to say a ton about Nativa today cuz we're going to talk about it a little bit here in the interview. Um but I would encourage you to go to nativa.com/ccsalespro

1:28if you want to support our podcast. Check out Nativa, which is our uh one of our sponsors. Fantastic company if you're looking to grow your ISO. And as we'll talk about today, if you're selling Clover, I really think it would be a mistake to not at least look at and talk to them about what they have to offer because the Clover stuff they have is is pretty crazy. So, it's awesome stuff. Um our second sponsor is Stackable. And the only thing I want to mention here is the retail stack. Now, this uh podcast This coming out on uh I believe on on Friday here. So, we

1:58actually it would have been uh last night that I did the retail stack event. If you missed that event, head over to CC salespro.com/retail. We'll make sure we have a page set up where you can watch the replay video and learn more about the retail stack. But, I'll talk more about that later on in the episode. So, with that being said, I do want to mention again that Dwayne Haskett, chief revenue officer at

2:19Natpay, Natpay is one of our sponsors. So, I always want like to clarify that. But, Dwayne is such a great guy. Been industry for a long time. Excited about this interview. Let's dive into that. Hey everybody, I'm here today with Dwayne Haskett. Dwayne is the chief revenue officer at Natpay. How you doing today, Dwayne?

2:33Doing well. Doing well, James. Fantastic. Down here in sunny Florida. Yeah. Visiting the some some troops down here. We In Atlanta, we just had to deal with the storm flowing through. So, it's nice to get down here in some sun sun and enjoy sunny Florida. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm excited to talk to you. We're going to talk about Clover, Clover strategy. Like where is Clover going in the future? Where is Natpay going with Clover? I know this is such a huge part of the kind of product mix for the ISO agent community these days. But, before we dive into that, I haven't had you on the podcast before,

3:03Dwayne. So, I want to get your story. So, tell me how did you end up in this crazy industry? And how did you get to know Vlad? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, it was 2000 just a just a moment ago. But, I guess it kind of feels that way sometimes. [laughter] Around 20 26 years years ago. Got into the industry out in California with ISO called Cornerstone Payment Systems. Was one of the first employees

3:25there. That went from acquisition to acquisition to acquisition. Became Sage Payments further along the way Paya. And in '05, I had an opportunity to be a founding member of Priority Payment Systems. And was running operations there at Priority at Priority for a number of years. Followed by running sales as the senior vice president of sales to the tune of 11 years growing out that ISO channel uh the merger with Synergy Data, uh all the fun that ensued through that whole process, and uh left in 2017, founded an ISO called Defined Payments, uh grabbed a great partner named Vlad Sadovsky uh with Netevia. Uh Vlad had been one of the the top ISO clients of

4:09mine at Priority for several years. So, we kind of you know, I joke about it. You know, we kind of say, you know, you went from Dwayne's world at Priority to now I'm in the Vlad-a-sphere. Yeah. Uh you know, it's a little inside joke with Vlad. It's kind of funny. We're in in each other's worlds and and I'm glad to be uh you know, partnered with him for so long. He really did uh did me a lot of uh favors along the way as we built out Defined and helped us along the the technology pipeline and allowed us to get a jump start with the

4:36business. Um you know, we we did did a pretty good job of becoming a very successful mid-size ISO and and you know, the kind of writing came on the wall. Vlad uh came down the pike and and and offered me made me an offer I couldn't refuse, frankly, to join the team here at Netevia. So, I and and uh a great number of team members from Defined Payments are now joining up with Netevia and and uh we're really looking forward to the future and and what it what it

5:01holds for us. That's great. That's awesome. So, um all right. So, we heard some of that last week from from Vlad and we're going to we're going to circle back to some more of the strategic things towards the end, but I I do want to talk for a minute here about Clover. So, when you look at Clover today and you look at its role in kind of the ISO agent channel, what are your thoughts high level? Like, where is Clover at today strategically? How are ISOs thinking about Clover? How should

5:22they be thinking about it? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look look, when it really boils down to it, what point of sale system has done the best job over the last I'd say, you know, 7 to 10 years almost now, um at really being friendly to the ISO and agent community? Um that that POS is is Clover. Um really has become, you know, easy to deploy, good support, um friendly to the ISOs that deploy it in terms of protection of their merchants. And all in all, that's that's been something that that Clover has done a great job with. And and you know, as the years have progressed and

5:56as many varying size of competitor, both well-funded, the small upstart, you know, POS provider that's out there as different solutions become available to merchants, you know, we look we look at it as, you know, what's the easiest solution for ISOs and agents to deploy? Um, as things commoditize, which in our industry and in our business throughout my 26 years in it, um, we've seen it time and time again, whether it be merchant pricing, whether it be hardware, whether it be, um, point of sale systems now. And and really, you know, you're you're getting to a point to where the the market saturation leads you kind of ends up

6:35creating a a scenario to where all points lead down one path. We believe one of the best solutions out there for the ISO and agent community that we service is Clover. And with that being said, you know, we're investing heavily at Nativa in order to bring, you know, additional technology stacks to Clover that aren't just value-added merchant applications that each one costs an additional fee to utilize, right? And a lot of times, are merchants leveraging each app that they download to its fullest or are they just collecting a bigger and bigger bill that eventually makes them unhappy with the service and and and support that they've been

7:11afforded by their agent or ISO? In a lot of cases, that commoditization that you're looking at when it just becomes a fee for a service is something we want to solve by offering a holistic eco ecosystem where a merchant can come in, get a package of products, and then only pay for the usage of that product as it benefits their business. And we feel like that type of approach will be the the way of the future with things such as AI spike to deliver to the merchants and kind of serve up to the merchants what they need at the time with their business and then make it

7:47fair and profitable and lucrative for that business owner to to engage with our entire scope of product set within the platform to to deliver a really unique experience the hardware is being commoditized as we speak and at Nativo we intend to offer very aggressive opportunities for people to get a nice package of hardware but the the real use case is how can we package our infrastructure within the the holistic network it's how can we leverage AI to provide a truly value add experience for the merchant and provide the agent and ISO with something that's unique in the marketplace and not just another app not just another point of

8:31sale geared for an industry when it's becoming commoditized these days. Yeah, sure. So I guess my question my follow up that would be you [clears throat] mentioned the cost of the hardware what are some of the other pain points that ISOs are facing who are trying to build that Clover book and what are some of the things that you guys are are working on to you know to

8:48make that better as time goes on? No absolutely absolutely you know I'm bringing our resources together with Define and and Nativo we really we're really anxious and looking forward to the opportunity to provide a a more cohesive service and deployment experience we think that's key for people to be able to get the product out there it's it's it's something that you know a lot of people say they do it well but few do and and we think that's an advantage

9:13that we can easily take to the bank. Yeah agreed yeah the service thing is is pretty crazy like you know especially you look at Clover I mean a big part of their TAM is the quick serve restaurant and you know getting those installations done correctly getting the type of service you know I mean that's that's not a small thing and I think it's one of those areas where again Clover provides that almost I guess that second level support tier where you know they're there to to back up but um as far as the agent out there making the sale, a lot of times they they struggle

9:41with that cuz they're they're I've talked to so many ISOs now that are like, "I won't even do a restaurant deal anymore with with Clover or anybody else cuz they don't want to they don't want to have it on their shoulders that they have to do it, you know what I mean?" Sure, [snorts] sure. No, the the the the key to the package is Clover can offer such a robust experience, but you have to support the channel,

10:00Yeah. right? If the channel is supported and and and really um shown the way down the path, especially with a package of a and suite of services that's, you know, really kind of robust and and and handles a lot of different marketing needs. Everything, you know, we're looking at at products that can do everything from online ordering to uh website design, website ordering, you know, kind of a complete gamut, especially for quick service restaurants and going up to full service restaurants and uh even even some cases retail that, you know, really put a a a package around it that we could help them install and implement and support

10:36that marketing effort as well, because most of those merchants, they buy a marketing product in the app store. Um they maybe use it once, they maybe use it twice, they collect some email addresses, and a lot of uh you know, mid-size SMBs, they really just don't know what to do [snorts] with the data. And so, taking a um an AI approach to giving them solutions and recommendations as well as a human touch as well is something that we just don't think the the marketplace is doing right now and where we intend to take uh the the the service package we're going to be offering on Clover

11:08here going forward. I want to take a quick break in the action to talk about the retail stack with Stackably, one of our sponsors here at the podcast. It's company where I'm the largest individual shareholder of the company. Very, very proud of what we have there. So, what we just rolled out yesterday is the retail stack. Long story short, if you have a retail merchant and you want a fantastic software solution where you don't have to, you know, spend a bunch of money on software and figure out all these other things. Everything is enclosed in one system and the software is free because we believe software should be free. So,

11:39what what are we talking about? We're talking about advanced inventory management. We're talking about multi-location management. We're talking about uh all kinds of, you know, you can load in individual SKUs for individual variants, all of that stuff. We're talking about a loyalty program, free of charge. We're talking about email and text marketing with automation workflows that we bring in. There is a charge for email and there's a charge for text. The the core, again, our software is always free. Um but we have that in there as well. Obviously, we have scanners. We have the T3 line and the D3 line from Sunmi. So, beautiful, nice, big point of

12:14sale systems with customer-facing displays, um dual pricing with compliant dual price uh labels for products. All of that is there. And so, if you're looking to sell what I believe in 6 months is going to be the leading retail point of sale in our industry, um head over to ccsalespro.com /retail. Check it out. Watch the replay of the event last night if you missed it. Um but I think you're going to love this this solution. I've been out selling in the field. I'm going to start putting more content out again on YouTube and things like that. Um but it's such a a great solution to sell in the field

12:45because it's free and it does everything a retail business could possibly want it to do. So, it's pretty cool. So, again, ccsalespro.com/retail to check that out. With that being said, let's dive back into this great episode and interview. about the financial aspect a little bit. You you alluded to it a a bit, but I mean, you know, there's some serious financial components to this, especially as it as it relates to hardware. So, talk a little bit about that. How are ISOs dealing with that today? How do you envision them dealing with that in the future in terms of like, "Man, we want to stock the hardware. We want to be

13:13able to go place these deals that need, you know, five stations." And you know what I mean, all that stuff can be a lot, you know, for the ISO to to navigate. No, absolutely. Absolutely. Um you know, from a perspective of where the hardware sits today, um like I mentioned earlier, you know, the commoditization of of POS in general, there's so many people out there that are are financing it into the deal. There's financing offers. There's other opportunities that people have went down the path with. And we look at it as a scenario to where we can help our small to mid-size ISO partners by handling that financing in house. So,

13:45you know, if we're taking care of it in a non-blatant way, we're we're we're basically modeling it into our overall sales strategy and where we are from a financial cost uh participation uh strategically, um the small to medium-size ISO or agent, they can't get the resources at that type of with that with that type of accessibility, right? There's other challenges financially that they need to spend their time, effort, and money on. Whereas, you know, we have access to those those capital resources. So, by offering a package uh type of scenario where we bring in uh very simple to select package A, package B, package C, and I don't want to

14:25uh you know, throughout the all the special sauce that we have intended here for the end of 2026 and beyond, but you know, we really intend to make it simple and and kind of a menu selection. In in the future and in today's world of AI and fast-paced technology infrastructure, um the one way that the consumer still really relate is being able to go in and select off a menu, right? When you go to a restaurant, you want to open up your menu, you want to you want to see your pictures of your nice fancy products, and you want to say, "I'd like this as an appetizer, this is a meal, and this

14:54is a dessert, right?" So, you know, merchants are much the same. If if they can if you can lead that reseller or that merchant to be able to select off a menu and and pack package and put together their program and have it be extremely cost-effective from an upfront perspective um boss structure into the program, then we feel like that'll provide a really value-added service for those customers that that, you know, really are wouldn't otherwise be able to move into the land of POS. They'd probably still be using a terminal because they couldn't afford it. Or the agent might not be able to finance in a POS because of the size of the

15:29merchant. I'd say threading that that fine line, you know, kind of going through that that process of of allowing people to do things they wouldn't otherwise be able to do because of the resources that Nativa can bring to bear and the technology, I think is going to be key. Yeah, good stuff. You know, Dwayne, I'm sitting here just listening to you and I'm thinking about like it's so interesting to me how many people that are listening right now really kind of want to get to where you're at in in the ISO world. Meaning, you know, you you did go out on your own, you built Definr, you were able to you know, now

16:02come and and join forces, you know, with a larger company and things. And so as we kind of transition, you know, we talked about Clover. I want to end with some of the other strategic things, but I have one other kind of off-the-wall question, which is just like for those that are listening right now, when you look back at your time from I think you said 2017 of starting Definr and then and then kind of this this latest transaction, what are a couple things that you wish you would have known in 2017 that would have made your journey a little easier, I don't know, a little faster, a little

16:27more profitable, I don't know, whatever it is. What do you wish you would have known in 2017 that you know now? Oh, wow, that's a great question. That's a great question, James. Really, it is focus, maintaining focus and not trying to do be everything to everyone, but doing what you do best, right? You know, I hearken back to when I first started Definr, you know, I'd always been very well accustomed to working with experienced sales agents that, you know, had had been in the business for quite some time. You know, my background was operations. I became an operational expert. I feel like I can really come down and help those clients and and

17:02I taught my team to be able to help those clients as well expand their business, grow their business, capitalize their business in certain ways that would be effective because that's what I had done. You know, I went off when we first started the business and tried to create a retail channel with new to the industry sales reps and

17:17it was a crash and burn for me, right? So, that was a a waste of time, effort, and energy in the first couple years that I wish I could have back. But, it you know, it it equates to the bottom line is if you focus on what you're really good at, and and set parameters to not get sidetracked and taken down rabbit holes, you know, I think I think that's the best way you can be effective in in this space in the in the merchant processing industry because, trust me, there's a lot of different rabbit holes to go down today, especially. Much like what you've been working on, James. I

17:43mean, I'm very impressed by, you know, the the capability to take and and really bring the solution sets to your customers and hand deliver them. I mean, that's been something you've been doing for years in terms of, you know, advising, and now to be able to bring that in a meaningful way to customers. I mean, that's the same type type of thing I try to do, but just in a different way. I try to bring that expertise level to those that might not have that expertise just because of uh they haven't been exposed to it, or someone was hiding that expertise from them,

18:16trying to take advantage of something. Um you know, if you if you do do things the proper way, you're you're going to win in this industry. And And if you keep your focus, you're going to win. It's really about focus. Yeah, you know, one thing I think is like a challenge these days is like AI, there's like so much opportunity with AI, but the also one of the one of the challenges is like with AI, you can start to think that you can do everything because, you know, AI just oh, it speeds up. I can learn this. I can learn that. I could go I could

18:40automate this. And it's like, yeah, but you still have to pick some lane uh you know, at least you know, no more than a few lanes that you're going to go in, and even if you use AI, it's like you you still you got to be cuz I think it almost it can almost trick you into feeling like hey, I think I'm pretty good at this because I I spent 30 minutes reading a talking to Claude, and now I feel like the expert. It's like, no, you haven't executed on that yet. You have no idea what you're doing. Don't get fooled by that, right? So, you still got to stay

19:07focused, and use AI to to facilitate, you know, that that progress in the focused area rather than trying to go super broad, you know? Right. Right. No, I mean that that's that's a great point. I mean, especially, you know, the more things are available for all people, it's it's kind of like at one point, I think it was probably 5 years ago, everyone was building an app, right? It was everyone's building an app, and now it's everyone's building an AI. And And you know, there's there's those times where you really say, "Look, look, if if you whittle down to your core capability and and and what you

19:36really bring to the table, then you use the tools at your disposal to to to to to uh no pun intended, but stack around you, right? And if you uh you know, if you really do that well, that's where your customers get impressed because the jack of all trades, master at none, is, you know, not a good place to be because a lot of times you end up you end up stepping on your own on your own toes and and and tripping over your own over your own messes. So, you know, the the the better way to be, I think, is to is to head head down the fairway and

20:06then, you know, utilize the tools at your disposal to benefit and and and build upon your solid foundation. It's It's just like, you know, building a building. I mean, if you don't have a solid foundation, you're not going anywhere. Yep. Absolutely. Well, Dwayne, I always love having you just just talking through things with you. I think your insights in the industry are great. Um before we close out today, though, give me one or two other things that you maybe you had on your list that you wanted to talk about. Again, I know you're just diving in with the TV, and I know I know Vlad pretty well, so I'm

20:33sure you guys have a million things you've been talking about. What are some other things that that, you know, again, the the TV is the sponsor of the podcast, so what are a couple of other things that maybe you want to put on the radar of our listeners that they be watching out for as they get into 2027? Yeah, I mean, I would say growth. I mean, growth in terms of what the offering is here. Um you know, I would say that me and Vlad I think are going to really hit it off as a tag team here at this organization because he has the ideas. Vlad is the

20:59idea guy. What what one of the better in the industry, and he really knows where his vision it to go. Um and uh, you know, where I feel like my place is going to be is to come in and help him uh, steer the rudder on the ship so that we get there efficiently and effectively. And um, you know, put put together programs that, you know, are um, superior to what the marketplace offers today, right? If we can do things

21:23just a little bit better, people notice. Um, our industry is a small one. That's one thing that's always allowed me to be successful is typically uh, you know, clients of mine tend to introduce me to other clients because, yeah, you know, I I try to always have the companies that I'm I have a responsibility to uh, do things a little bit better. And and I've been

21:43successful at that during my career. Vlad's been successful at the vision and uh, coming together, I think that's going to be what's exciting for us. And um, you know, I would really I would really say I'd define, you know, we we always had the the blocking and tackling. And that's why our customers I

22:01believe really appreciated us. And with Netacea coming in with a bigger technology base, more products and services, the vision to to to to bring it in and the capability to execute, um, I think 2027 is going to be a really interesting year for folks to keep an eye on us and what we're going to do. And and if you haven't given us a look,

22:21give us a shot and and and talk to me. Love it. Yeah, so again, uh, if you want to get connected, we have a special link set up from the podcast. It's um, ccsalespro.com/netacea or netacea.com/ccs sales pro. Either one. So, both go to the same place. So, go check that out and uh, and reach out

22:35and uh, speak with Dwayne and his team. Dwayne, thank you again so much for taking time to join me today on the podcast and share your insights. Looking forward to seeing what you and Vlad have uh, cooking up here in for 2027. Thank you so much, James. Appreciate it. So, it didn't take long for Mastercard to announce its plan for the acquisition

22:50of BVNK. The card company um, this week announced the launch of global money platform which combines Mastercard's global payments capabilities with BVNK's stablecoin infrastructure through a single API. Wow, that's cool. Yeah, isn't it? Global Money Platform provides a full-stack modular infrastructure there for modern finance, Mastercard explained. Banks, um, fintechs, and enterprises can now embed multi-currency accounts, including fiat and stablecoins, real-time conversions, stablecoin linked cards, and local bank payouts through Mastercard's portfolio of global money movement capabilities, known as Move, into their own products and under their

23:38own branding. The fintech payment processor Nuvei and card-issuing platform Marqeta will be among the first to integrate Global Money Platform, which is already live. Now, in a related development, Marqeta has announced that it has teamed up with Coinbase to bring stablecoin back cards to crypto-native and non-crypto businesses. Marqeta already issues crypto-backed cards for Coinbase. This latest agreement focuses on enterprise

24:11customers. Mhm. Mhm. Now, in another piece of related news, stablecoin payment volume totaled $482 billion in the first 9 months of the year, according to Allium, a block blockchain data and infrastructure platform. Mhm. Now, $482 billion isn't a lot, but considering Mhm. I mean, considering how new how new the technology is, I mean, that's

24:38Right, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So, plenty of announcements out of Visa this week. Most notable, an AI genic pilot with Bill, the AI-powered financial operations platform, and Billtrust. The idea is to enable trusted AI agents to initiate and help complete invoice payments through supplier portals using Visa intelligent commerce and Visa trusted agent protocol. Mhm. A lot of complex stuff this week. So, I thought I would like uh

25:15Yeah. give us a little bit of the old we we're talking about the new here's a little bit about the old. Yeah. You know, I've I've reported in the past about how 90% of businesses still write checks for some bills. Right. This week I wanted to touch on consumer check writing with data from the Federal

25:32Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Okay. The number of checks written by consumers fell from 1.83 per month in 2021 to 1.1 two in 2025. It's like a 40% drop or something. Yeah, yeah. And less than a year ago decade ago back in 2018, it was 3.3 per month. Wow. Mhm. That's crazy. Now while the number is falling, the values are rising. The weighted median dollar value of a consumer check payment rose from $120 in 2021 to $137.58

26:14in 2025. Mhm. The weighted median value of checks written for goods and services rose from $96.50 in 2021 to $100 in 2025. Mhm. And here's something I think we can all agree on. Older Americans are more inclined to write checks than younger ones. Mhm. Those between the ages of 18 and 24 barely write any checks. About uh 0.077

26:45a month. That's funny. Yeah. While those between the ages of 55 and 64 write an average of 1.48 checks per month. Yeah. So it does it does really kind of beg the question of like in 20 years, you know, is anybody still writing checks like you know Oh yeah, you know, I mean I'm I'm an old-fashioned check person and I write maybe

27:11one check a month. Yeah. Yeah. And that's to pay that's my paycheck. Right. You know, I mean it's actually kind of fascinating like I I was thinking about just this morning like this morning I had to go so somebody reached out to me a child like a family friend you know their kid reached out to me they were doing this fundraiser and they were wanting us to be a sponsor of I honestly don't even know what I sponsored but

27:34whatever it was it was like 350 bucks. And you know, it was like well how do I pay for it and they're like can you bring us a check? And it was like Okay, if you weren't a family friend, you know, so I I ran down to my finance person and I'm like hey we need a $350 check from Stackable, you know, to sponsor this thing and then I signed it and then one of her one of the people who works for her went and you know, ran it over there. But I mean if it's like if you want me like to write a check and put it

28:04in the mail no Right. I won't do it. I just I refuse. I won't do it. So it's like no you're not going to get my money. [laughter] So So I think it's like you know, it's interesting I think you know, as a business we do still write some checks. We're trying to not write any but you know, so I think it's more right now a matter of even the ones that are left it's it's yeah, you have the larger value ones where it's like well yeah, I don't mind taking a minute to write a $75,000 you know, check but then if it's that value then I'm probably going to send a

28:35wire, you know, or an ACH. So Right. Exactly. I don't really see the use case so yeah, I think this is really the only thing that's left now is a matter of like you know, again you have the an older generation that still likes to write checks occasionally for certain things. And you have people who only

28:52accept checks still. Right. But I think both of those two, even in 7 years or so, I think neither of those So, I think it's going to get to a point in like 7 years where it's kind of just like, "No." It's going to get to the point where banks don't really make checks available. I don't know. I think that's going to go by the wayside pretty

29:08quick. I think it I think it is. It's already moving in that direction. Right. I mean I'll I'll be honest. The only time in the last uh 6 months that I wrote a check was I got caught by a red light camera, you know, going through a red light. And I had to pay a fine. And they wanted to, you know, give me They wanted to surcharge it if I paid it online. So, I'm like, "The heck with it. I'll put it in an envelope and just drop it in the mail." And it sat on the edge of my desk for a week before I got around to to

29:41actually um put it in the mailbox, you know? It's funny cuz like for me I'm, you know, I probably wouldn't even have considered that as an option. I'd I'd think, "I have to pay the surcharge." I wouldn't even have thought that there was this I wouldn't have thought of like a check as an You know what I mean? It's so funny. [laughter]

29:57You know. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's funny cuz I ran out of checks a couple months ago, right? So, I had to order some. And I'm like, "Well, this will be This will last the rest of my life." Yeah. Cuz I write like one check every couple months, right? Yeah. So. I I found a checkbook in a drawer the

30:13other day, probably like a month ago. And I think it was from 7 years ago that I was like, "Oh, that's the last time I got a book of checks. That's interesting." [laughter] Yeah, right. And it's funny, on my company uh checkbook I got this notice like a year ago, "It's time to re-up." Well, the only checks I

30:32write are my paychecks. Right. Right. I still have pages and pages of of blank checks ready, you know? Right. Yeah, you don't need checks yet. So. Interesting. So, uh James, the National Retail Federation has just published its yearly estimate of consumer spending for the year-end holiday season. And this just blows my mind. The trade group's economic modeling suggests that retail sales in November and December, they they go from November 1st to December 31st for their holiday

31:05um estimates. Um that So, sales should grow by about 4.2% over 2025 to total $1.013 trillion. Mm. Wow. And uh just to put that that in perspective, last year retailers saw sales grow by 3.1% um over 2024 to total just shy of a trillion dollars. Now, I I sat in on a on a press briefing that the NRF gave and um you know, some people were asking, "Well, do you delineate between online and and in store?" And um they're like, "No, we just do all all of it together." However, Adobe keeps tabs on online sales

31:54Yeah. and it's predicting that online holiday sales online sales this holiday season will exceed $275 billion. Wow. Mm. And a record 69 63% of online spending is going to be coming through mobile devices, Adobe said. Yeah. That's up from 61% in 2025. Yeah. All these stats are making me excited for the event that I'm doing

32:22later today on my retail stack, Fatty. [laughter] So. Great. Great, James. I'm glad I could help you. We just want to get a really small slice of that of that What did you say it was? 1. what trillion on the retail All right, we're just like, you know. 1. Let's see. 1.013 trillion. So, uh

32:401 trillion 130 million. Yeah, we're looking for, you know, 2 3% market penetration here in the over 24 months and we'll be pretty happy with that. So. [laughter] I bet you will. I bet you will. But no, but you know, in seriously it's no it is really interesting. Like one thing I find that's fascinating about this Patty, I've been really into retail the last, you know, month or whatever as

33:00we're preparing for this thing. Right. There's just so much to it, you know, there's a lot that goes into providing a really good solution for that. But one of the things I find fascinating is [clears throat] I've had a surprisingly difficult time convincing merchants that they should use like we have a Stackable Connect app, right? Which is like you can do your shopping through an a native mobile app on your phone. So, you convince your customers, hey, download the Stackable Connect app. And it's like I don't know. It is interesting to me how um it shouldn't be as hard as it is to convince merchants to adopt. It's like

33:30it's like your customers all have the Amazon app. Don't you want them to have an app on their phone for you? Like it just feels kind of obvious. Right. Um so one of the things we were trying to do there is we're trying to make it more of a like a community type app. So, it's like for the agent it's like if the agent sells, let's say, I don't know, 30 retailers in their community, if you can get all 30 of them promoting that Stackable Connect app, then anybody that logs in is going to see those 30 and see their whatever they have in their point

33:58of sale is going to sync to that. So, they could do the purchase online. Um and then we put in the like Uber Direct Delivery so that they can have like an Uber driver come pick it up and you know, do the the retail delivery. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. But it's like again, I guess my point to that is it's just really it's interesting like talking to these merchants, getting them on board with that, you know, they're like, oh, wow, that's really awesome, you know, but I don't know that we would use it. You know, and you're like, why would you not use this? You know, so anyway

34:25Why would you not I would imagine at first when they try it, once they try it, it's it's a done deal. Well, it's like yeah, but I think I think it's like I I It's a weird thing, Patty. I can't put my finger on it. Like I've been out selling in the field and stuff again, and it One of the things I find fascinating is small SMBs, they they really like cut they sell themselves short. It's like They're like, "Well, this is an amazing app, and this is a great technology, but I don't think my customers would use it

34:53to buy from me." Like they would use it to buy from Amazon, but they wouldn't use it to buy from me. And it's like, "Why not? Why would they not want to buy from me? Why would they not want to get a delivery to their door with your stuff?" I want to get a delivery to my And the nice thing is like I feel like local retailers have this huge advantage over Amazon, which is that Amazon, like it or not, it does still typically take 2

35:16days. Yeah, it's not It's almost never the next day, even though And sometimes it's like, "Oops, we're out of that. You'll get it like next week." Yeah. And so, my thing is like it's definitely not going to be within the hour. So, why would you not hook up Uber Direct to your retail store and like I can order it and it will be here at my house in an hour, 2 hours, 3 hours, whatever it is. Like So, anyway, so we're still we're still working through all of that of like figuring out kind of like how to drive adoption of that tech on the retail side, but to me it's kind

35:50of like yeah, you should definitely use this, you know? Well, you know, I mean, I do a lot of my grocery shopping at Walmart. Yeah, yeah. And and I have it delivered because I otherwise I would make way too many impulse purchases, right? Right, yeah. It's a great way to save money. But what's interesting is that sometimes it's like, "Oh, we don't have that here, you know, where the store you're ordering from. We'll mail it to you." Or you know, "We'll deliver it to you." It gets delivered to me before last week what I had ordered got delivered to me

36:25before my groceries got delivered to me. Well, yeah, and and you know, the reason they're able to do that, Patty, is again, they're using that's exactly what they're doing. They are using Uber Direct. Well, hold on. I don't think they're using Uber Direct. What's the other one? It's um it's the network that has all of them together. I can't remember what it's called all of a sudden. But anyways, there's there's two

36:41main networks that people use for this. There's the Uber Direct network, which is just Uber drivers, and then there's another one that that has like Uber ride share that you know, a bunch of them. Delivery, whatever, yeah. Um but but again, yeah, that's what they're doing. They're using the network of drivers, and it's pretty cool now. I mean, it's an API. We just put the API into Stackable, and it's like, yeah, you can just you can get your stuff

37:01delivered, you know? So. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. So, finally, I wanted to go back do some international reporting here. Um the South African government will open that country's payment system to non-banks, including telecom firms, uh fintechs, and retailers beginning next year. Uh the change, of course, would end banks' long-standing dominance of South Africa's payment processing market. The South African Reserve Bank, that country's central bank, said it hopes the change will spur competition, lower costs, and uh broaden access to digital financial services, and encourage

37:42innovation. Now, as part of the modernization effort, the Reserve Bank has proposed a national cash utility, a central bank-owned cash handling company, that will include white-label ATMs operated as shared infrastructure rather than by individual banks. Mhm. That's really interesting. I you know, that's that's the first [clears throat] I've heard of something like that.

38:08Yeah, that's pretty interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's it for this week, James. Awesome. Well, Patty, thank you so much for sharing the insights with us and keeping us up to date on the industry. We always appreciate it. Uh I appreciate you guys listening. [music]