PEP Episode 032 — Tackling Fraud and Chargebacks in High-Risk Sectors with Anthony Dominguez of AMP Payments

Podcast Description:

Discover the surprising world of Bitcoin’s early adopters and their unconventional use cases! From car dealerships to strip clubs, we uncover the intricate issues of chargebacks and fraud in these sectors. This episode features a special guest, Anthony Dominguez from AMP Payment Systems, who shares his unique Airbnb investment strategy and the recent changes in Airbnb’s payment system. We also dissect the murky waters of junk fees in payment processing, particularly the complexity of interchange rates that merchants face.

AMP Payment Systems’ innovative approach to merchant services is a game-changer. Anthony elucidates their mission to provide flexible, solution-oriented services for both low and high-risk accounts. We tackle the unique challenges faced by merchants on the TMF list and AMP’s commitment to tailored solutions. Post-COVID, the credit card processing industry has evolved, and AMP’s adaptability is highlighted. This episode dives into the criteria AMP considers when forging partnerships, emphasizing the necessity for flexibility and innovation.

High-risk merchant accounts, the future of cryptocurrency payments, and the importance of trust in business form the crux of our discussion. Anthony shares a personal journey from the mortgage industry to payments post-2008 market crash, underscoring the sector’s unpredictability. We explore the potential resurgence of crypto under different political landscapes and why widespread adoption remains challenging. Finally, we shine a spotlight on AMP’s mission to support businesses with dedicated customer support and strategic solutions, making this episode a must-listen for anyone interested in the payments landscape.

James Huber (00:00):

The first places that were taking Bitcoin were car dealerships and strip clubs. And the strip clubs is kind of obvious of, there’s no stamp for it. Nobody, no chargebacks knew you were there. Chargebacks are less. Actually just learned this in litigation cases is that people do chargebacks like crazy at strip clubs.

Anthony Dominguez (00:24):

Oh yeah,

James Huber (00:26):

They have you sign these for, I just went through this file and it was, they charge back after they went back into the room five times with their license and stuff, and they tried to charge it back. So that’ll be an interesting deposition.

Anthony Dominguez (00:38):

There’s a professional athlete who was on a podcast or something a few years ago and he was telling how he would to have his friend sign his credit card form and then he’d charge it back on his Amex. So

James Huber (00:49):

He’s on there being like, I do

Anthony Dominguez (00:50):

Fraud. Yes,

James Huber (00:52):

With hookers.

Jeremy Stock (00:54):

Welcome to the Payments Experts podcast, a podcast of global legal law firm. We hope you enjoy this episode. Welcome to the Payments Experts Podcast, a podcast of global legal law firm. We’re very excited Today we have in studio managing partner of the law firm, James Huber, as well as special guest. Joining us in studio, Anthony Dominguez. Anthony Dominguez of AMP Payment Systems. Gentlemen, we’re excited to have this conversation. Welcome.

James Huber (01:29):

Thanks Chairman, and thanks for joining us in here.

Anthony Dominguez (01:32):

I appreciate the invites.

James Huber (01:33):

What do you find? We don’t get too many. I mean, we always joke, our dress code here is, I think I’ve described it to people as offensively casual, because none of our clients ever come in. Our clients are all over the country and very few of them find themselves in North County San Diego. What are you doing up here?

Anthony Dominguez (01:53):

So actually we spent a lot of time in La Jolla. So my wife and I have done some Airbnb investments. And so what we kind of do is we buy some real estate in places that we want to travel to.

James Huber (02:04):

Perfect.

Anthony Dominguez (02:05):

And we remodel, we hold onto it, we rent it on Airbnb and VRBO when we’re not there, and then we get to use it when it’s available.

James Huber (02:13):

Yeah, great. For Airbnb, how are they doing their payments? I pay on a credit card there. Do you know who’s doing that?

Anthony Dominguez (02:23):

You know what? I think they switched it in the last two years or so, but I think they was literally just using Stripe or somebody for quite a

James Huber (02:31):

While. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that’s a huge account. And are they doing surcharging and discounting at Airbnbs?

Anthony Dominguez (02:37):

No, they’re not. And actually Airbnbs, especially from California, was doing a big push to make sure that all the fees and everything are included in your initial quote before you used to build in a cleaning fee

James Huber (02:49):

And

Anthony Dominguez (02:50):

Some other expenses, which was an advantage to travelers if you were staying for a longer time because one flat fee versus two weeks or three weeks, it was the more expensive you’re staying two nights or three nights. So now it’s just you got to build into your price. So yeah, I don’t see them doing a surcharge anytime soon.

James Huber (03:08):

Yeah, yeah. And the junk fees, I mean, it was kind of like Ticketmaster with Airbnb, you had no idea what you were going to get charged. You sign up, you pay your deposit, then you’re leaving and you’re like, what do you mean all these fees? So junk fees is a hot topic that we can certainly delve into because some of the legislation coming down, I mean, you could call interchange a junk fee. You have no idea the rate you’re going to get charged. Now the consumer’s not getting charged that. The merchant is not really getting charged that because most of them, well, what about the merchants that are on Interchange Plus? Couldn’t they make an argument? I mean, the last time I checked, and it’s been a while, there was 147 different interchange rates. It’s insane. So any merchant on interchange plus, I don’t see what would stop them from going, these are junk fees.

Jeremy Stock (03:59):

Hey, James, before you get into that for our audience, would you talk about what is Interchange Plus versus just interchange?

James Huber (04:06):

Okay, so interchange is the rates that Visa and MasterCard. And as I said, I think there’s, last time I checked there was 147 of ’em. I’m guessing they didn’t eliminate any. They probably created, no. Yeah, they’re adding. So those are the rates that Visa and MasterCard charge based on how the transaction is. If it’s a rewards card, and I do it on the internet net, that’s one rate. If it’s a debit card and I don’t punch in my debit, that’s another rate. So you put all those scenarios out and you end up with a gajillion, different rates. So some merchants are charged a flat rate, 3.5% everything, or some of them are charged two 3% for really secure transactions, and then a higher rate if it’s online or it’s riskier. Some merchants are put on an interchange plus. So whatever the interchange rate is, they’ll just add a fee to that.

James Huber (05:00):

So if I was a merchant, I might go, these are junk fees. I have no idea what I’m getting charged. And they might be coming after someone like you and you’re going, well, that’s not me charging them. I’m literally just passing these through to you. So it’d be interesting to see how this junk fee comes down. I don’t think they’re really looking at that right now. They’re mostly looking at ticket Master where you buy a ticket and it’s all this, sometimes it’s 50 bucks, sometimes it’s 150 bucks. So are you guys hearing any chatter from your end about junk fees?

Anthony Dominguez (05:34):

Not a substantial amount. I think it’s one of those things that there’s so many other pressing issues right now for a lot of business owners. And so delving into the minute details of they were charged 10 basis points, 20 basis points here more. I think that’s not something that they’re focused on. But yeah, everything I’m seeing is that it’s focused on the consumer end and what the end user is seeing and being charged. And are they aware of that when they do a transaction? Right. That’s kind of what we’re hearing more of.

James Huber (06:05):

Yeah. I mean, I remember when cash discounting or dual pricing or surcharging came out, nobody liked it because I’m buying a $2 cup of coffee and all of a sudden it costs 2 25. Everybody hated them. Once Covid came around, it kind of went nuts because everybody’s going, look, I understand businesses are struggling and I have to use my credit card. There’s a benefit. I talk about it all the time. Prior to Covid, we would go into court and you’d get a judge that had way grayer hair than me, and he’s going, huh? Credit card. I don’t even use that. I don’t use it for anything. I use the big wad of cash that judges letting them use, have piles of it in their houses,

Jeremy Stock (06:49):

But yeah, just use cash. They’re like, well, no big deal if you can’t take credit cards.

James Huber (06:55):

Excuse me, because we’re arguing these are the rules, the visa rules, these are the laws. And he’s going, huh, that’s a privilege, not a right. And then Covid came around and he is going, oh my gosh, I had to order my ivory back scratcher online and I had to use my card. So it’s not an option, but we’re ahead of ourselves. You’re a CEO, is that your title?

Anthony Dominguez (07:24):

Yes.

James Huber (07:25):

Yeah. I mean, you’re the

Anthony Dominguez (07:26):

I’m top off. Yes, I am. I’m not a big title guy or I try to be accessible. I try to be available. So I’m definitely, I’m not a name dropper, a title dropper kind of person. But yes, that is my

James Huber (07:38):

Title. And when you’re talking to merchants, I mean, I see a lot of people, you don’t take the title CEO necessarily because why am I talking to the ceo? I see a lot of people that are owning the company and they’re the VP of sales or something, just so it’s more approachable or you don’t look as ragtag. But I mean, I have clients that process a billion dollars a month. A merchant has an issue, they still get to talk to the ceo. So why it’s a MP payment systems. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about a p payment systems where you’re at now?

Anthony Dominguez (08:11):

Yeah, for sure. So a P or amp, it is kind of a culmination of some ideas that we had about what we’d seen in the market in terms of being a solution oriented iso, you deal with this all the time. You see contracts from all of the major players, and I’m sure you hear all the same complaints, is that some folks do some core things and they do it well, and then they don’t do anything else. And anything beyond that, they could care less. If they’re not getting the business, then they’re not really there to guide you through it and kind of walk you through it. So we saw a lack of solutions available. People love in the merchant industry love to say, no. Oh, we don’t do that. We can’t do that. And then you have to rephrase the question, rephrase the statement. It’s like, oh yeah, we can do it.

James Huber (08:59):

Yeah,

Anthony Dominguez (08:59):

Okay. But you made me go through all these hoops to get the answer that I knew that was available, but you couldn’t get outside the box. So we wanted to offer that for both our ISOs and our agents as well as our merchants, just solutions. So we’ve been focusing on the low risk, which we’ve always done, the face-to-face transactions, the mom and pop stores, one to six locations kind of thing. But we found that there’s a need for high risk solutions, both for our ISOs and our agents, but some merchants fall under a high risk category. We placed a guy who was an auto shop, I think in North Dakota, and his son had stolen his identity 10 years ago, did some fraudulent transactions, opened a merchant account in his name, and he was on the TMF list. So he had trouble running his auto shop just servicing a community. So they get their cars fixed and he had trouble getting a merchant count under like seven, 8%.

James Huber (09:56):

Yeah,

Anthony Dominguez (09:56):

That’s brutal. People like that. There’s real people who have real need to find a solution in situations that warrant it. We found some traction offering solutions for Canada as well. So we’ve just been trying for both our ISO and our agents to really be a solutions oriented shop.

James Huber (10:17):

And

Anthony Dominguez (10:18):

For our merchants, we’re focused on adding things that create value that can help them drive revenue, make their business a little easier to operate. We’ve offered, we offer for payroll, we offer different ancillary services that say, Hey, we know that your business is hard to manage. Business is not easy. Being successful at business is even harder. And so we can help in all those little ways that can make things easier,

James Huber (10:41):

And

Anthony Dominguez (10:41):

That’s what we’re built on.

James Huber (10:42):

Well, no, it’s one of the reasons that we’ve been working together. I was telling Jeremy, I dunno, like 5, 6, 7 years

Anthony Dominguez (10:48):

At least.

James Huber (10:49):

Yeah. And one of the reasons we like working with you is you’re dynamic and in this industry you have to be the credit card processing pre covid looks nothing like it did now. I mean, when we got into the business, people were still running what you called knuckle buses, bus goes.

Anthony Dominguez (11:05):

I remember that. That was,

James Huber (11:08):

Yeah,

James Huber (11:08):

You’d have to send that and then you’d have to mail that in. You probably got your money, what? A month later. I mean, now I’m beeping my phone and they’re saying, you’re not even going to have to get out of your car to get gas soon. But it’s changed so much, and you basically have to, because your customer’s needs are changing all the time. And you said it, a lot of companies, they’ve got their bread and butter and they just stick with it and they stick linear. So it’s really fun working with people like you that are really merchant focused, looking to help the merchants and going, oh geez, no, I don’t do that, but tell you what, I’m going to go figure it out. It’s a lot like our law firm, especially early on when people nothing and you’re going, yeah, I can help you with that and I’ll just go figure it out. Now on the front end, we actually say, if we don’t know, hey, I don’t know. I’m going to go figure it out. And if it turns out this looks like something that somebody else should do, I’ll let you know, but I’ll get you on the right path and everything like that. And I think that’s probably a lot of what you do because

James Huber (12:13):

In the payments processing industry, I mean a MP payment systems, I don’t want to say you’re a cog in the wheel, but you guys are one piece of the ecosystem and there’s all these other players that you have to bring together. So let me ask you that. This is something we haven’t really gotten into before in the podcast, is what do you do when you’re looking for a partner, like a bank or a processor or a technology company? What kind of things are you looking

Anthony Dominguez (12:42):

For? That’s a great question. You mentioned that flexibility. You guys are very flexible. I’ve thrown a variety of weird situations. Non-payment related houseboat. Yeah, houseboat business. That was a failure. But you know what? We live and we learn.

James Huber (12:58):

I really wanted one of those houses. I

Anthony Dominguez (13:00):

Know, I

James Huber (13:00):

Know. Me too. There’s these luxury houseboats that, were they not movable?

Anthony Dominguez (13:05):

No. Well, it had a small engine, but it was a essentially floating condo.

James Huber (13:09):

Floating condo, but it’s got to be able to move. That was my thing. But it was luxury on a lake in the middle of nowhere, which I thought was awesome. And then you’ve got this luxury houseboat, and then you’ve got what, 5, 6, 7, 8 other ones was the

Anthony Dominguez (13:24):

Idea.

James Huber (13:25):

And I thought that was cool. Then your buddies can have their own houseboat. She can be over eight houseboats away, and she’s not getting there anytime quick because the motor’s so slow. Anyways, sorry, I digress. But what are you looking for in partners?

Anthony Dominguez (13:41):

Yeah, so for us, what makes the most sense is look, obviously the numbers matter in terms of revenue share, things like that. But it also matters. Can you get the job done? Because there’s so many people, and especially when you talk about technology who have great ideas for technology, and then they’re out there selling it, trying to get investment, trying to get early adoption. I don’t really have anything. And then you try it, you’re like, this is nothing. Or you look at AI where it’s been the last 10 years we’ve been hearing about ai, everyone’s like, oh, we integrated ai, and it was all BS for the most part. It wasn’t really ai. Some

Jeremy Stock (14:21):

Of it still is. We’ll talk about that later.

Anthony Dominguez (14:24):

Yeah, exactly. And now there’s real legitimate AI being introduced to products and to services. And so now it’s a matter of evaluating partners, evaluating tools, and seeing an educated guess of, Hey, are you actually going to be able to accomplish what you said you’re going to accomplish? Cool. The numbers make sense. If that is the case here, the numbers work, but are you actually going to be able to get that done and does it work with what we do? Because a tool can be great, but you have to totally revamp your system and then it’s not worth it.

James Huber (14:54):

Well, I mean, maybe it is, but it’s got to be,

Anthony Dominguez (14:56):

It better be really worth it. How do you

James Huber (14:58):

Judge if somebody can deliver what they say they’re going to deliver too? Because we run into this in our firm in the legal work, we end up picking up a lot of cases that are halfway down the road. They’re going, look, they’re just not getting it done. They’re billing me like crazy. I really like the guys, but I just don’t know what’s going on. And how do you, similarly, when you’re looking, let’s say you’re looking for an attorney and I’m going, yo, Anthony, I’m going to help you get these boats and we’re going to get it done. And obviously your judge of character was spot on for me, but how do you pick it with your processing or technology companies? How do you get that vibe? Or is it just instincts that you’re like, nah,

Anthony Dominguez (15:43):

This guy’s full of smoke. So it’s a combination of things. Definitely some time in the business, there’s a lot of great people in our industry, but there’s that handful of just slime balls that people run across. And so you start to get your ears open for those keywords, look over promising. When everything is perfect, then I know you’re hiding something from me, right? If I ask you, let’s say we’re talking about a processing partner, and I say, Hey, what your merchants are you guys looking for? What should I bring to you? And they’re like, oh, we like everything. No, you don’t. They

James Huber (16:21):

Don’t.

Anthony Dominguez (16:21):

Nobody likes everything. So what don’t you like? Tell me, oh, well, okay, actually we sometimes have trouble with this or this. Okay, cool, let’s get down to it. But someone who wants to continually tell me that they’re amazing in every way. Look, you work for an organization, nobody is perfect, and that’s okay, but be upfront with me. I was like, Hey, if we melt fit in, then we can make money together. But if what we need isn’t covered by what you can offer, that’s okay. Just let me know.

James Huber (16:54):

Yeah, just tell me.

Anthony Dominguez (16:54):

Yeah. So anyone who doesn’t can’t tell me, Hey, this is not my field, this is not my expertise about anything, then it’s usually someone I can’t trust.

James Huber (17:05):

Yeah, that’s a good point. So if somebody’s going, here’s what I can do and here’s my limitations. Yeah, that’s a good idea. So that’s a good for anybody that’s looking to,

Anthony Dominguez (17:16):

What about you guys obviously want as many customers as possible, but you have to evaluate whether some people are just worth your time and energy.

James Huber (17:24):

Well, Jeremy does all of most of our client intake on the front end. Jeremy, how do you pull out the people that are just not going to work had it before where we’re, like I said, we pick up cases and it’s rare, but I can think of there’s one time this year where the guy’s going, Hey, the way this is working just isn’t working. I was going, absolutely. It wasn’t my case, of course, but it was. He’s talking about another attorney at our firm and I’m going, yeah, absolutely. I think you should go somewhere else. If you’re feeling that

Jeremy Stock (17:56):

Way, I think you put your finger on it, both of you. It has to do with transparency. You can get that sense when people are just being straight with you. It sometimes happens. Merchants approach us about matchless, about match TMF very often, and it turns out we find out later they gave us 30% of the story. So those you try to just get a sense for it. James, in those conversations can, as you were saying, Anthony, the more experience you have, the quicker you start picking up on those types of ones where you’re like, Hey, this maybe is probably not the greatest option here.

James Huber (18:32):

Or you’re like, okay, I need to see all your emails and stuff. And they’re like, no, no, you don’t need to see that. We had one where Bryce, who does the podcast often, he’s like, I think this guy must be having an affair or something. He won’t give me any of his emails. Then we started speculating about who went,

Jeremy Stock (18:54):

Who was it know. Right. Yeah. We have a lot of fun over here. Anthony, you guys, you can tell. I’ve got a quick question. Maybe you guys can segue this. What percentage of your guys’ work is high risk? You said you do bring in some, how much of your work is that?

Anthony Dominguez (19:10):

Yeah, so right now it’s a small percentage. So it’s about 10% of our overall merchant accounts. But we kind of foresee that growing. We’re investing in some resources to find more of those high risk deals because what we’ve seen so far is that the ISO that has a high risk deal or a couple high risk deals, they have low risk deals too.

Anthony Dominguez (19:33):

And once you can show that, Hey, look, we’re going to take care of your high risk stuff. We’re going to take care of the stuff that’s hard. Some of that stuff, that’s easy as well. And we’re going to be able to do an even better job on that because that’s simple, right? Let’s cut and dry. Boom, let’s get it done. But now you know that we are willing to get the job done, we’re willing to find you a solution, and we’re going to go through that extra legwork and that extra bit of effort that it takes to sometimes get a deal placed.

James Huber (19:58):

And nobody wants just high risk business. So when agents and ISOs are finding merchants that need the business, it’s nice to have both. And from a merchant’s perspective, if you’re selling stuff online and it’s all CBD free trial or whatever, you can’t really do free trial that much anymore. But those business, there’s an art to it of you’ve got this stuff where customers are disputing the transaction, try and sell something that they’re not disputing as much easier to balance your own portfolio out. There’s all these schemes going on. We’re seeing more and more of them where they’re setting up these fake businesses and they’re running stolen credit cards or prepaid debit cards to balance out the amount of transactions that are disputed versus not. And these people are getting popped. The DOJ just did another one, chargeback surety of this business. So when you’re out there looking for high risk, I used to say to clients, do not put that on the internet because those are the guys that are going to find you. So I think it’s the same thing of when you’re looking at these people, you have to feel them out and they’re going, oh, my charge back’s from zero.

James Huber (21:23):

You are selling CBD online.

Anthony Dominguez (21:25):

Yeah. So you’re perfect. So you’re

James Huber (21:27):

Perfect. I don’t think so. And then they’re at 20%, but getting, I won’t say back on top, I guess off on top, how’d you get into the payment space? What attracted you about it?

Anthony Dominguez (21:40):

Honestly, I tell people it was just dumb luck. Yeah. My old business partner and I were in the mortgage business at the time, and so this was like 2008, beginning of 2008, excuse me. So if you remember, the market crash was I think October, November, where things just like the rug fell out, but this is January and we can get a deal done today and credit down payment, all the same specs. And then tomorrow we go back to submit essentially the same deal, and they’re like, oh, we don’t have that program anymore. And then that happened three times and we’re like, okay, the writing’s on the wall.

James Huber (22:22):

Yeah, this isn’t,

Anthony Dominguez (22:24):

I’m a firm believer. Once is a fluke, twice as a pattern three is like, Hey, you better be on the lookout.

James Huber (22:32):

Something. So you caused the mortgage single handed.

Anthony Dominguez (22:37):

That’s the takeaway.

Anthony Dominguez (22:38):

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So I was doing a mortgage for guy at the time, and I saw his bank statements, and at that time it seemed like a lot of money going through his bank account. And so I just was chatting with him about what he does, and he happened to run an ISO out of Oregon, and he was moving to Arizona. He’s like, Hey, I’m actually starting a new company. So we learned more about it and we’re like, Hey, this would make sense. And it was clear that something was happening in the mortgage industry. We were at a level where we couldn’t see the big picture to know what it was, but something was happening, right?

James Huber (23:11):

And

Anthony Dominguez (23:11):

So we’re like, all right, let’s learn more about this. And we liked the idea, and then the residual income made a ton of sense. So he jumped right in,

James Huber (23:19):

And

Anthony Dominguez (23:19):

He ended up being one of those slime balls that I mentioned.

James Huber (23:22):

Who was it?

Anthony Dominguez (23:23):

His name was John Cargill.

James Huber (23:26):

No,

Anthony Dominguez (23:27):

He was a small player, but he ended up getting busted years later. We saw on the news that he was running some sort of scam where stolen identities and opened merchant accounts. So basically after six, eight months, we realized, started seeing, we didn’t know anything about the industry, so we had to learn everything, realize that he know anything. So we learned custom service, we learned deployment, we learned sales, we learned everything. And then we’re like, what is it that you’re doing here? And he was trying to take the portfolio and leave it under his old business name and kind of be able to cut us out. So we said, look, we can’t do business like this. We’re going to go do our own thing.

James Huber (24:05):

Yeah, good.

Anthony Dominguez (24:05):

Yeah, and it was fortunate. The guy got desperate later and was doing all kinds of shady stuff, apparently.

James Huber (24:10):

Yeah. Perfect. Yeah. So your instincts are pretty sharp. So we kind of talked of where you’re at now. Where do you see the industry going in the next, I wouldn’t even say five years, I’d say. What do you see in the next one or two years going on?

Anthony Dominguez (24:25):

Well, I mean, it’s going to be interesting, right? You mentioned all the litigation that’s happening. So I think we’re all kind of waiting to see how that might affect us, how it might affect our merchants, the consumer, obviously, one of the big ones is threatening rewards credit cards. That’s half the reason why people, they upcharge, they do that extra transaction, they spend that extra amount so they can hit their miles, they can hit their numbers, get their

James Huber (24:48):

Rewards.

Anthony Dominguez (24:49):

So that will be a game changer. I’m definitely interested to see how alternate payments might finally take hold, like

James Huber (24:58):

Crypto.

Anthony Dominguez (24:58):

Yeah. I feel confident that some sort of crypto is going to find its way as a day-to-day transaction at some point. It’s not going to be Bitcoin. To me, Bitcoin is more of a storage of, it’s kind of like gold, right?

James Huber (25:14):

It’s like we’re own stocks. Or even if you own gold, most people don’t have the gold in the house. I own some gold. It’s in Jeremy’s house

Anthony Dominguez (25:26):

Under the floorboards.

James Huber (25:27):

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. No, I feel the same thing. And look, we all got into crypto. I don’t want to say big time, but it was all the rage. We were basically playing Shark tank of people calling us up, being like, look, I want to raise some money here. I’ve got this project. I don’t want to follow any of the rules. So I’ve heard you can do it with crypto. And we were like, yeah, we’re not your guys for that. Actually, you should be following the rules even more. And turns out we were right because most of it imploded, but I always liked it, particularly when we got into it, even with Bitcoin is the first places that we’re taking Bitcoin were car dealerships and strip clubs. And the strip clubs is kind of obvious of there’s no stamp for it. Nobody, no chargebacks knew you were there. Chargebacks are less. I actually just learned this in litigation cases that people do chargebacks like crazy at strip clubs.

Anthony Dominguez (26:27):

Oh yeah. And

James Huber (26:29):

They have, you sign these for, I just went through this file and they charged back after they went back into the room like five times with their license and stuff, and they tried to charge it back. So that’ll be an interesting deposition.

Anthony Dominguez (26:41):

There’s a professional athlete who was on a podcast or something a few years ago, and he was telling how he would to have his friend sign his credit card form, and then he’d charge it back on his Amex. So

James Huber (26:52):

He’s on there being like, I do

Anthony Dominguez (26:53):

Fraud

James Huber (26:55):

With hookers. Wow. So the crypto and then the car dealerships I thought was cool because when crypto’s in its bull cycles free car, because I bought one Bitcoin, now I have made 50, 60, 80 K people were buying Teslas like crazy, especially with, I think, did he take Dogecoin? Did Elon take?

Jeremy Stock (27:21):

I think he did for he B her for a while.

James Huber (27:24):

Yeah. Yeah. That thing went nuts. I remember he appeared on Saturday Night Live. People were over out of control overnight.

Anthony Dominguez (27:29):

Yeah. No, he’s big into Doge, but I think it was just became too volatile to

James Huber (27:33):

Price

Anthony Dominguez (27:34):

Against a

James Huber (27:35):

Car. Well, right. You could be sitting there and it was changing. That was back then. When it’s going like this now, it’s like 20% a day sometimes.

Jeremy Stock (27:43):

Yeah, I think it still does once in a while. There’s still some dramatic shifts now and again, that’s certainly for some of the smaller coins.

James Huber (27:49):

Yeah. Mean, the one thing is the JD Vance, he’s apparently owned by Peter Thiel and the Silicon Valley guys, and Trump’s coming out and saying Procr. So I totally see that happening. And then Trump, it’s deregulation across the board. I think crypto probably go nuts Again, even those little coins, and we’ll probably be playing Shark Tank again because

James Huber (28:17):

He’s going to unwind the CFPB and he probably can’t unwind the SEC, but he can certainly tone it down. He can certainly tamp it down and he will, and cut budgets and cut enforcements. So I could see a golden age of payments for Trump. And I don’t have a problem speaking my political views here, but when the guy gets shot in the ear and gets up, and then last night Hulk’s ripping his shirt off, it’s looking pretty likely that we’re in for another four years. I mean, we were talking before we got started, it was like the only way we could beat him is Oprah Rock

Anthony Dominguez (29:00):

Ticket. In which order?

James Huber (29:03):

I don’t think it matters. What do you think? You’d probably have Rock president, right? He’s the rock. Oprah, I would think is probably more qualified

Jeremy Stock (29:15):

If you believe all the sexism stuff you’d want to put the man first. And in today’s day and age, I don’t know.

James Huber (29:24):

But I think deregulation will be, I don’t want to say a golden age for payments, but I think there’s going to be a lot of opportunities for alternative payments, crypto, and then all this surcharge caps, this, that, the other thing. I think everything might go out the door. And so I think for small businesses or middle-sized businesses, there’s going to be some money to be made.

Jeremy Stock (29:50):

Is it just the volatility? What’s keeping it next? We talked about all these surcharges, surcharge plus all these fees being thrown in. When you go to Ticketmaster or you are doing your Airbnb, why haven’t people just jumped over to crypto now? Can you guys talk about that? Is it just the volatility or is there something in addition to that? That’s a hurdle.

James Huber (30:11):

I mean, it’s still hard to buy. People don’t need to buy it. I mean, I talked to Chris, my partner, and he’s like, can you even sell any of that stuff? I was like, yeah, you sell it right now. Oh, then bins go down. And I’m like, no, I guess I can’t sell it anymore. Transfer it over here. I dunno. What do you think?

Anthony Dominguez (30:30):

I think, honestly, I think its what you mentioned, it’s volatility is a huge factor. But I think it’s also that we haven’t decided which coin is going to be the most useful. If you were trying to trade with 25 different currencies in one place, it’s like people would be confused too, that they would just pick one and say, Nope, just give me that one. I don’t care. Leave me alone. But we actually, we partnered with a company who allows merchants to accept Bitcoin and other cryptos. Which one? Payments which, I forget the name. It’s Ethereum, I’m sure. Well, no, no. So it allows you to use your crypto wallet and pay in multiple forms.

James Huber (31:09):

Oh, multiple. So it syncs with Coinbase. Yeah.

Anthony Dominguez (31:12):

So use, you scan a QR code, and then at the merchant’s location, and then for the amount that’s owed, they scan it through, they open their wallet and they make the transaction.

James Huber (31:24):

And you just push through. I mean, Coinbase, you can do that already. They will give you a debit card, right?

Anthony Dominguez (31:29):

Yeah. I mean, that’s different crypto.com too. That’s using the existing rails to transact. But this is using your actual Bitcoin Coinbase wallet to make that transaction. And so we’re not saying volume yet, but I know it’s coming, so we’re trying to push it, make it available for our merchants as something. At the very least, it’s memorable when someone sees that sticker in the door next to Visa and MasterCard and discover of, Hey, we accept Bitcoin and other forms of payment,

James Huber (31:59):

Coinbase or whatever. It’s just, it’s memorable at the very least. Well, it’s interesting because I’ve always been like, oh, visa and MasterCard will never let crypto happen, and they’re kind of going Bring it. Yeah. How do you get your money into the wallet? You use your Visa card. How do you take it out? How do you spend it? Who owns the rails between Coinbase and Merchant? Oh, guess what we do? So I mean, that’s kind of nice for it.

Anthony Dominguez (32:24):

And eventually envision, there’ll be downloads, be able to built into the terminal to where you can accept Bitcoin by scanning the QA code on the terminal or something of that form.

James Huber (32:34):

Yeah, I think that’s already, I mean, chase, the big thing Chase was didn’t they buy XRP one of those coins? I’m not sure. I think they bought a part of it or something, or they invested in part of it. So I think it’s pretty incestuous, but I agree. I think that’s one reason that Bitcoin won’t be more than an investment tool. Money. It’s like gold. I can’t go and drop a gold bar, one

Jeremy Stock (33:02):

Of my gold. I

Anthony Dominguez (33:02):

Could see it being used for large transactions at some point. Like international,

Jeremy Stock (33:06):

Like buying a car.

Anthony Dominguez (33:07):

Yeah, buying a car. Especially international transactions, payments that you don’t have to deal with currency exchange rates and things like that. Don’t movie theaters take it.

James Huber (33:17):

I remember hearing that. I thought they were going to.

Anthony Dominguez (33:20):

I think you might be right. I thought Harkins or somebody was talking about

James Huber (33:23):

It, but I think it makes sense for kids too. Or I want to say millennials. I think I’m a millennial, actually, but I think

Anthony Dominguez (33:31):

I am as well.

James Huber (33:31):

Yeah, but they got a bad rap. I’ll stick with Gen X. Jeremy’s straight up Gen X, right?

Jeremy Stock (33:38):

That’s right. Gen X, proud. Proud, proud.

James Huber (33:41):

Okay. Well, cool. This has been a good conversation, guys. Any closing words? I mean, tell us how people get in touch with you.

Anthony Dominguez (33:48):

Well, so AMP Payment Systems, amp payment systems.com. We have a great team. We have Arizona based customer support. We have salespeople all around the country. We are solutions, right? We’re trying to help you make more money. We’re trying to help improve your bottom line and make running your business easier. And for the ISOs, same thing. Our goal is to help you be more successful, help you close more deals, and make more money. That’s kind of the bottom line. Great.

Jeremy Stock (34:19):

Awesome. Sounds great. Thank you so much for listening to the end of this episode of the Payments Experts podcast, A podcast of global legal law firm. We’ve had in studio with us, James Huber, managing partner of Global Legal Law Firm, as well as our special guest, Anthony Dominguez of AMP Payment Systems. Go tell them you found and heard him on the Payments Experts Podcast. Thank you so much. Have a good one. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Payments Experts Podcast, a podcast of global legal law firm. Visit us online today at globallegallawfirm.com.