April 15, 2025 • 29 mins
Allen Kopelman, CEO and Founder of Nationwide Payment Systems, takes us behind the curtain of the rapidly evolving payments landscape, sharing insights gained from his fascinating career transition from restaurant chef to payments industry leader. Since founding his company in 2001, Allen has navigated multiple industry transformations, positioning his business to thrive amid technological disruption.
The conversation reveals a fundamental shift in merchant priorities: "Today businesses are buying tech first, merchant services second." This observation frames Allen's provocative assertion that "Software is the new ISO."
Looking ahead, Allen identifies several critical trends reshaping payments: the dominance of software-driven solutions, the impact of the FTC's "click-to-cancel" rule on recurring transactions, and potential interchange fee adjustments from card networks. He offers a compelling perspective on artificial intelligence as well, revealing how his company has leveraged AI to dramatically improve SEO performance and predicting that "people who know how to use AI will replace people who don't use AI."
Ready to gain insights from a payments veteran who's successfully navigated decades of industry evolution? This episode delivers practical wisdom you can apply immediately to your payments business or career.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Leaders in Payments podcast,
where we talk to C-level leadersfrom across the payments
landscape.
We'll be discussing theproducts and services that
impact the payment space today,as well as trends and
predictions for the future ofpayments.
We will also hear stories fromour guests about their journeys
to the top.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hello everyone and welcome to the Leaders.
In Payments podcast.
I'm your host, greg Myers, andon today's show we have a very
special guest, alan PaymentsPodcast.
I'm your host, greg Myers, andon today's show we have a very
special guest, alan Kopelman,the CEO of Nationwide Payments
Systems.
So, alan, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Oh, thank you for having me on today, Greg.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Absolutely Well, let's dive in If you don't mind.
Tell our audience a little bitabout yourself, maybe where?
Speaker 3 (00:40):
you grew up, where you went to school, where you
currently live, a few thingslike that.
Okay, so I live in FortLauderdale, florida.
I grew up in Florida.
After moving, my parentsabducted us from New York in
1968.
Lived down here in SouthFlorida most of my life, a
little bit of time in Atlanta,dallas.
I used to be a chef and thencrazily got into this payments
(01:01):
business in 1998.
And in 2001, I launched thecompany Nationwide Payment
Systems.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Okay, great.
Well, tell us about NationwidePayment Systems.
What do you do?
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Well, we started off basically selling little boxes
like everybody else.
Back in the day, you know, withthe Trans 330s, nereid 2085,
hypercoms A lot of people doingit, newer people in the industry
never heard of any of that andwe started to get into
integrating point of salesystems and restaurants as we
(01:35):
got requests for that.
Because, you know, as you signup more accounts, you get
exposed to more customers andpeople asking for different
things.
And over the years, you know,we've, especially the last, I
would say, 10 years and theneven more in the last five, six
years, you know, become veryfocused on technology and
(01:58):
focusing more on technology andless on, you know, merchant
services, because today I feelthat businesses are buying tech
first, merchant services secondin most cases.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Right, right.
Do you have certain industriesor types of merchants that you
focus on?
Speaker 3 (02:17):
No, I think that that was one thing that I was really
glad about when we went throughthe pandemic COVID.
That I was really glad aboutduring the when we went through
the pandemic COVID is that whenI saw a lot of my friends who
focused on restaurants, focusedon nail salons and businesses
like that and focused solely,maybe, in the city where they
(02:37):
were, the state that they lost alot more business than we lost.
And because we were focusing,in prior to that period, on a
lot of e-com, you know we didn'tsee a huge drop off, which was
good, so that was superimportant, while we did see a
significant drop off inresiduals, you know we didn't
(02:59):
take as hard a hit as manypeople took.
So I think that when you stickto one sector, that that's
really difficult.
But one of the things that wehave done is is, you know, we
kind of take the approach likeokay, you know you're a higher
not a high, not necessarily highrisk, you know, but a higher
risk type of business.
(03:20):
We focus in on finding solutionsfor them, finding software they
could use, you know, workingwith processors that deal with
those type of businesses, andthose people get called on a lot
less.
The B2B sector doesn't getcalled on.
I always tell my reps go to thewarehouse areas.
What are you guys doing?
(03:41):
Everybody's pounding thepavement on the storefronts,
right, and you know these guysthat have businesses and
warehouses and freestandingbuildings.
No one ever calls on them andif you call on them you're going
to find a hidden gem in theredoing hundreds of thousands of
dollars a month.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
So you know you have to, really you know, expand, who
you're willing to call on toget business.
Okay, so you're kind of talkingabout sort of go to market.
So obviously you have salesreps, do you have partnerships?
How else do you go to market?
Speaker 3 (04:15):
We don't really have a lot of sales reps, maybe like
one or two, just other realsales reps.
Everybody else, basically, is areferral partner.
So you know, you come.
We deal with a lot of businessbrokers, you know consultants
for different types ofbusinesses, fractionals we have
a couple of fractional CFOs, sothey might be working with a
(04:37):
business and the business youknow is at a point where, okay,
we need a new point of salesystem with 50,000 items of
inventory and what are we goingto use for a point of sale.
And they'll come to us and say,oh, can you help us with this
problem?
And we focus more on those typeof opportunities.
(04:58):
I got booted off Stripe.
What do I?
Speaker 2 (05:01):
do.
I'm sure you hear that a lot.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
We get some of those calls.
Some of them are superdifficult to deal with because
they build up.
It's amazing to me You'll see abusiness doing millions of
dollars a month and they builttheir entire infrastructure on
Stripe and then they can't move.
Yeah, it's super challenging.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
And you mentioned POS .
Are there certain POS systemsthat you like to sell more than
others, or just pretty muchwhatever fits the merchant need?
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Well, we always want to fit the merchant's need, but
what we've done is in the lastcouple of years it's kind of
learned our lesson when it comesto point of sale.
I was in a forum on Facebookthe other day somebody big in
the business I don't know if youknow Mike Nardi he wrote most
people don't understand whatyou're talking about.
You've lost more money inresidual than most people have
(05:50):
made in their lifetime.
The trend where all theseprivate equity came in and
bought up all these point ofsale systems and then swooped in
and stole all the credit cardprocessing either right away or
over a short period of time,that's really dug into our
pocket.
And after that happened quite afew times.
(06:13):
We really worked hard to findcompanies who own the point of
sale system, own the processingrelationship and it's all one
company.
And that way we know that ifthey do sell we're not going to
lose our residual.
And it's a huge problem in thebusiness.
I mean, just like in 2024, lastyear we probably lost close to
(06:38):
$10,000 a month in recurringrevenue from just software.
Company gets sold.
Here goes to one merchant, twomerchants, three merchants gone.
You know so and that hurts.
You know when you lose thatmuch money in residuals to those
to that problem, and thatproblem I don't think is is ever
going to stop right now.
(06:59):
I wrote an article aboutagnostic versus antagonistic and
I wrote another follow-uparticle called Is Software the
New ISO?
And software is the new ISO andthat's where the business is
going right now.
Every company out there isfocused on partnering with ISVs.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Yeah, definitely has been a trend for quite some time
, I don't know.
I've read stats where up to 60%of small businesses are running
payments through softwarecompanies.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Oh, definitely.
I would say that software isgoing to start, probably in the
next two years, going to reallyoutpace, especially as business
owners get younger.
We're going to see moresoftware, less terminals.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Totally, totally agree.
So are you guys just kind ofbased in the US or do you do
anything outside the US?
Speaker 3 (07:52):
We can do a little bit outside the US because we
have referral relationships withcompanies.
When somebody comes to us Ifthey're doing international
transactions, I always laugh.
Visa has commercials, oh, it'sa worldwide economy, but that's
not really.
You know, that's far from thecase.
I think that, you know, from anISO perspective, when I look at
(08:12):
some of these big ISOs, I thinksome of them need to really
take a look.
At Stripe they probably used tolaugh and go Stripe, what are
they going to do, you know?
But I think they really need totake a look at you know how
they're capturing a lot of thesee-commerce companies,
especially the SaaS companies,who are doing business all over
the world, and you know we willget some of those businesses
(08:34):
come to us and then it's if theyhave a large amount of
international transactions.
It's really hard to servicethat kind of business Right and
there, and there's only a fewpeople in that game of
international processing.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Well, what would you say?
Differentiates your businessfrom your competitors out there.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
Well, one, we do a very good homework with our
merchants.
We try to understand.
I ask them all the time like,okay, tell me about your
business, how do you acceptpayments?
You can't show me two plumbersthat are going to do business
the exact same way.
One guy is going to want tohave a card present.
One guy is going to want to keyin everything.
The third guy is going to wantto send a payment link out.
(09:15):
It's just what you know.
You just have to figure out andthen try to explain to them the
risks that accompany.
You know what they're doing andit's and you know sometimes the
sometimes it just depends likethey're beat, like we have a
huge plumbing company.
It's b2b, they only deal withthe businesses.
They have very littleresidential.
(09:35):
So for residential we gave themlittle swipe simples for their
five guys that do residential,everybody else they just send
them a link and they pay theirbill.
So you know you have to reallydo your homework and not try to
stick a.
You know a square peg in around hole and you know figure
out what what they're doing, howthey're doing it, and you know
(09:56):
take advantage of things likewhen somebody comes to you and
and they're in a particularbusiness that might get breaks
on interchange because of theirSIC code, and make sure that you
board them correctly so thatthey're getting the correct SIC
codes and hitting the rightinterchange levels so that you
(10:18):
can save them a lot of moneylike education utilities.
Insurance is a big one.
We found many insurancecompanies being charged retail
interchange, nonprofits onretail interchange and they're
on cost plus but they're notgetting the break that they need
.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
So you talked about software being the future.
What are some other trends thatyou see over the next, say,
three to five years in payments?
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Well, that's definitely number one.
You see, over the next, say,three to five years in payments
Well, that's definitely numberone.
I see number two.
I see a lot of sales going backto the ISOs where they're
pressing to do more inside sales.
I see that.
The third thing I see is theFTC just came out with this
really strict click to cancelrule and I think that that's
(11:03):
going to create a lot of havocout there for companies who are
doing recurring transactionsbecause the fine is $55,000 per
incident.
I think that could cause somemajor problems this year once
that goes into effect in Aprilor May.
The other thing I've beenreading about although the
article that I read, two of themwere pulled from the internet.
(11:26):
I guess it's a rumor that Visaand MasterCard are upset about
all these companies who arepropagating level two and level
three data into the transactions.
It's kind of like, I guess,preset data to get lower
interchange fees.
I guess they're trying to takeaction to stop that or at least
(11:52):
not accept that data.
But they give everybody enoughnotice.
The payment companies willfigure out some sort of AI to go
in there so they're not sendingthe same data each and every
time to the card processor.
That could cause anotherheadache this year and let's
hope that Dick Durbin doesn'tget to promote the CCCA and try
(12:15):
to even get that passed, becauseI think that that will create
forget the havoc it would causeon our business.
I think it would causebusinesses to have a really hard
time and I think it wouldreally cost consumers more money
.
It's not going to helpconsumers because it's just
going to drive people to buy now, pay later.
And buy now, pay later costsbusinesses more money and costs
(12:39):
consumers more money.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Well, they're not educated enough to really, I
think, understand the realimplications in the real world.
And that's always been achallenge, right?
The visas and MasterCardsaren't going to give up their
revenue, nor are the banks oracquirers or anyone else, right,
they're going to find itanother way.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
No, it was interesting to see the Congress
when they had that hearing andthey're questioning the people
from Visa Well, what are yougoing to do about the trillion
dollar deficit on credit cards?
They said we're not in charge.
Talk to the banks, you know.
So it just shows you thatthey're uneducated on how the
payments business works andthey're not interested.
(13:18):
It's more like hey, let'sshowboat, let's bring in Visa
and MasterCard and let's slapthem around.
The public will say, yeah,congress slapped around Visa and
MasterCard.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Right, right.
Well, you mentioned AI a minuteago.
Are you hearing much about thatfrom your merchants?
Is it affecting your businessat all?
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Well, one thing AI is definitely out there.
If you're not experimentingwith AI, I suggest you go to
OpenAI or whichever Gemini orCopilot, whatever you want to
use.
Register, have a registeredaccount.
Get a paid account at leastwith one of.
Have a registered account.
Get a paid account at leastwith one of those, because when
you're using a paid account andyou're typing and doing things
and asking it to write lettersor help you with blog posts or a
(14:02):
document or marketing materialor social media posts, it starts
to learn about your website andwhat you're doing and you know.
So AI everybody needs to get onthe AI train and start learning
AI, because AI is not going toreplace people in all cases.
(14:22):
It might reduce workforcesomewhat because you know, if
you're using AI to dounderwriting, you know now you
don't need somebody sittingthere typing in websites and
looking up people's creditreport.
You can program an AI to go inand do all that and hand the
underwriter.
Okay, here's the report on thisguy.
(14:42):
Boom, and it's sitting in frontof them in five minutes instead
of 20 or 30 minutes or an hour.
So you know, definitely I thinka lot of processors are using
AI.
They're going to figure out howto use AI.
Businesses are going to figureout how to use it.
We started using AI on our SEO.
(15:03):
We took our SEO from asingle-digit 8 to 98 score on
SEO, so obviously it works good.
It tells you everything.
It tells you, goes in, analyzesyour entire site and then gives
you a list like, okay, go here,fix this, fix that you know.
(15:23):
Tells you things you're doingright, what you're doing wrong.
So ai is here to stay.
I mean definitely see tons ofinvestment into AI.
Who knows where it's going totake us in the future, but I
think businesses are going toput it to use and people need to
put it to use, because peoplewho know how to use AI will
(15:44):
replace people who don't use AI.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Yeah, I think that's a fact.
There's no doubt that that'scoming.
Let's switch gears a little bitand talk about you.
Maybe walk us through yourprofessional journey, what you
were doing before.
You mentioned being a chef, butmaybe talk about your
professional journey, what gotyou into payments, how you
started the company, a fewthings like that.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
Yeah, so payments, that was just an accident.
I had a restaurant and I wasplanning expand and then that
didn't work out.
I was doing some catering andthen one of my friends said hey,
you should get into thepayments game.
You can make all this money,sign people with leases and this
and that and make residual.
(16:27):
So I started working forsomebody and I really enjoyed
the business.
It was a lot less work thanworking in a restaurant.
I mean, I worked in hotels,country clubs, I mean restaurant
, so the hours are better, Iwould definitely say that in the
payments business.
And then you know, you start tofigure out like, hey, what am I
(16:48):
going to do with this?
I started my own company.
I credit Riyad from JR's POSDepot.
He doesn't own it anymore.
But he gave me my first twocopies of the green sheet and I
read the green sheet and then Iwas like, wow, I guess I could
start one of these companies.
So that's what I ended up doingas my business partner, david,
(17:09):
and we launched our company in2001.
And we really just looked atthings and said we need to do
things.
That the way we want to betreated the way I would want to
be treated as a business ownerand just treat people the way we
want to be treated Be available.
I always tell sales reps theone thing.
(17:29):
I tell this to merchants tooanybody who has a business If
you answer your phone, you'redoing 10 times better than
everybody that's not answeringtheir phone.
So you have to answer yourphone.
That's a key thing in business.
Return emails and today youneed to have a good digital
presence.
You have to figure out, have alinkedin profile, have uh, I
(17:53):
mean I see I started my podcastalmost three years ago and
hardly anybody was podcasting inpayments.
Now there's probably a dozen ormore payments, podcasts and
from all different types ofcompanies and people and all
that.
So you know, and everything'sfocused on a different topic
(18:14):
area.
And leasing that was anotherlike big headache.
So we decided like, oh, we'rejust going to do this 12-month
lease.
And when we would go intobusinesses in our early days
we'd say, oh, the lease is only12 months, you make 13 payments
and you're done.
Say, oh, the lease is only 12months, you make 13 payments and
you're done, so you don't haveto deal with the year-end tax
bill that you would get and allthis other you know, excise
(18:36):
taxes on leases.
It was really crazy and whenyou get yelled at a few times
you go, hey well, how can I fixthis?
And you know, I was lucky thatthe people that I worked for at
the time Imperial Bank ofCalifornia they hooked us up
(18:57):
with a good leasing company andwhat's funny is a lot of
relationships I have in thebusiness today.
Long-term relationships allcame from that relationship that
I started with.
So the people that worked atthat bank tons of them Joe,
gretchen, kevin, there was a guy, steve we write business for
his group now for years.
Tons of people that I met,rosie tons of people that I met
through that one relationship,are still around today.
(19:19):
So relationships are superimportant in this business.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
Somebody will come to me and they'll go well, can you
get this merchant approved?
Yeah, where are you going tosend it?
Then I'll tell them oh, thisplace.
Well, heck, I sent it there, itwas declined.
Well, you're you and I'm me.
And people don't understand.
They call everything like oh,there's a super ISO and then
there's whatever wholesale ISOsand all these names, right.
(19:45):
And basically I tell people Igo, you guys just don't
(20:09):
understand the business.
If somebody has an ISO andthey're a full service ISO,
where they're taking liabilityat least most of the liability
or all the liability they'regoing to be able to get more
things approved at the bank thansomebody who's an ISO but has
zero liability.
And that's what people don'ttend to understand, what the
real structure of the businessis.
And then obviously everybody'sgot five, ten years experience
(20:31):
in the business brings the samedeal in with more information
and a full package.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
There's ways to get things approved.
Well, what are some thingsyou're passionate about?
Maybe one work-related passionand one personal passion.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Work-related passion is I like giving back to the
community of the payments,coming on podcasts talking about
the payments industry.
I always attend the SCAA.
I went to the very first one.
I'm going there this year.
I'm going to be doing a paneltalking about software is coming
for us and you know I reallyenjoy doing that.
(21:09):
I write a column in the greensheet, the street smarts column.
They just announced that I'minvited back for my second year,
so I really enjoy doing thatand getting a lot of good
feedback from reps that start to.
They discover one article, thenthey start reading more
articles and you know it's niceto you know get that feedback
from people that they're wow.
(21:31):
This is really, reallyappreciate you sharing the
content.
That's really important.
The podcast is also.
We're talking to business peopleand giving small to
medium-sized business ownerstips on all sorts of things
sales, marketing, not just aboutpayments, it's about more than
(21:53):
that talking to differentbusiness leaders about their
startup company and how did theystart it up.
Maybe we help them along theway, or they tell us about their
project that they're doing andthings like that.
I'm really passionate aboutdoing that and helping people.
It's super important.
That's one of the things I likeabout this business being a
chef, you cook food and then yousee smiling faces, everybody's
(22:17):
enjoying your food.
That's really cool.
And with this business, we'rehelping business owners achieve
what they want in their business.
Technology helps businessessave time and money, so it's
super important you help peoplesave time, save money, give them
good information.
You know sometimes they don'tlike.
(22:38):
Sometimes you're the bearer oflike oh, maybe you shouldn't do
that or you need to change thisto protect yourself more and
things like that.
You know like nobody likes todiscuss chargebacks.
You know like that.
You know like nobody likes todiscuss chargebacks.
You know, and my personal lifeand even that goes into business
a little bit is, you know,giving back to the community and
(23:02):
it's important to give back toyour community and we're
involved with a lot of localcharities here in South Florida.
A lot of them are related tochildren children that need
clothing, children that needscholarships to pay for sports,
scholarships so children can bein a preschool, and different
things like that.
And you know dog charities andyou know we have food banks and
all different sorts of charitiesand we give money throughout
(23:26):
the year and we volunteer atsome of those charities and so
it's important to give back.
I also tell reps you know it'ssuper important.
You know, be involved in yourcommunity, give back to your
community, show people thatyou're a business leader.
And the other thing I alwaystell reps they don't listen to
this one.
You're a sales rep, okay, andyou're selling bank card.
(23:48):
You need to invest in yourbusiness.
Invest in your business meansput up a one-page website,
promote yourself.
I have a website, alancoblemancom.
I mean it's not super importantfor me because I own a company,
but if you have a company nameput, make a one-page website
with information about yourcompany, stick your picture on
(24:09):
there, put your linkedin onthere and make yourself look
good.
And don't have a Gmail or aYahoo or a mail.
You know you got to lookprofessional.
You got to look the part right.
So when you look the part andyou act the part, people don't
know how big or how small yourcompany is.
(24:31):
They don't know so.
But if you don't presentyourself where you have a real
business, that's kind of hard todeal with.
And I tell them form acorporation the money it costs
you to form your corporation.
I tell this even to smallbusiness owners form a
corporation.
If you don't have money forthat, start out at least with a
fictitious name.
(24:51):
Separate your money from yourbusiness and your personal.
Do not co-mingle those fundsbecause later, when you go to
incorporate, you already havethe start of a business.
So it's super important toinvest in your business.
Whether you're a sales rep oryou're the ISO, whatever your
(25:12):
role is in your business is todo it the right way and make an
investment.
Invest in your business andinvest in your community.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Very, very important.
So one final question andyou've kind of answered this
from advice perspective to salesreps but if someone just came
to you and said hey, you know,maybe they're right out of
college, they're looking for acareer, they want to build a
career in payments, they knowyou have a lot of knowledge what
would you tell them to do to besuccessful in payments as a
career?
Speaker 3 (25:40):
To be successful in payment Today, go invent some
software.
It's crazy, but I tell thisstory all the time.
In 2001, when I started, peoplebuilt software to sell hardware
and to sell service contracts,and they sell their software
right.
So that's what they sold.
Today, somebody builds software, they're looking, they don't
(26:01):
care about hardware.
They're using iPads or Androidtablets or just whatever any
kind of computer the merchanthas, you know, and they're
selling a SaaS revenue and theywant payments.
That's you know.
That's what we're all about now.
We're trying to recruit as manyindependent software vendors as
possible.
(26:23):
And you know, if you want to getstarted in payments, you got to
get out there, get your nosebloody.
You got to have to do whateverybody else did to learn this
business.
I can't download.
You know everything 25 yearsinto somebody's brain.
You know you had to out there,pound some pavement, get beat up
.
It's just much harder todaybecause somebody's got a POS
(26:43):
sitting on their counter.
Unless that thing's broken,it's a lot harder to rip out of
there than somebody's just got aTrans 330 or a Hypercom.
Back in the old days you justwalked up, batched it out, hit a
few buttons after you got themapproved and boom, you have a
merchant account.
You know it's just a lot hardertoday.
But you know, listen, you canget out there.
(27:04):
And also with cash discount,dual pricing, 0% programs,
surcharging you know that's awhole other subject matter.
But that just gives reps a waybigger leg up on when we started
in the business because theycan make hundreds or thousands
of dollars a month from onemerchant account.
(27:24):
So it's a lot easier to makemoney that way on zero percent
programs and just bite thebullet and stop fighting with
the merchants and sending outletters and secret shoppers and
stop with the games with thesurcharging.
(27:46):
And I read an article where itsaid more than 33 percent of
retail merchants are passing afee to their customers.
So that means one out of three.
That's a lot.
That's a lot of businessespassing the fee.
I mean, will Visa change course?
I don't know.
No one tells Visa what to do.
(28:07):
They make their own rules.
They're so big.
The only company or person thathas more money than Visa is
Elon Musk, all right, or aperson that has more money than
visas, Elon Musk.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
Well, Alan, we've had a great discussion about you
and the company and the industryas a whole.
Is there anything you'd like toadd before we wrap up?
Speaker 3 (28:26):
Well, if you want to connect with me, you can reach
me on LinkedIn, alan Kopelman.
You can check out the podcastB2B Vault.
Listen to Greg's podcast.
Hope everybody enjoyed what wetalked about today and thank you
for having me on the show.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Yeah, alan, thank you , and I know your time is very
valuable, so I really appreciateyou being on the show today.
Thank you, and to all yourlisteners out there, I thank you
for your time as well.
Until the next story.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Thank you for joining us this week on the Leaders in
Payments podcast.
Make sure you visit our websiteat leadersinpaymentscom, where
you can subscribe to the showand where you'll find our show
notes.
If you enjoyed listening,please share on your social
channels as well.
Welcome to the Leaders in Payments podcast,
where we talk to C-level leadersfrom across the payments
landscape.
We'll be discussing theproducts and services that
impact the payment space today,as well as trends and
predictions for the future ofpayments.
We will also hear stories fromour guests about their journeys
to the top.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hello everyone and welcome to the Leaders.
In Payments podcast.
I'm your host, greg Myers, andon today's show we have a very
special guest, alan PaymentsPodcast.
I'm your host, greg Myers, andon today's show we have a very
special guest, alan Kopelman,the CEO of Nationwide Payments
Systems.
So, alan, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Oh, thank you for having me on today, Greg.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Absolutely Well, let's dive in If you don't mind.
Tell our audience a little bitabout yourself, maybe where?
Speaker 3 (00:40):
you grew up, where you went to school, where you
currently live, a few thingslike that.
Okay, so I live in FortLauderdale, florida.
I grew up in Florida.
After moving, my parentsabducted us from New York in
1968.
Lived down here in SouthFlorida most of my life, a
little bit of time in Atlanta,dallas.
I used to be a chef and thencrazily got into this payments
(01:01):
business in 1998.
And in 2001, I launched thecompany Nationwide Payment
Systems.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Okay, great.
Well, tell us about NationwidePayment Systems.
What do you do?
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Well, we started off basically selling little boxes
like everybody else.
Back in the day, you know, withthe Trans 330s, nereid 2085,
hypercoms A lot of people doingit, newer people in the industry
never heard of any of that andwe started to get into
integrating point of salesystems and restaurants as we
(01:35):
got requests for that.
Because, you know, as you signup more accounts, you get
exposed to more customers andpeople asking for different
things.
And over the years, you know,we've, especially the last, I
would say, 10 years and theneven more in the last five, six
years, you know, become veryfocused on technology and
(01:58):
focusing more on technology andless on, you know, merchant
services, because today I feelthat businesses are buying tech
first, merchant services secondin most cases.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Right, right.
Do you have certain industriesor types of merchants that you
focus on?
Speaker 3 (02:17):
No, I think that that was one thing that I was really
glad about when we went throughthe pandemic COVID.
That I was really glad aboutduring the when we went through
the pandemic COVID is that whenI saw a lot of my friends who
focused on restaurants, focusedon nail salons and businesses
like that and focused solely,maybe, in the city where they
(02:37):
were, the state that they lost alot more business than we lost.
And because we were focusing,in prior to that period, on a
lot of e-com, you know we didn'tsee a huge drop off, which was
good, so that was superimportant, while we did see a
significant drop off inresiduals, you know we didn't
(02:59):
take as hard a hit as manypeople took.
So I think that when you stickto one sector, that that's
really difficult.
But one of the things that wehave done is is, you know, we
kind of take the approach likeokay, you know you're a higher
not a high, not necessarily highrisk, you know, but a higher
risk type of business.
(03:20):
We focus in on finding solutionsfor them, finding software they
could use, you know, workingwith processors that deal with
those type of businesses, andthose people get called on a lot
less.
The B2B sector doesn't getcalled on.
I always tell my reps go to thewarehouse areas.
What are you guys doing?
(03:41):
Everybody's pounding thepavement on the storefronts,
right, and you know these guysthat have businesses and
warehouses and freestandingbuildings.
No one ever calls on them andif you call on them you're going
to find a hidden gem in theredoing hundreds of thousands of
dollars a month.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
So you know you have to, really you know, expand, who
you're willing to call on toget business.
Okay, so you're kind of talkingabout sort of go to market.
So obviously you have salesreps, do you have partnerships?
How else do you go to market?
Speaker 3 (04:15):
We don't really have a lot of sales reps, maybe like
one or two, just other realsales reps.
Everybody else, basically, is areferral partner.
So you know, you come.
We deal with a lot of businessbrokers, you know consultants
for different types ofbusinesses, fractionals we have
a couple of fractional CFOs, sothey might be working with a
(04:37):
business and the business youknow is at a point where, okay,
we need a new point of salesystem with 50,000 items of
inventory and what are we goingto use for a point of sale.
And they'll come to us and say,oh, can you help us with this
problem?
And we focus more on those typeof opportunities.
(04:58):
I got booted off Stripe.
What do I?
Speaker 2 (05:01):
do.
I'm sure you hear that a lot.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
We get some of those calls.
Some of them are superdifficult to deal with because
they build up.
It's amazing to me You'll see abusiness doing millions of
dollars a month and they builttheir entire infrastructure on
Stripe and then they can't move.
Yeah, it's super challenging.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
And you mentioned POS .
Are there certain POS systemsthat you like to sell more than
others, or just pretty muchwhatever fits the merchant need?
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Well, we always want to fit the merchant's need, but
what we've done is in the lastcouple of years it's kind of
learned our lesson when it comesto point of sale.
I was in a forum on Facebookthe other day somebody big in
the business I don't know if youknow Mike Nardi he wrote most
people don't understand whatyou're talking about.
You've lost more money inresidual than most people have
(05:50):
made in their lifetime.
The trend where all theseprivate equity came in and
bought up all these point ofsale systems and then swooped in
and stole all the credit cardprocessing either right away or
over a short period of time,that's really dug into our
pocket.
And after that happened quite afew times.
(06:13):
We really worked hard to findcompanies who own the point of
sale system, own the processingrelationship and it's all one
company.
And that way we know that ifthey do sell we're not going to
lose our residual.
And it's a huge problem in thebusiness.
I mean, just like in 2024, lastyear we probably lost close to
(06:38):
$10,000 a month in recurringrevenue from just software.
Company gets sold.
Here goes to one merchant, twomerchants, three merchants gone.
You know so and that hurts.
You know when you lose thatmuch money in residuals to those
to that problem, and thatproblem I don't think is is ever
going to stop right now.
(06:59):
I wrote an article aboutagnostic versus antagonistic and
I wrote another follow-uparticle called Is Software the
New ISO?
And software is the new ISO andthat's where the business is
going right now.
Every company out there isfocused on partnering with ISVs.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Yeah, definitely has been a trend for quite some time
, I don't know.
I've read stats where up to 60%of small businesses are running
payments through softwarecompanies.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Oh, definitely.
I would say that software isgoing to start, probably in the
next two years, going to reallyoutpace, especially as business
owners get younger.
We're going to see moresoftware, less terminals.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Totally, totally agree.
So are you guys just kind ofbased in the US or do you do
anything outside the US?
Speaker 3 (07:52):
We can do a little bit outside the US because we
have referral relationships withcompanies.
When somebody comes to us Ifthey're doing international
transactions, I always laugh.
Visa has commercials, oh, it'sa worldwide economy, but that's
not really.
You know, that's far from thecase.
I think that, you know, from anISO perspective, when I look at
(08:12):
some of these big ISOs, I thinksome of them need to really
take a look.
At Stripe they probably used tolaugh and go Stripe, what are
they going to do, you know?
But I think they really need totake a look at you know how
they're capturing a lot of thesee-commerce companies,
especially the SaaS companies,who are doing business all over
the world, and you know we willget some of those businesses
(08:34):
come to us and then it's if theyhave a large amount of
international transactions.
It's really hard to servicethat kind of business Right and
there, and there's only a fewpeople in that game of
international processing.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Well, what would you say?
Differentiates your businessfrom your competitors out there.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
Well, one, we do a very good homework with our
merchants.
We try to understand.
I ask them all the time like,okay, tell me about your
business, how do you acceptpayments?
You can't show me two plumbersthat are going to do business
the exact same way.
One guy is going to want tohave a card present.
One guy is going to want to keyin everything.
The third guy is going to wantto send a payment link out.
(09:15):
It's just what you know.
You just have to figure out andthen try to explain to them the
risks that accompany.
You know what they're doing andit's and you know sometimes the
sometimes it just depends likethey're beat, like we have a
huge plumbing company.
It's b2b, they only deal withthe businesses.
They have very littleresidential.
(09:35):
So for residential we gave themlittle swipe simples for their
five guys that do residential,everybody else they just send
them a link and they pay theirbill.
So you know you have to reallydo your homework and not try to
stick a.
You know a square peg in around hole and you know figure
out what what they're doing, howthey're doing it, and you know
(09:56):
take advantage of things likewhen somebody comes to you and
and they're in a particularbusiness that might get breaks
on interchange because of theirSIC code, and make sure that you
board them correctly so thatthey're getting the correct SIC
codes and hitting the rightinterchange levels so that you
(10:18):
can save them a lot of moneylike education utilities.
Insurance is a big one.
We found many insurancecompanies being charged retail
interchange, nonprofits onretail interchange and they're
on cost plus but they're notgetting the break that they need
.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
So you talked about software being the future.
What are some other trends thatyou see over the next, say,
three to five years in payments?
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Well, that's definitely number one.
You see, over the next, say,three to five years in payments
Well, that's definitely numberone.
I see number two.
I see a lot of sales going backto the ISOs where they're
pressing to do more inside sales.
I see that.
The third thing I see is theFTC just came out with this
really strict click to cancelrule and I think that that's
(11:03):
going to create a lot of havocout there for companies who are
doing recurring transactionsbecause the fine is $55,000 per
incident.
I think that could cause somemajor problems this year once
that goes into effect in Aprilor May.
The other thing I've beenreading about although the
article that I read, two of themwere pulled from the internet.
(11:26):
I guess it's a rumor that Visaand MasterCard are upset about
all these companies who arepropagating level two and level
three data into the transactions.
It's kind of like, I guess,preset data to get lower
interchange fees.
I guess they're trying to takeaction to stop that or at least
(11:52):
not accept that data.
But they give everybody enoughnotice.
The payment companies willfigure out some sort of AI to go
in there so they're not sendingthe same data each and every
time to the card processor.
That could cause anotherheadache this year and let's
hope that Dick Durbin doesn'tget to promote the CCCA and try
(12:15):
to even get that passed, becauseI think that that will create
forget the havoc it would causeon our business.
I think it would causebusinesses to have a really hard
time and I think it wouldreally cost consumers more money
.
It's not going to helpconsumers because it's just
going to drive people to buy now, pay later.
And buy now, pay later costsbusinesses more money and costs
(12:39):
consumers more money.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Well, they're not educated enough to really, I
think, understand the realimplications in the real world.
And that's always been achallenge, right?
The visas and MasterCardsaren't going to give up their
revenue, nor are the banks oracquirers or anyone else, right,
they're going to find itanother way.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
No, it was interesting to see the Congress
when they had that hearing andthey're questioning the people
from Visa Well, what are yougoing to do about the trillion
dollar deficit on credit cards?
They said we're not in charge.
Talk to the banks, you know.
So it just shows you thatthey're uneducated on how the
payments business works andthey're not interested.
(13:18):
It's more like hey, let'sshowboat, let's bring in Visa
and MasterCard and let's slapthem around.
The public will say, yeah,congress slapped around Visa and
MasterCard.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Right, right.
Well, you mentioned AI a minuteago.
Are you hearing much about thatfrom your merchants?
Is it affecting your businessat all?
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Well, one thing AI is definitely out there.
If you're not experimentingwith AI, I suggest you go to
OpenAI or whichever Gemini orCopilot, whatever you want to
use.
Register, have a registeredaccount.
Get a paid account at leastwith one of.
Have a registered account.
Get a paid account at leastwith one of those, because when
you're using a paid account andyou're typing and doing things
and asking it to write lettersor help you with blog posts or a
(14:02):
document or marketing materialor social media posts, it starts
to learn about your website andwhat you're doing and you know.
So AI everybody needs to get onthe AI train and start learning
AI, because AI is not going toreplace people in all cases.
(14:22):
It might reduce workforcesomewhat because you know, if
you're using AI to dounderwriting, you know now you
don't need somebody sittingthere typing in websites and
looking up people's creditreport.
You can program an AI to go inand do all that and hand the
underwriter.
Okay, here's the report on thisguy.
(14:42):
Boom, and it's sitting in frontof them in five minutes instead
of 20 or 30 minutes or an hour.
So you know, definitely I thinka lot of processors are using
AI.
They're going to figure out howto use AI.
Businesses are going to figureout how to use it.
We started using AI on our SEO.
(15:03):
We took our SEO from asingle-digit 8 to 98 score on
SEO, so obviously it works good.
It tells you everything.
It tells you, goes in, analyzesyour entire site and then gives
you a list like, okay, go here,fix this, fix that you know.
(15:23):
Tells you things you're doingright, what you're doing wrong.
So ai is here to stay.
I mean definitely see tons ofinvestment into AI.
Who knows where it's going totake us in the future, but I
think businesses are going toput it to use and people need to
put it to use, because peoplewho know how to use AI will
(15:44):
replace people who don't use AI.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Yeah, I think that's a fact.
There's no doubt that that'scoming.
Let's switch gears a little bitand talk about you.
Maybe walk us through yourprofessional journey, what you
were doing before.
You mentioned being a chef, butmaybe talk about your
professional journey, what gotyou into payments, how you
started the company, a fewthings like that.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
Yeah, so payments, that was just an accident.
I had a restaurant and I wasplanning expand and then that
didn't work out.
I was doing some catering andthen one of my friends said hey,
you should get into thepayments game.
You can make all this money,sign people with leases and this
and that and make residual.
(16:27):
So I started working forsomebody and I really enjoyed
the business.
It was a lot less work thanworking in a restaurant.
I mean, I worked in hotels,country clubs, I mean restaurant
, so the hours are better, Iwould definitely say that in the
payments business.
And then you know, you start tofigure out like, hey, what am I
(16:48):
going to do with this?
I started my own company.
I credit Riyad from JR's POSDepot.
He doesn't own it anymore.
But he gave me my first twocopies of the green sheet and I
read the green sheet and then Iwas like, wow, I guess I could
start one of these companies.
So that's what I ended up doingas my business partner, david,
(17:09):
and we launched our company in2001.
And we really just looked atthings and said we need to do
things.
That the way we want to betreated the way I would want to
be treated as a business ownerand just treat people the way we
want to be treated Be available.
I always tell sales reps theone thing.
(17:29):
I tell this to merchants tooanybody who has a business If
you answer your phone, you'redoing 10 times better than
everybody that's not answeringtheir phone.
So you have to answer yourphone.
That's a key thing in business.
Return emails and today youneed to have a good digital
presence.
You have to figure out, have alinkedin profile, have uh, I
(17:53):
mean I see I started my podcastalmost three years ago and
hardly anybody was podcasting inpayments.
Now there's probably a dozen ormore payments, podcasts and
from all different types ofcompanies and people and all
that.
So you know, and everything'sfocused on a different topic
(18:14):
area.
And leasing that was anotherlike big headache.
So we decided like, oh, we'rejust going to do this 12-month
lease.
And when we would go intobusinesses in our early days
we'd say, oh, the lease is only12 months, you make 13 payments
and you're done.
Say, oh, the lease is only 12months, you make 13 payments and
you're done, so you don't haveto deal with the year-end tax
bill that you would get and allthis other you know, excise
(18:36):
taxes on leases.
It was really crazy and whenyou get yelled at a few times
you go, hey well, how can I fixthis?
And you know, I was lucky thatthe people that I worked for at
the time Imperial Bank ofCalifornia they hooked us up
(18:57):
with a good leasing company andwhat's funny is a lot of
relationships I have in thebusiness today.
Long-term relationships allcame from that relationship that
I started with.
So the people that worked atthat bank tons of them Joe,
gretchen, kevin, there was a guy, steve we write business for
his group now for years.
Tons of people that I met,rosie tons of people that I met
through that one relationship,are still around today.
(19:19):
So relationships are superimportant in this business.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
Somebody will come to me and they'll go well, can you
get this merchant approved?
Yeah, where are you going tosend it?
Then I'll tell them oh, thisplace.
Well, heck, I sent it there, itwas declined.
Well, you're you and I'm me.
And people don't understand.
They call everything like oh,there's a super ISO and then
there's whatever wholesale ISOsand all these names, right.
(19:45):
And basically I tell people Igo, you guys just don't
(20:09):
understand the business.
If somebody has an ISO andthey're a full service ISO,
where they're taking liabilityat least most of the liability
or all the liability they'regoing to be able to get more
things approved at the bank thansomebody who's an ISO but has
zero liability.
And that's what people don'ttend to understand, what the
real structure of the businessis.
And then obviously everybody'sgot five, ten years experience
(20:31):
in the business brings the samedeal in with more information
and a full package.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
There's ways to get things approved.
Well, what are some thingsyou're passionate about?
Maybe one work-related passionand one personal passion.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Work-related passion is I like giving back to the
community of the payments,coming on podcasts talking about
the payments industry.
I always attend the SCAA.
I went to the very first one.
I'm going there this year.
I'm going to be doing a paneltalking about software is coming
for us and you know I reallyenjoy doing that.
(21:09):
I write a column in the greensheet, the street smarts column.
They just announced that I'minvited back for my second year,
so I really enjoy doing thatand getting a lot of good
feedback from reps that start to.
They discover one article, thenthey start reading more
articles and you know it's niceto you know get that feedback
from people that they're wow.
(21:31):
This is really, reallyappreciate you sharing the
content.
That's really important.
The podcast is also.
We're talking to business peopleand giving small to
medium-sized business ownerstips on all sorts of things
sales, marketing, not just aboutpayments, it's about more than
(21:53):
that talking to differentbusiness leaders about their
startup company and how did theystart it up.
Maybe we help them along theway, or they tell us about their
project that they're doing andthings like that.
I'm really passionate aboutdoing that and helping people.
It's super important.
That's one of the things I likeabout this business being a
chef, you cook food and then yousee smiling faces, everybody's
(22:17):
enjoying your food.
That's really cool.
And with this business, we'rehelping business owners achieve
what they want in their business.
Technology helps businessessave time and money, so it's
super important you help peoplesave time, save money, give them
good information.
You know sometimes they don'tlike.
(22:38):
Sometimes you're the bearer oflike oh, maybe you shouldn't do
that or you need to change thisto protect yourself more and
things like that.
You know like nobody likes todiscuss chargebacks.
You know like that.
You know like nobody likes todiscuss chargebacks.
You know, and my personal lifeand even that goes into business
a little bit is, you know,giving back to the community and
(23:02):
it's important to give back toyour community and we're
involved with a lot of localcharities here in South Florida.
A lot of them are related tochildren children that need
clothing, children that needscholarships to pay for sports,
scholarships so children can bein a preschool, and different
things like that.
And you know dog charities andyou know we have food banks and
all different sorts of charitiesand we give money throughout
(23:26):
the year and we volunteer atsome of those charities and so
it's important to give back.
I also tell reps you know it'ssuper important.
You know, be involved in yourcommunity, give back to your
community, show people thatyou're a business leader.
And the other thing I alwaystell reps they don't listen to
this one.
You're a sales rep, okay, andyou're selling bank card.
(23:48):
You need to invest in yourbusiness.
Invest in your business meansput up a one-page website,
promote yourself.
I have a website, alancoblemancom.
I mean it's not super importantfor me because I own a company,
but if you have a company nameput, make a one-page website
with information about yourcompany, stick your picture on
(24:09):
there, put your linkedin onthere and make yourself look
good.
And don't have a Gmail or aYahoo or a mail.
You know you got to lookprofessional.
You got to look the part right.
So when you look the part andyou act the part, people don't
know how big or how small yourcompany is.
(24:31):
They don't know so.
But if you don't presentyourself where you have a real
business, that's kind of hard todeal with.
And I tell them form acorporation the money it costs
you to form your corporation.
I tell this even to smallbusiness owners form a
corporation.
If you don't have money forthat, start out at least with a
fictitious name.
(24:51):
Separate your money from yourbusiness and your personal.
Do not co-mingle those fundsbecause later, when you go to
incorporate, you already havethe start of a business.
So it's super important toinvest in your business.
Whether you're a sales rep oryou're the ISO, whatever your
(25:12):
role is in your business is todo it the right way and make an
investment.
Invest in your business andinvest in your community.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Very, very important.
So one final question andyou've kind of answered this
from advice perspective to salesreps but if someone just came
to you and said hey, you know,maybe they're right out of
college, they're looking for acareer, they want to build a
career in payments, they knowyou have a lot of knowledge what
would you tell them to do to besuccessful in payments as a
career?
Speaker 3 (25:40):
To be successful in payment Today, go invent some
software.
It's crazy, but I tell thisstory all the time.
In 2001, when I started, peoplebuilt software to sell hardware
and to sell service contracts,and they sell their software
right.
So that's what they sold.
Today, somebody builds software, they're looking, they don't
(26:01):
care about hardware.
They're using iPads or Androidtablets or just whatever any
kind of computer the merchanthas, you know, and they're
selling a SaaS revenue and theywant payments.
That's you know.
That's what we're all about now.
We're trying to recruit as manyindependent software vendors as
possible.
(26:23):
And you know, if you want to getstarted in payments, you got to
get out there, get your nosebloody.
You got to have to do whateverybody else did to learn this
business.
I can't download.
You know everything 25 yearsinto somebody's brain.
You know you had to out there,pound some pavement, get beat up
.
It's just much harder todaybecause somebody's got a POS
(26:43):
sitting on their counter.
Unless that thing's broken,it's a lot harder to rip out of
there than somebody's just got aTrans 330 or a Hypercom.
Back in the old days you justwalked up, batched it out, hit a
few buttons after you got themapproved and boom, you have a
merchant account.
You know it's just a lot hardertoday.
But you know, listen, you canget out there.
(27:04):
And also with cash discount,dual pricing, 0% programs,
surcharging you know that's awhole other subject matter.
But that just gives reps a waybigger leg up on when we started
in the business because theycan make hundreds or thousands
of dollars a month from onemerchant account.
(27:24):
So it's a lot easier to makemoney that way on zero percent
programs and just bite thebullet and stop fighting with
the merchants and sending outletters and secret shoppers and
stop with the games with thesurcharging.
(27:46):
And I read an article where itsaid more than 33 percent of
retail merchants are passing afee to their customers.
So that means one out of three.
That's a lot.
That's a lot of businessespassing the fee.
I mean, will Visa change course?
I don't know.
No one tells Visa what to do.
(28:07):
They make their own rules.
They're so big.
The only company or person thathas more money than Visa is
Elon Musk, all right, or aperson that has more money than
visas, Elon Musk.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
Well, Alan, we've had a great discussion about you
and the company and the industryas a whole.
Is there anything you'd like toadd before we wrap up?
Speaker 3 (28:26):
Well, if you want to connect with me, you can reach
me on LinkedIn, alan Kopelman.
You can check out the podcastB2B Vault.
Listen to Greg's podcast.
Hope everybody enjoyed what wetalked about today and thank you
for having me on the show.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Yeah, alan, thank you , and I know your time is very
valuable, so I really appreciateyou being on the show today.
Thank you, and to all yourlisteners out there, I thank you
for your time as well.
Until the next story.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Thank you for joining us this week on the Leaders in
Payments podcast.
Make sure you visit our websiteat leadersinpaymentscom, where
you can subscribe to the showand where you'll find our show
notes.
If you enjoyed listening,please share on your social
channels as well.
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