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Stop Overpaying For Credit Card Processing with David Agtsteribbe · Mic Hamptons Podcast: Hamptons Real Estate & the People Behind It

• 0:00
  Mike Petersohn: Hi, I'm Mike Peterson from Brown Harris Stevens. The Hamptons runs on relationships and over the years, I've built a network of top tier professionals who operate at the highest level. Mike Hamptons is your access point to that world. The people, the insights, and the opportunities behind it all. Hi.
• 0:26
  Welcome to another episode of the Mike Hamptons Podcast. My name is Michael Peterson. I'm a real estate agent with Brown Harris Stevens and the Hamptons, and this is powered by my networking group, is called HNGLI, the Hamptons Networking Group. Hngli.com is our website, and I'm really happy to have someone who I actually consider to be a good friend, even though we are not always on the same page on everything. But this is David Agtsteribbe, so Agtsteribbe, which is a crazy spelling of a last name.
• 1:00
  It is. Welcome aboard. How are you
• 1:02
  David Agtsteribbe: Thanks, Thanks. Good to see you again.
• 1:04
  Mike Petersohn: So I'm going to start off in the way back machine. The very first time I met you was at the American Legion in Hampton Bays, and I was starting my networking group, and you were a part of it, and remain part of a different one. And you had a lot of insights and information, and sometimes I agreed with it, and sometimes I didn't. I think it took us a while to get onto the same page, but I always appreciated your candor and expertise.
• 1:32
  David Agtsteribbe: Thank you. Thanks. I appreciate I wanted
• 1:34
  Mike Petersohn: to get that out there. So you have a business. It's Epic Payment Solutions. Correct. And you're a credit card processor.
• 1:42
  You live and breathe in Hampton Bays, but you kind of cover all over The United States and probably the world. Can we give a quick little hello and how you're doing?
• 1:51
  David Agtsteribbe: Hello and how are you doing? Yeah, we're locally headquartered, but we do do business in all 50 states: Canada, Mexico, and The United Kingdom currently. Nice.
• 2:04
  Mike Petersohn: Okay. I know that you cover an awful lot of businesses in the Hamptons, and you're very supportive of the communities. Think before we get deep into who you know, your business, with a little background on you, I know that you don't love that, promote you this, but it's really something that's important to me. You are one of the more decorated people I've ever met in my life. A couple, you have two purple hearts, is that right?
• 2:33
  David Agtsteribbe: I do, yeah.
• 2:34
  Mike Petersohn: And you're the only person I know that's got a that has flags with your picture on them hanging up in Hampton Bays. So celebrating who you are. So you're military, ex military. I know that there things are you probably don't want to talk about or whatever, so you can chime in if you like. But you also what I really do appreciate about you is that you run the American Legion Hall in Hampton Bays, and you're a big supporter of all veterans out here and constantly doing fundraisers.
• 3:07
  How about this? Thank you for your service.
• 3:09
  David Agtsteribbe: Thanks. I appreciate it. Yeah. The only thing I will say, because as you know, I don't like talking about it, but we do do a once a month drive through food pantry at the Hampton Bays American Legion. The vets don't even have to get out of their cars.
• 3:24
  We just, they drive through, they can point to whatever they want. And I'm very proud of the fact that we're going on the third year now doing that.
• 3:30
  Mike Petersohn: That's awesome. You stockpile a lot of stuff, and that's great. Made it to Legion Hall thanks to you, and it's a great venue for us to meet at, and you are definitely a big part of the Hampton Bays community So and Southampton in I guess I want to ask you a couple of things. Like, I know a bit about credit card processing, but it's not really my forte. So first thing is you always stress that you guys are compliant.
• 4:02
  What does that mean?
• 4:04
  David Agtsteribbe: Okay. Picture this. You have multiple credit cards and they have rewards associated with them. Those rewards have to come from somewhere, right? So traditionally, what would happen is a merchant would pay ridiculously high processing fees, and part of that was to compensate for funding your rewards.
• 4:24
  That's really not a very fair business model. It doesn't happen in any other sector. It only happens in the credit card sector. And it got kind of big during COVID, but there's a thing called cash discounting, which in New York State is the only legal way to pass the fee through to the customer. Can't surcharge anymore.
• 4:43
  As of 02/11/2024, no more surcharging, only cash discounting. What does that mean? That means that every item actually has two prices. A cash and cash, price and a credit and debit price. And there's a difference between the two.
• 5:00
  But there's a way in which that needs to be done in order to be legally compliant. There are nine points of compliancy, if you want to call it that, including anything customer facing showing both prices, the software being what does it, not the merchant himself doing the separate price, how things are labeled, there's a whole bunch of compliancy stuff. If the processor isn't compliant, they risk the merchant being fined. It's not the processor that gets fined. It's the merchant.
• 5:32
  And a lot of my, if you want to call them competitors, I don't consider anyone a competitor. But if you want to call them a competitor, they don't care. Right? It's cheaper not to be compliant. So they'll set you up on a non compliant format, hoping that you never get fined.
• 5:47
  And if you do, they'll just tell you, you know, Oh, well. And that's it. We are compliant from day one. Our equipment, our software, the way we do business, you never have to worry about being fined or getting a charge back because you're not compliant.
• 6:02
  Mike Petersohn: That leads me to my next question, which was really, I remember you talking about this two years ago, that the state of New York actually reached out to you to advise them, because they were all these rule changes that were coming.
• 6:15
  David Agtsteribbe: Yes. So the New York State Assembly needed, I guess, what they call industry experts, even though I don't consider myself that. And they reached out to our company. So we were one of the two companies that spent over a year and a half consulting on how that law should be written and what the points of compliancy should be. So obviously, we were compliant from day one, and so was the other company that consulted as well.
• 6:42
  But yeah, we worked. I flew to Albany many times to, you know, give my 2¢ or whatever it was worth. Did they listen? They did. The law was pretty much written verbatim the way that we suggested that it should be.
• 6:57
  And the points of compliance here are pretty much verbatim as well. Yeah. And by the way, those laws are written to be a consumer protection law. They're not written to punish a merchant, even though there is a point at which the merchant can be punished if they don't comply. It's written to be a consumer protection law.
• 7:15
  I very much believe in consumer protection. I hate my industry. There's no regulation in my industry. And I try very hard to steer that the best that I can.
• 7:27
  Mike Petersohn: I remember you making the rounds to, you know, trying to advise as many people as possible to that this was coming down the road, and you may be out of compliance. And I remember you speaking with a couple of people, you know, a couple of people I know, and they're saying, wow, I had no idea. So it's good. Think we were joking before Come On Here that the Sims commercial, an educated consumer is our best customer. I feel the same way.
• 7:56
  David Agtsteribbe: Yeah, that's the biggest thing we face. So like as you know, right, you're a real estate agent out here in the Hamptons, right? You have the same issue. You have to constantly, people aren't educated. So you tell them something that they think they know better, right?
• 8:08
  That WebMD mentality, right? I'm dying even though they don't go to a doctor. So kind of the same thing in my field, right? I find that people aren't educated in it, and there's so much bad information out there. Even ChatGPT.
• 8:25
  So I have a salesman that handles all of my food service, all my restaurant stuff he focuses on. And he was chat GPTing the compliancy for dual pricing. And what it gave back was incorrect information. We actually showed a merchant that if you go out and Google or chat GPT in the state of New York, the answer you get is not a compliant answer. So, that's a big problem.
• 8:52
  Wow. Yeah.
• 8:54
  Mike Petersohn: That's very interesting. I think it's important for you to get more information out about, you know, your company and whatnot. So you mentioned before that every merchant gets a virtual terminal. What does that mean?
• 9:08
  David Agtsteribbe: Yeah, let me tell you what I mean by that. So when you think of a credit card terminal, you think of a physical terminal that sits on a counter for brick and mortar. And we do that, and they're free. We don't charge for them. We don't rent them.
• 9:19
  We don't lease them. We don't sell them. They're completely free. But we also give what's called a virtual terminal, which is a website you would go to, resides on your computer, any device with internet access. You would log in with credentials unique to you, and you have several abilities that that gives you.
• 9:37
  It gives you the ability to send invoices out to people that they can click on and pay, to do recurring billing, customer vault, QR codes, payment pages, all of that, right? And even process a card. Somebody calls you with a card number and you're doing a card not present transaction, it's the virtual terminal. So we bundle that. We give that away.
• 10:01
  What's unique about that is other people in the industry charge extra for that. So they would, you'd rent a terminal, you'd pay an extra $10 a month to be able to invoice, another $10 to be able to do recurring billing, another $10 for your customer vault. Before you've even processed, you've paid $60 $70 $80 a month in what they call SaaS fees, right? And And you haven't even processed yet. We don't have any of that.
• 10:27
  I want you to process. So logically speaking, the more ways I give you to do that, the more sense that makes. And I never understood why the industry doesn't get that.
• 10:37
  Mike Petersohn: Okay, then loyalty programs?
• 10:40
  David Agtsteribbe: Yep. So loyalty programs are very big, right? I'm surprised that merchants don't reward. You know, I walk into a place they don't have a loyalty program. I'm like, why?
• 10:50
  It doesn't cost you anything, right? We have many loyalty programs available. We have basic ones that are free. We do have more robust ones that there is a very, very small fee for. And by small, I mean $10.15 dollars a month.
• 11:04
  Right? That lets you reward your customers either financially or by points or by giving them something or whatever, and even giving email blasts and text message blasts and that kind of stuff. But you want to build your client base and you want to keep those clients. And people don't have brand loyalty today the way they used to, right? They're all looking for a good deal.
• 11:27
  You know, I can get it 10¢ cheaper, the guy next door, it's the same product. Who cares? So, people don't really have that loyalty anymore. So, if you can give them some type of loyalty program, especially a restaurant, I'm always shocked at how many restaurants don't have loyalty programs. All of the POS systems, because as you know, we do, we have a major POS business.
• 11:47
  All of our POS systems have loyalty built in.
• 11:51
  Mike Petersohn: Nice. Thank you for that. So, a new different wrote down some notes because I wanted to understand a little bit dig a little deeper on this. Having POS that's fully suited for the merchants' needs, you've merging technologies?
• 12:12
  David Agtsteribbe: So so so let me explain what I mean. Let me explain what I mean by that. Yeah. So Clover, most well known POS in the world, is generic. Right?
• 12:22
  You and I both have iPhones. That iPhone out of the box was identical. The only way we made them different was by going into the App Store and downloading stuff. Moving an icon from one screen to another doesn't make it different. Adding apps makes it different.
• 12:36
  The problem is we can only use our phone the way those apps allow us to. Okay. Clover is the same concept. It's the iPhone of POSs. So if you're a business and you have a Clover, you have to adapt your business to use the clover the way the clover can be used.
• 12:52
  So what's bad about that is, let's say, a dry cleaner, a liquor store, and a doctor have different needs. They're not looking for the same thing in a POS, but they're all getting a generic clover. Enter us now. Here's what we do. Our POS division has agreements with 27 different POS manufacturers.
• 13:10
  Those are industry specific POSs. So, example, a POS going to a cigar store is going to have age verification built in, right? Whereas retail clothing shops not going to require that. So we have POSs for specific industries. Now, what happens if that POS that's made for that industry doesn't really do everything they need it to do?
• 13:35
  What if they have a special need? Well, you would say, you know, sorry, you have to use this the way it is. So we partnered with another company called Merging Technologies. And what Merging Technologies does is they can sit down with us and the merchant, and they could say, okay, this works for you, but you need this feature, this feature, and this feature. Let's build it just for you.
• 13:59
  So here's the POS for the industry, but now we're going to modify that POS. So not only is it for the industry, it's for this specific merchant with the needs that he needs. And Mergent Technologies is phenomenal at that. So we work hand in hand with them when we have, when we need a custom POS that one of the POSs we have doesn't quite get to the finish line with.
• 14:22
  Mike Petersohn: And assuming this is very well received?
• 14:25
  David Agtsteribbe: Extremely well received. Yeah, it's I can't think of anyone else throwing it. So Yeah, you always
• 14:33
  Mike Petersohn: tell me that, you know, beat everybody, which is great.
• 14:37
  David Agtsteribbe: Well, let me explain my if I can. Let me explain my concept about competition. When you use the word competition, you're implying that someone else does what you do, either better or worse, but they do what you do. I don't look at other people in my field. They're in my field, but they're not competition because they don't do what I do.
• 14:58
  Better or worse, they don't do what I do. So I have no competition. I have an open field. You know, I'm a horse running in an open field, basically,
• 15:06
  Mike Petersohn: which I like. You sent me a note a couple weeks ago about clover. Like, you were excited. So now you're fully integrated or
• 15:17
  David Agtsteribbe: So let me explain. And it sounds like I just bad mouth clover,
• 15:21
  Mike Petersohn: right?
• 15:21
  David Agtsteribbe: No. I kind of did. But let me explain. So Clover is very generic. However, there are merchants that it's been jammed down their throat.
• 15:30
  Clover has great advertising, right? So, you know, it's just, again, it's just like iPhone marketing. They have great marketing. So my choices are, don't sell a merchant of Clover or lose that merchant. So I said to myself, okay, if I'm going to do Clover for a merchant, how do I do it in a way different than the rest of the industry?
• 15:52
  Well, simple. Even Clover themselves charges for Clover hardware. There's no such thing as free Clover hardware. So the Clover solo or duo, which is their full POS, customer facing screen, merchant facing screen, cash drawer, scanner, boom, is about 1,300 to $1,500 on Clover's website, depending on the day of the week and the availability. We give it away for free.
• 16:17
  Keeping with my theme of free hardware always, we give the Clover away. Now, obviously, we're not getting Clover for free. We're paying for it. To me, that's a cost of doing business. I'm the only guy I could think of that's giving Clover away for free.
• 16:33
  Any Clover device the customer wants. So if you're out there and you want to use Clover, even though I discourage you from it, I'm the guy for you to contact. Hope
• 16:43
  Mike Petersohn: you don't get yourself in trouble with Clover on that one.
• 16:46
  David Agtsteribbe: That's all right. I'll take full responsibility.
• 16:52
  Mike Petersohn: Something like if you're driving around the Hamptons right now, it feels like every fourth store is a cannabis retail. Like, it's kind of and yesterday, I was taking some folks around, and we were driving on Old Montauk and passed through the Indian reservation. I think there might have been, like, eight cannabis stores lined up in a row. They were like, What is going on here? And then now that you have them on 27 and they're.
• 17:20
  They're everywhere. Yeah. But you guys work with Canada. Like, I know you've had a specific We answer do. On want to hear.
• 17:31
  David Agtsteribbe: So we actually have a solution. So let me just differentiate between the two. So CBD, we could treat like a normal retail, credit card processing, whatever they want. Traditionally, keep in mind that even though cannabis is legal in areas, it's technically illegal. On a federal level, it's illegal.
• 17:48
  That causes a problem in my industry because it's hard to get bank accounts, it's hard to get processing, it's hard to get financing on the back end to fund the account, right, because it is federally illegal. Okay. So with that said, we don't have a credit card solution for cannabis. We do have a debit card solution for cannabis that costs the merchant nothing. And what it's called is a cashless ATM.
• 18:18
  So you have to kind of picture this. A regular ATM, go up to, you put your card in, you you put the denomination you want, it spits money out of your account. If that ATM is out of network, there might be a $3 fee. Okay. So now picture a credit card terminal, a physical terminal, that's reprogrammed to be an ATM.
• 18:40
  That's legal with every bank because the bank looks at it as an ATM, not a credit card terminal. So as far as the bank's concerned, it's an ATM transaction, and every bank will allow it to occur because of that. Okay? Interesting. That's important because there's a lot of people providing solutions.
• 18:56
  Cannabis stores sign up, and three months later, the solution is gone, or it's the bank won't do it anymore, and they discover this is completely legal, and every bank will allow it because it's an ATM solution, not a credit card solution. So here's what happens. We reprogrammed the machine. It now has function buttons on it, right? And those function buttons are denominations, five, ten, fifteen, twenty.
• 19:22
  You take your debit card, you run it through the machine, and let's say you hit 20. Okay. A receipt gets printed up for 20, but obviously no cash comes out. That 20 is then put into the merchant's account. So that $20 receipt, you can hand to the merchant and use like a $20 bill.
• 19:40
  If the fee if it's an $18 transaction and you hand him a $20 receipt, he will literally give you $2 cash back because you just did an ATM transaction. Okay. Okay? And we fund the merchant every morning. So, it's a legally compliant solution for cannabis slows.
• 20:03
  Interesting.
• 20:05
  Mike Petersohn: And I have no reason to question you on that at all because I know that you're advising the state of New York on all things credit, so there you go. Know that's always been a big issue, in the financial community about, you know, how does I've heard crazy stories of people manufacturing cannabis and just having, you know, closets full of cash. Like, what do you do?
• 20:29
  David Agtsteribbe: So they actually call that legacy cash. I'm going to segue into actual ATM machines here. Sure. So they call that legacy cash. And the solution when dispensaries were opening was to give them a ATM machine for their legacy cash.
• 20:43
  They would put their cash inside the ATM and that's what it would spit out when people, right? The problem is it wouldn't spit it out fast enough. They literally would have bags of cash. It's called legacy cash. Well, here's what a lot of people don't realize about ATM machines.
• 20:58
  Banks don't tax that money. That transaction fee, that $3 transaction fee that you're getting on an ATM isn't taxable. It's not income. Because as far as the bank's concerned, the cash that's already been put into an ATM called Vault Cash has already been taxed. So it was a great legacy cash solution.
• 21:18
  It was a great way to, and I'll use the word wash, to wash your money legally because it really is, it really, it's, there's nothing illegal about it in the IRS's eyes, the bank's eyes. You're taking legacy cash out of a garbage bag, you're running it through an ATM machine, it's getting deposited into a bank.
• 21:33
  Mike Petersohn: The government's getting their bid and taxes.
• 21:36
  David Agtsteribbe: Sure, sure. So that was always the solution. So now, take a credit card terminal, convert that into an ATM machine, right? And when I say convert it, I'm saying the way the bank looks at it and the way the rails that it's riding, it's riding ATM rails, not credit rails when it processes, right? You're duplicating the same thing.
• 21:57
  So that's exactly what we did. That's pretty cool.
• 22:01
  Mike Petersohn: Yeah. That's a great solution. Mean, that's been hidden people up for that's been problematic in the cannabis industry. From what I understand, know, financial services background, thinking about that, I've always everybody's trying to find creative solutions, and that's interesting that it's gotten to that point now.
• 22:21
  David Agtsteribbe: What's important, too, is solutions that are going to last, not ones that you're going to do, and six months from now, the merchant's going to find out, you know, someone's knocking at the door, hey, why are you doing that? You can't do that anymore. You know, we've been doing this for almost two years now. It's, you
• 22:36
  Mike Petersohn: know, it's a great solution. Got it. I want to head back to the American Legion, the work that you're doing there. I'd love for you we're going to come to an end in just a minute, but I would love for you to just reiterate if people can you raise a lot of money for the vets, services. I know there's clothing, all kinds of things.
• 23:02
  If you want to just, you know, people know, like, how they can contribute because vets are underserved, in my opinion, in this Sure.
• 23:11
  David Agtsteribbe: And this is not just for people locally. This is for anyone that wants to contribute because there should never be homeless or hungry vets in America. It just should not happen. The fact that it does just amazes me that we allow that to happen. So with that said, American Legions, VFWs, I'm a member of the VFW as well.
• 23:36
  You know, I'm not playing favorites. They're both fantastic organizations. In the veterans community, they both do so, so much. If you can give to your local VFW or American Legion, cash is really what they need. Right?
• 23:51
  You know, we fund a lot of programs. We have a transport vehicle, veterans transport vehicle, nine passengers, three wheelchairs. We lend it out to whoever needs it. Right? We pay for the upkeep of that.
• 24:02
  The insurance, the gas, everything. That's not cheap. Right? Our drive through food pantries are not cheap. We have a supply of wheelchairs and walkers.
• 24:12
  Anyone can call us and say, I need a wheelchair. Need a wheelchairs. That's not cheap to do. The American Legions and VFWs nationwide have closed their doors because they can't support themselves. We're blessed in the fact that we have remained open.
• 24:31
  Not that we're doing phenomenal, but we're paying our bills and we've remained open. And so there's a lot of hope for the future as far as that goes. But yeah, you even, you know, you started this interview by thanking me for my service. Even thanking a vet to me is something important that you could do for them because it lets them know that you didn't forget, you know, that you're conscious of it. So even that goes a long way.
• 24:58
  Mike Petersohn: Totally. If we're So going to wrap it up, if you can let everybody know how they can get in touch with you for your business, Epic, and also, you are an integral part of the Hamptons, in my opinion, and where you're located at. So please let everybody know from both Epic standpoint as well as for the Legion Hall.
• 25:28
  David Agtsteribbe: Sure. Can call me directly at (631) 833-9679. You can go on our website, which is epicpaymentsolutions.net, and you can see all of our services and what we offer. And we are actually headquartered in Hampton Bays, our corporate office for The United States. We do have an office in California, Miami, and Chicago.
• 25:53
  Our corporate office is actually here on Long Island in Hampton Bays.
• 25:57
  Mike Petersohn: Sweet. Thank you. I want to thank everybody for tuning in to another episode of the Mike Hamptons Podcast. This is always fun for me to engage with people like David and get their information out here. These are folks that are very much involved in the Hamptons and the fabric of what's going on out here.
• 26:17
  Group is the HNG is the Hamptons Networking Group. Our website is hngli.com. Please, we love to have visitors. Love to have you understand what we do more and more. And keep in mind that if you have anything for your house, etcetera, we've got you covered.
• 26:37
  This is where deals take place. And remember, I know a guy. So this is powered by Flying Point Media, which is, they're by far the top group out here doing social media. I really greatly, greatly appreciate all that they do for us. So we'll see you in the next episode.
• 27:01
  Thank you so much. If I felt distracted at all or seemed distracted at all during this interview, I was faced with this. So it's kind of hard to not crack a smile. So this is delightful, and I know this is subdued for you.
• 27:17
  David Agtsteribbe: Have you ever seen My Cousin Vinny? Of course. I wore this for you.
• 27:24
  Mike Petersohn: Hey. This is Michael. Thanks for listening to Mike Hamptons, powered by the Hamptons Networking Group, where the right people make the right things happen. If you're planning anything in the Hamptons, buying, selling, building, hosting, or investing, don't do it alone. Tap into our network of vetted top tier service providers who get things done at the highest level.
• 27:47
  And if real estate is part of your plan, I bring deep knowledge, strong network, and a track record of getting deals done the right way. Reach out anytime. We'll see you on the next one. You can call, text, or DM me right now or visit my website to get connected. I work with a tight network and the best deals go to the people who move first.
• 28:08
  Don't forget to subscribe. I'll see you on the next deal. Keep making moves.