ConsumerFi Podcast: Digitizing the Customer Payment Experience (Part 1) with PayNearMe's Steve Kramer

Transcript

[00:00:00] You’re listening to the ConsumerFi Podcast powered by Nortridge loan software that accelerates change.

[00:00:20] All right, everybody. Welcome to the ConsumerFi Podcast.. I’m pleased to have Steve Kramer. He’s the VP of product with PayNearMe. Steve, welcome to the pod.

[00:00:30] Thanks Joel. Great to be here. So, you know, PayNearMe, this is, this is from a personal standpoint and I want to get into Steve some of your background, but I’ll tell you PayNearMe is a solution that when I was a lender, I didn’t go for it.

[00:00:43] And I actually have some. I have a little bit of like a trauma because of it, because I think it would have really would have helped. And that’s why I’m excited to have you on today. But Steve, can you give us a little bit of background on yourself and, and maybe the overview of pain near me for those who don’t know?

[00:00:57] I, I think there’s only a few, [00:01:00] but maybe give us the overview.

[00:01:02] Yeah, no happy dots. I’ll talk more about painter me, cause it’s more interesting than talking about me. Um, but yeah, no I’ve, um, been around, uh, in the payment space for, for more years than I care to mention. 25 plus years in the payment space actually began my career.

[00:01:16] Believe it or not programming, I was a theater science guy. I was programming realized, you know what? I like this product side better. And I kind of bounced in my career back and forth between technology and product and finally kind of settled on product. The number of years. I really enjoy it. So I’ve been doing that work for a lot of the big legacy providers out there and joint PayNearMe about three years ago.

[00:01:34] Pay near me. We really would like to call it a payments experience management company. It’s kind of a new term. Right. But it really is not just focused on the payment, but the payment and everything around it. Think about it. Right? So whether that’s dealing with consumer acceptance, consumer engagement, operating costs, and operational efficiencies that all wrap around the payment itself.

[00:01:52] So really kind of taking a different look at payments where we’re an interesting company. We’ve been around 12 years. So it’s a 12 year old startup, [00:02:00] if you will cut our teeth in, in cash bill payment. So, you know, the ability to walk into a seven 11, a CVS now, a Walmart walk up and, and, and many of these locations you can pay right in line, right?

[00:02:10] Your scan, your milk, scan your bread, stand your bar code for your bill, pay it all you walk out you’re done. And then about four plus years ago, we started introducing our electronic payment offerings card, ACH to apple pay, Google, pay all of that stuff. And so now trying to wrap the entire experience together for our billers.

[00:02:25] And we also work in the gaming space in the all games. So that’s great. And we’ve seen payments move so much in the recent past. There’s so many of new, new mechanisms, digital currency is the currency. As far as I’m concerned. I think that the fed is probably looking at ways to remove. The burden of having to produce physical money.

[00:02:46] Yeah. I think this is a great space to be in Steve. So what we want to get into on this one, and we’re going to have a couple of episodes, which I’m so pleased to do because it, I like to be able to tell a story. And so Steve’s going to start with us and then we’re going to finish [00:03:00] with one of his associates and.

[00:03:01] Let’s talk about why do we bother focusing on, on digitizing the payments experience? Great way to start. Right. I, at first thought, when I completely agree with you on the path to being in payments, I have, you know, I’m a certified payments geek. Like I, I can talk payments all day and I love doing it. And it just it’s changing so quickly.

[00:03:20] And that I think is what’s fun about it, right? Just when you think you got to figure it out, you know, something comes along like a pen. Changes even the way you’re thinking about it. Right. Right. And so you even take that and digitizing payments. So, you know, we’ve been all about digitizing payments for years, again, in the pay near me, startup, you know, we were about digitizing cash and now we’re about digitizing the whole solution.

[00:03:42] And I think actually, you know, one of the strange side effects of COVID indepen DEMEC I think it opened a lot of people’s eyes to, oh my gosh. You really do need to digitize this. There’s so many positives to doing it. You know, we have stories there of some of our, our lenders that we work with that, for example, they used to allow people to come [00:04:00] into their stores and paying cash.

[00:04:01] You know, people with cash, consumer who suddenly went, we can’t have people in our stores anymore. Like our stores are closed. What do we do? And they suddenly realized that, wait, we need to digitize this solution. And that’s where we actually were able to help and step in. And there are others out there and do it too.

[00:04:15] Right. But saying, why don’t you go somewhere where they’re already going, they’re already going to Walmart, just go there and pay in cash. And you start looking at this. Uh, how do you start digitizing? You know, what, what steps do you take? And whether you’re a small vendor, a big lender, whoever, you know, can you take some kind of small steps that makes get some quick wins there?

[00:04:33] Yeah. And interestingly, you know, I’ve, I did some projects when I had my auto finance company and making the move to digital can, it doesn’t have to be completely daunting. So when you’re small, you have, you have, you have some nimble nature. I had collectors, right. So I had maybe 30 people that were hitting the phones.

[00:04:50] So I just said, okay, we’re starting. We’re going with the digital payment platform. I want you, when you do demos, when you get in touch with every customer, I want you to tell them [00:05:00] about this and get them to do something like download the app or this or that. Like, I didn’t have to do a major change transformation in order to make this happen.

[00:05:09] I just had to have them advertise this thing and entice the consumers into taking it down because it was going to ultimately make their lives better. Right. That was not that hard for a small company. You think of these things as being very daunting, big, hairy projects. It doesn’t have to be. Yeah. You can take some small steps and have some major impacts made.

[00:05:29] It sounds like you were maybe even a little ahead of your game that, but we, cause we talked to a lot of lenders, especially the small lenders about that. Yeah. You’ve got a call center. You’re set up for a call center. And what I talk about all the time, right? Is I’ve got my call center. It’s set up, it’s running Steve Kramer calls in to make a payment.

[00:05:45] Steve Kramer pays every month. Good payer. We have no issues. I don’t want to talk to him at the cost center, teach him to self serve. Right? He’s a good customer. I, I want my call center agents focused where I need them focus on challenged customers on making new sales. I’m working with new [00:06:00] consumers, that the person who makes the payment every month.

[00:06:02] Yeah. Let’s teach them what they can do to self-serve and show them the power that. And there are some really simple steps, as you said, they’re very easy ways. Show them the app like here. Well, you can download here, show them the website. Hey, do you see? Right. You know, thanks for calling in to make your payment.

[00:06:18] You see right here, you, you can just pay online yourself. You don’t, you don’t need to talk to me. Right. And we’ve even taken it a step further where we said, you know what, why doesn’t your agent have the ability to just push straight to the user? You know? Hi, Mr. Kennedy. Thanks. We’re calling you. You want to make your payment?

[00:06:32] Hey, I know you’re are you in front of your computer or I notice you’re on your. I’m just going to send you a link here. Got it. Click on that. See how you can make your payment yourself. Teach that consumer right there. Right? Go ahead and self-serve and now you’ve got them right now. See how easy that was.

[00:06:46] That was great. You didn’t have to call me next month. You can just do that all yourself. And I pulled that consumer out of the call center. I remember the old pain near me was the, Hey, I have a, I have I’m converting the cash division. I’m going to go and make that cash payment at one [00:07:00] of the outlets that you were partnered with to now this full digital text to phone type stuff.

[00:07:06] Can I, can I zero in on that, that text payment to phone feature? So that was something that I was looking at a couple of years ago and I was told it’s kind of like. Dying, right? Like there’s apps that are going to supplant that. Are you seeing the same thing within, or do you still see it as being relevant?

[00:07:23] Cause in my mind I feel like it’s relevant because I think people have hit me with a couple of those out of convenience in the recent past. And I like it. It’s still relevant. It’s it’s so funny. Every time, there’s a prediction right. About that’s going away and you’re not going to see that anymore. And you always see it come right back again.

[00:07:40] I mean, to our codes would be a great example. We can talk about that later on the podcast, right? Like thought would’ve thought QR codes would be a thing. And now they’re back to being everywhere again. Right. But no, absolutely. We see that the texting and, and pay by text and the ability to receive a text.

[00:07:55] Absolutely. As a still very valuable, they’re very viable. I mean, there’s [00:08:00] great studies out there that talk about, you know, reaching consumers. Right. And, and how do you want to reach your consumers and what you’re going to try and call them people aren’t picking up their phones. Anyone’s caller ID.

[00:08:09] They’re not going to pick up that call. You can email them, especially younger consumers. They’re not reading email, right? Email is way too slow. So text is one way. I mean, it’s just one method of reaching them. And that’s where we talk about, like, you have to think about the payments experience, right? So text is one way, but there are others too.

[00:08:26] So for example, a consumer who gives on their own. That that’s it. They’re an iPhone guy, you know, they’re, they’re, they’re living on their iPhone all day. Well, why don’t you push out to their apple wallet? Right. And now you’ve got that consumer where they live right now. So texting is one method can be very, very productive and can certainly work, but you’ve got to make sure you wrap the whole experience in right.

[00:08:44] You’re an apple person. Great. We’ll push to your apple wallet. You’ll get your notification right on your phone. Just like you’d get a text notification. And look, we we’ve seen the results. Like when we’ve done this push to text, push to apple. You know, notifications out and we’ve seen clients cut their call center volume in half, just from doing [00:09:00] simple things like that.

[00:09:01] And again, let those agents focus where they need to be focused. You see a difference with larger lenders and the adoption curve or challenges that they may face. That would be unique. From a smaller lender that has that flexibility because that’s my frame of reference. So I wonder about a big organization.

[00:09:16] Yeah, there are right. There are certainly different challenges at different organizations. A lot of them are similar, right. Even at the big organizations, they’d like to reduce call center volume, right. Pull those consumers out. But there, it really is, you know, how do I get more calls straight through processing?

[00:09:31] Everything digital, because you know, if you’re a small vendor and you’re, you’re getting a few percent exceptions, you can handle that in house. But when you’re large, that few percent starts to become a very large number. Right? Well, and the key is you mentioned the word exception and that just rings a bell in my head saying if there’s anybody that’s not on this clean path, I definitely want to talk to them because it infers that there have there’s some issue.

[00:09:55] I can’t make it. Streamlined easy digital payment that tells [00:10:00] me I have to talk to you. Right. Right. Which is what I want. Yeah. Well, it isn’t it isn’t right. So you’re right. If their acceptance, you usually want to talk to that person, but you can actually, and we can talk about this more later on. Right. You can actually start working that into your straight through processing as well.

[00:10:16] Let’s say you’ve got a customer who they’ve paid you several months in a row with ACA. And you’ve gotten a return every single month, right? Like, ah, you know, so yeah, you may want to talk to that customer and say, look, Hey, you know, Joel, I need a better payment method from you because ACH then clearly isn’t working out or you can actually configure that and go, you know what, maybe after two or three in a row or two or three in a six month.

[00:10:37] I’m just thinking, not going to let them pay with ACH. I’m just going to allow them to debit and, you know, get a better place. Can you lock that down in the system where you’re like, Hey, if there’s a rule, if the customer goes, uh, NSF on a certain payment vehicle, three times, they are, no, it just, it lets the agent or something.

[00:10:54] Right? Absolutely. So that’s, that’s how it should work. Right? Where it knocks the consumer down. If the consumer calls the [00:11:00] agent, you know, and says, look, you know, I didn’t have a job now I do. Or, or there’s something going on. And. That’s changed, you know, maybe about the agent overriding go out. Okay. We’re going to turn these stage, but you know, give that flexibility on both sides.

[00:11:11] Right. So that, you know, again, trying to get rid of, as you said, I think I saw your shutter when I said the word exceptions. Right. But any large lender. Yeah. That’s a, that’s a big. Well, but the way you said it, I mean, I just, I pictured doing a, uh, like a parade or chart of the different types of, of exceptions that come in and it it’s always plays out.

[00:11:28] Whenever I do a predo chart, it’s always 80 20 rule, and there’s always some, one thing that people are doing. So then you eliminate it and then your call volume drops by 80%. Right. Hopefully push them onto that rail, both small liberal art funders. And it’s also lenders depending on where you’re playing in the sometimes space.

[00:11:43] Right? So for some larger vendors, they’re saying, you know what, I need to cut down my, for example, my estate return. I need those return numbers lower because every one of those is causing, you know, causes us pain internally. We’re a small and under, so, you know what I might want to take a little more risk, especially maybe end of month, 15th of the month, [00:12:00] depending on their due date.

[00:12:01] So let me turn that knob a little bit, the other way. I’m willing to accept a few more ACH returns because I want those additional payments in. So yeah, you need to be able to be configurable in that regard, right? I’m balancing that’s something that non-prime auto folks definitely know. Cause you’re always balancing between.

[00:12:17] Do I accelerate this account and move it more towards a recovery or do I try to kind of work with them? Maybe they are responsive, but it’s just, their payment performance has been poor. You have some re underwriting essentially to do, you know, Steve, we talked about the big transformations, the small transformations.

[00:12:34] Maybe we should just kinda ratchet that back. You came up with a really cool model for our conversation, which is helpful about. Maybe not going full digital transformation, but then you throw out this term digital exploration. What do you mean by digital exploration versus transforming? So, yeah, so digital exploration really?

[00:12:56] When, when starting to, you know, when someone’s thinking about how am I going to do this, right. How many, and a [00:13:00] lot of it is you sit back and it’s like, wow, this is really daunting. And, and you know, what I like to say is, yeah, I’m sure. Cause everybody has tons of it. Resources just sitting around looking for work, right?

[00:13:09] Yeah. No, not exactly. Everyone’s got a roadmap that’s two years long and they’re like, well, that sounds great in 2023, but you know, as you and I were joking at the beginning of the pond, Payments it lives too fast, right? It’s often funny when you see, especially some of the legacies are, or even quite frankly, some of the large banks and they go, yeah, we’ve got a two or three-year roadmap.

[00:13:28] And I scratch my head and I go in payments. Like I wish I had a crystal ball that I could predict that accurately what’s going to happen into it. You need to be more nimble than that. It’s about starting to look. You know, with constrained resources that we all have, right? Where can I get some big wins?

[00:13:43] Where can I just focus to say, you know what, let’s let’s shoot for that middle area. Is there a partner out there that can help me get there where I don’t have to invest as much ITV sources? And look, can I use your 80 20 rule and go 80% of my pain is, is right here. But it’s only in this small focused area.

[00:13:58] Let’s focus there and try and [00:14:00] get a win. And you know what? One of the, one of the cases we’ve seen it is. That first payment. Right. If I can get that customer to that first payment digitally, what a win. Right. So, so what comes in with that? That doesn’t come in with the others. I’m thinking obviously coaching a little bit of hand-holding maybe a little bit of education.

[00:14:18] Absolutely. He even in the coaching, you can start working in, but what helps the business out and helps the consumer out? We’ve seen this before, right? Hey, would you like to, you know, wouldn’t you like to pay online and some of the common complaints you hear about people paying online is wow. I forget. I forget my due dates.

[00:14:35] I’m busy, whatever. Hey, no problem. Why don’t we opt you in for alerts and updates. So that way we can remind you when your payment’s due right on your. Yeah. And that way you don’t have to worry about forgetting it. I mean, just simple stuff like that to set them up and go, wouldn’t that be great if I could opt you in right now?

[00:14:51] Hey, look, we’ve even seen big successes at vendors where they go. Why don’t we do it in straight for auto pay right at the beginning. I mean, that’s, that’s the big one, right? Look, I’m old school. I’d like to pay [00:15:00] off of a physical bill. I just, I just have a process from when I was young. Right. So I would just get all my bills stacked and I’d leave them on a place on my desk and I would work through them on Saturday morning, very casually.

[00:15:10] Cause then I would also do my financial. And it’s a process and a method that works for me. Steve, how many of my vendors do you think have missed mailing me paper bills over the years, too many to count. So I’m able to call them and say, Hey, you missed. And they, they work with me, but. If I wasn’t so darn stubborn and I would just go with right in automated version and that’s kind of where I went.

[00:15:34] So now my bank says for the bill pay where I push, I don’t want you pulling, I want to push them. Like I said, I have my things. I saw that my bank says, well, we’re, we’re, we’re linked up with them for, for E e-commerce. Right. So we can just get you the bills here and they’ll show up in the interface. And I think it okay, it’s at my bank, it’s in the interface.

[00:15:51] I’m not going to lose it in the shuffle. When you send me some email that goes into spam. Look us postal service has serious issues right now getting the mail out. [00:16:00] And even on time, I think you have to look at these things as, as almost head strategies to, to, to make sure that your money keeps flowing.

[00:16:06] Right? Absolutely. It’s also, it’s understanding that people have a process. You know, you have yours with a stack of books and a lot of people have that process. So how do you say, Hey, that process is great, but you know, Hey Joe, what happens when you’re on the road for a week? You’re not in front of your desk, right.

[00:16:20] Or suddenly you, you miss a paper and your bill is due. Like how can we work with you to establish a process that maybe as a backup to that I’m getting that reminder by text. And one of the things that I think a lot of people miss on is it doesn’t have to be a one-time thing, right? So we could send you a reminder, you know, a week ahead of time.

[00:16:37] It says, Hey, your bill is coming up in seven days. And then maybe there’s another reminder a day before it says, uh, Hey Joel, Dan’s due tomorrow. Or maybe even one. It’s due today. And look, you could send a third one, three or four days later, a week after that says you seem to have missed the payment. Right.

[00:16:53] And maybe it’s and those messages can be a little different, right? Maybe the one that’s a little bit after there’s a little bit firmer nail, not quite as friendly, obviously you [00:17:00] don’t want to spam the person. Right. But just something that says, Hey, did you miss a payment? Here’s where you can do it so easily to try and get people.

[00:17:05] As you said, you missed your statement. You weren’t home, whatever. What can you do to get that consumer back? Right. Cause it’s so once you have mid and look, the other thing that we talk about a lot in this kind of digital x-ray exploration, that person makes that first payment. Right? Right. They did it hopefully digitally, right.

[00:17:22] Or maybe with the agent, whatever they made that payment, which means they have some kind of payment method in front of them, whether it’s the bank, whether it’s their card, whether it’s their bank, account numbers, apple pay, whatever. Now is the time to capture the broad. Right. Yeah. Hey Joe, you just made that payment.

[00:17:38] You got your, you still have your debit card in front of you. Why don’t we sign you up for auto pay? You never have to worry about this and you’ve got your card in front of you, like now is the time to get them. So if you can get that first payment and get that first experience locked in what a huge, quick win that is, right?

[00:17:53] Strengthening that ongoing payment stream and particular in particular using. A digital platform such as yours. [00:18:00] Do you find that some lenders have a philosophy around incenting that or game of gamifying it right. Saying, Hey, if you make. Three on time payments on the pain near me platform. We’re going to give you 20 bucks off your next scheduled payment or so, yeah.

[00:18:16] You know, obviously as you know, random, a little harder and lending to do those kinds of incentives, just because of APRs and all of that. But I I’ve seen people attempt that it’s, it’s an interesting challenge, right. To try and figure it out. Insensitive consumer. And we could probably have a whole podcast, you know, I think about apple pay and Google pay myself.

[00:18:33] Right? So look, I’m a, I’m a certified payments geek. I try them. All right. I’ll pay any method anytime, anyplace, because I want to see how they all work. And I go, I go to a store that accepts that I’m a Google person. They accept schools will pay nine times out of 10. I forget. I reach into my monopod, my debit card.

[00:18:50] I put it in their sheet and afterwards I’m like, ah, I should have paid with my. That’s my habit and there’s no incentives to using Google pay or [00:19:00] apple pay. So I just forget and I do it and you’ve got the same thing. You’re right. With bill pay. And like, how do you incentive consumer? I don’t know that it really can be gamified.

[00:19:07] I mean, I think there are interesting options there. I think where we’ve seen it more is more of a customer satisfaction thing. Right. So you didn’t have to worry about it. You’re on time. You don’t have to worry about an on-time payment. You’re going to get reminders. You’re going to get told exactly how much you pay when you pay it.

[00:19:22] So it’s all in front of. So really trying to, instead of game a, buy it for the consumer, really just try to show the benefits to the consumer of what they’re getting at. That’s great. I mean, I, and I love to strengthen those payment streams, but let’s be real in, in non-prime auto. You’re going to have some percentage, maybe one in five, maybe even a little more.

[00:19:41] That are not going to go full term and end up, you’re going to have to recover that piece of collateral. So yeah, you mentioned a little bit about kind of rescues and repos and how the tool can be kind of, or a digital kind of payments platform can be helpful. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, absolutely.

[00:19:56] Well, first of all, that the goal right. Is to make sure they don’t [00:20:00] get there. They don’t get into repo and, and rescue. Right. And, and one of the things they are is making sure, you know, we, we saw a lot in our research about people saying just keeping track of what I owe and keeping track of due dates is hard.

[00:20:12] And the other piece, and, and one of the real resistors to, to online payments is, and that aren’t using. Like, I don’t remember. I, you know, people hope we’re using password managers, but no, they’re probably writing it down somewhere and forgetting it and all of that. Right. What can you do that gets rid of that friction?

[00:20:29] Hey, why don’t we just send you a customized texts that you can click on and you don’t have to worry about them all and password let’s keep you out. Uh, uh, rescue and repo by trying to send you those reminders. Maybe as I said, seven days after 30 days after, here’s your reminder, here’s your link. You don’t have to log in.

[00:20:46] You can just pay right now. Right? So I think we would like to say is the best way to deal with rescues and repos is not let the customer get them. Course, as you said, there, there’s still a percentage that are going to get there. Right. And you’re going to need to take some kind of act and there’s something so [00:21:00] not offensive about getting a text message.

[00:21:02] I can’t quite put my finger on it, but if I see an email or something that kind of jars me, it’s like, Hey, I’m confronting reality. I have a financial situation that I’m behind on. Right. I don’t know. Just the brevity of the, of the text message seems to me to be. A little bit more comforting. It’s almost like a little bit impersonal, but in a way that keeps me from getting personal with the issue.

[00:21:23] You know what I mean? No, a hundred percent, especially if you’re, if you’re near that rescue area, you know, if you’re, if you’re delinquent to a degree, a lot of those consumers. They don’t want to talk. They don’t want to be embarrassed. They don’t want to have to talk to on the phone. So if you can send me something that I can kind of self rescue, if you will, and I can then do it without having to talk to someone and be better.

[00:21:41] Hey, great. You’re like so much the better they are. And also can you then digitize that experience? You know, if someone’s in a true delinquent state right there, they’re 60 days past due, they’ve had trouble in the past. You’re probably not going to want to take an ACH from them, but you know, what, can I push you to debit card with just a link that you don’t have to worry about or.

[00:21:59] [00:22:00] Can I go all the way and go, you’re going to need to make a cash payment, but Hey, do you live near a Walmart? Great. Why don’t you just go in there? Here’s a code, just make a cash payment. You’re done. You can be out, you know, and we can kind of rescue you back. So kind of that ability to, to help drive that consumer.

[00:22:14] And I think you’re right. It make it less personal, make it less, let the consumer self-serve and rescue themselves if you will. And then the final thing, right. Is, and you and I joked about this actually, before we started, right. How configurable is the system, if your system is that cookie cutter system.

[00:22:28] Nope. This person 60 days they’re done they’re out. Yeah. There may be other aspects of that consumer that you want to look at. Do they have good payments in the past? Right? Are they, are they near payoff? Right. And, and can the system understand. And say, Hey, look, you know, Joel, 60 days past, we want him going here.

[00:22:45] You know, Kramer is 60 days past, but we may have to treat him differently. So, right. So can you configure things that you can, you know, we can go one way and not go another we’ve seen with one, for example, that, you know, we had, uh, a merchant is a little bit different than rescue and repo, but they, they were concerned because they were [00:23:00] having some fraud issues where people were paying off the full amount all at once.

[00:23:04] Getting their title and then charging it back or having a safe return. And they said, this, this isn’t working for us. And it was when we, when they moved over to our platform, they said, this is, this is one of our challenges. How can we work together to solve it? And what we did was we worked on a business rule that says, you know what, if you’re trying to pay your payoff amount and it’s more than like X times your normal monthly payment amounts, you know?

[00:23:26] So you’re, it looks kind of suspicious. This, system’s going to flag that and go, Hey, you know what? We’re not going to let you make that payment unless you talk to. Who wants to confirm exactly what you’re doing. Yeah. And it really helped them in terms of kind of driving down that fraud that they were having.

[00:23:39] That’s a, that’s a big deal, not just with those. I mean, with, even with dealer checks, it can be an issue. I do like having the ability to flag those and run them up there. There. So like you said, I mean, it’s fraud it’s at the end of the day it’s fraud. If you are making that payment knowing full well, you’re going to reverse it.

[00:23:57] We don’t need the angler fish on here to [00:24:00] confirm that’s fraud. That’s that’s fraud. Right. And if you see, you know, I said, if it’s their regular monthly payment amounts and it’s the payoff amount, that’s probably not broad. That’s probably a good payment. Let’s go. Three or four times the monthly payment amount and it’s a payoff.

[00:24:12] Yeah. Maybe we want to talk to that person first and not let model. So can you configure the system to let them do that? Right. And then look, the other thing, and this is, I think really interesting, especially when you deal with younger consumers is the real-time nature. Right? Look, you’re on a repo. The worst thing they can do is take a payment and then actually repost.

[00:24:32] Right. That’s a terrible thing. Right? You’ve now taken the baby. Have you thought about a repo and yet the truck wasn’t pulled off the road and the truck was sent out because, and a lot of that happens because right. I paid today on a Wednesday, but I didn’t get notified until Wednesday night or Thursday.

[00:24:47] It has to be real time. Right. There has to be that real-time connection. It’s very funny talking to some, some folks in the payments industry early on talking about real-time payments. Now I can’t real-time payments gonna be great. And look, I’m a [00:25:00] big believer in real-time payments, but I said, guys, you don’t understand there’s a generation coming up.

[00:25:04] That that’s, that’s an expectation from them. That everything is real-time Venmo generation. Absolutely. When I, when I’m a PayPal consumer and I’m the 20 something PayPal, consumer, and I send money to Joel, he gets it. Now we are in the payment space. Does he actually get the money instantly? No, of course not.

[00:25:20] It’s in this paper a while later? Yes. But to them that’s an instant payment. So it better be the same when I’m paying my, I don’t know if it’s not the same. I’m I’m not, I don’t have a satisfied consumer on the phone. Right. What do you mean? It’s not real time. Everything’s real time. That’s what I, that’s what I like about cryptocurrencies and I’ll, I’ll save that.

[00:25:37] We’re just about at time. But, like I said, we’re, we’re, we’re doing, we’re doing a couple of episodes here and our next one, Steve, I’m excited to take the conversation to the next step. So we talked a little bit about, and I’m gonna, I’m gonna use your exact word. I’m gonna refer to my notes here. Digital exploration.

[00:25:55] We’ve covered that you gave us a nice little pathway, whether you’re a smaller, a large [00:26:00] business to kind of get there. And I love the tangible nature of it. It’s very big. Next episode, we’re going to get into moving from digital exploration to digital integration. But what we’d like to say is really going on.

[00:26:12] How do you, you know, I I’ve got my quick wins. I was able to solve a few immediate business needs, but now let’s, let’s go all the way. Let’s try and digitize as much as we possibly can and really streamline that, bro. Yeah. Yeah, baby. All right, well, we’re going to wrap this one up, Steve. Thank you so much.

[00:26:28] Steve Kramer, the VP of product at Payne near me. Steve. Thanks so much for being on the episode and excited to get into the next one with you, Joel. Thanks for having you looking forward to it. The consumer five podcast has been brought to you by Northbridge loan software. That accelerates change. We’d also like to thank the national automotive finance association, the only trade association, exclusively serving the non-prime auto financing.[00:27:00]