00:02.700 --> 00:04.740 Sean Murray: Hello everyone, it's Sean Murray, I'm back again 00:04.740 --> 00:08.190 here at deBanked TV at the South East Acquirers show today I have 00:08.310 --> 00:11.220 Avive Baron from Direct Payment Group. Thanks for being here. 00:11.250 --> 00:12.480 Aviv Baron: Yeah. Thanks for having me, Sean. 00:12.930 --> 00:14.700 Sean Murray: No problem. So I wanted to ask you a little bit 00:14.700 --> 00:17.790 about what you do, because my understanding is that you are in 00:17.850 --> 00:19.470 the payments industry, is that right? 00:19.690 --> 00:22.450 Aviv Baron: Yeah, so we started Direct Payment Group to 00:22.660 --> 00:25.360 basically service merchants in the card not present space and 00:25.360 --> 00:28.330 your ecommerce stores, businesses in the middle medical 00:28.330 --> 00:31.030 billing space, anyone with stroke subscription sales. So 00:31.030 --> 00:33.760 they're generally, generally exposed to a higher level of 00:33.880 --> 00:38.560 risk, chargebacks and refunds. We come in and we give them a 00:38.590 --> 00:40.990 fully integrated solution so that they can process their 00:40.990 --> 00:45.160 sales, avoid as many chargebacks as possible and overall keep 00:45.160 --> 00:46.180 their merchant accounts happy. 00:47.260 --> 00:50.050 Sean Murray: What was the business like for you during the 00:50.050 --> 00:54.580 pandemic? I imagine there must have been a lot of activity in 00:54.610 --> 00:56.980 e-commerce transaction. Is that right? 00:57.160 --> 01:00.100 Aviv Baron: Yeah, so a lot of a lot of spending shifted online. 01:00.550 --> 01:03.100 One of the first things that we noticed was that merchants were 01:03.100 --> 01:06.310 hitting their volume capacity, and immediately had needs for 01:06.640 --> 01:09.490 basically accounts that needed to get upgraded or kind of 01:09.490 --> 01:12.250 graduate to a higher level of accounts. So we saw a lot of 01:12.250 --> 01:15.670 business come in from there. We actually catered primarily to 01:15.670 --> 01:18.130 the higher risk community. So we saw a lot of cannabis come in, 01:18.430 --> 01:22.120 CBD sales, a lot of dropshippers that needed to get on board. And 01:22.420 --> 01:23.860 yeah, we were able to serve them. 01:23.860 --> 01:27.290 Sean Murray: I have a question about the cannabis aspect of it. 01:27.740 --> 01:30.800 Is it like a state by state thing that you had to worry 01:30.800 --> 01:33.590 about? Or how do you how do you approach that whole landscape? 01:33.800 --> 01:36.320 Aviv Baron: Yeah, so that's a good question. Right now, it's 01:36.320 --> 01:39.860 kind of split down the middle between marijuana sales and hemp 01:39.860 --> 01:44.090 and CBD sales, hemp and CBD, we're good to go in all in all 01:44.090 --> 01:47.450 states, so you can sell any type of products. There are some 01:47.450 --> 01:50.660 regulations around like DA D&I, but in general, hemp and CBD are 01:50.660 --> 01:54.410 fine with marijuana, since there's no real card solution 01:54.410 --> 01:57.770 yet. We're not really playing in that space. But that is state to 01:57.770 --> 01:58.070 state. 01:59.020 --> 02:01.810 Sean Murray: And what's it like to be back here in person at a 02:01.810 --> 02:05.530 show? I imagine that you were probably doing a lot of online 02:05.530 --> 02:06.970 networking. So. 02:07.510 --> 02:10.780 Aviv Baron: Yeah, so most of our most of our prospecting and 02:10.780 --> 02:14.380 networking has been done online. So it's been on Zoom. It's been 02:14.410 --> 02:16.840 really through a lot of social media platforms. This has been 02:16.840 --> 02:19.690 great. We're finally back to it, again, to see be in the same 02:20.080 --> 02:23.050 room as people that kind of share the same goals and are 02:23.260 --> 02:26.560 kind of after the same knowledge that we are. So it's been great. 02:27.100 --> 02:28.600 Sean Murray: How long have you worked in the payments space 02:28.600 --> 02:29.020 for? 02:29.530 --> 02:32.440 Aviv Baron: So on and off around 10 years, I took a bit of a 02:32.440 --> 02:36.340 hiatus to work for a direct lender for eight years. And I 02:36.340 --> 02:38.590 stopped doing that around two years ago to get back into 02:39.280 --> 02:40.150 payments full time. 02:40.870 --> 02:42.790 Sean Murray: Well, that's great. Thank you very much. Appreciate 02:42.790 --> 02:46.420 your time. And we look forward to seeing you more at the show. 02:46.440 --> 02:48.450 Aviv Baron: Yeah, definitely. Thanks for having us. 02:48.850 --> 02:50.530 Sean Murray: All right. Thank you, everybody. Stay tuned for 02:50.530 --> 02:50.860 more.