PayCompass CEO Justin Volrath on Leadership, Culture & the Future of Payments

The SEAA Podcast, July 2026:

PayCompass Founder and CEO Justin Volrath sat down with Bill Glass to discuss how he built PayCompass and the meaning behind our #AgentFirst philosophy.

Listen to the full episode here.

Bill Glass:
Welcome to the podcast. I’m your host, Bill glass, and this is your front row seat to the future of payments and fintech. We’re diving deep into the stories, strategies and innovations that are shaping our industry. Whether you’re a seasoned entrepreneur, a forward thinking ISO, or just hungry for real industry insights, this is the podcast you’ve been waiting for.

If you love what you’re hearing, make sure to hit that like button and subscribe. Let’s get into this. Hey everybody. Today we’re joined with Justin Volrath, founder and CEO of PayCompass, one of the fastest growing ISO organizations in the country with more than two decades of experience in the payments industry. Justin has built his career around trust, innovation and helping businesses and sales professionals succeed.

How are you doing, brother?

Justin Volrath:

Doing well man. How are you doing? I’m doing great, I appreciate you.

Bill Glass:

Yeah, I appreciate you joining me. I know every second is valuable. So the fact you carve some time out for us, we really, really appreciate that.

So no one goes to college for this industry right. How the hell did you get into payments buddy?

Justin Volrath:

I love this conversation. So I grew up in the septic business. The water. Septic business? Yeah, we were number one in the number two business. That’s what we used to always say. Living in Des Moines, Iowa, and his family business or work together with my dad.

And that got to the point where we were traveling a lot. We started selling the products and we were traveling a lot. And it just got to the point where I’ve got a young family. Didn’t want to do that anymore. We were just kind of done with that. So when we moved away from that business, I really didn’t know what, I’d always done that.

So nine years old, right? And so I thought I wanted to go into real estate, which I did. But while I was studying for the test, I got into Craigslist and I found an ad for a company out of northern New York that just wanted me to go sling leases, that’s all. I didn’t know any better, but they said, we’ll give you $100 for every statement you can go gather.

And so I was like, let’s go. Yeah. That’s easy. Easy. I got this. And so I started going around doing it. My dad started doing it as well. Thinking like, well, we’ll figure this out. We figure out something long term. Within about two weeks, I was very disenfranchised. I was like, these guys are a bunch of scammers. This industry is horrible.

I started talking to people, but my dad got really excited about it and actually joined Heartland. I went into real estate about three years later. We’re making about the same money, but he’s working a lot less hours than I am. I’m working nights and weekends not seeing my family. And so that’s when he convinced me to join was, you know, man, I could just do his normal business hours and tell me about this residual income again.

And so that’s how I stumbled into it through a Craigslist ad and a really convincing father, the residual addict, I get it. That’s right. It’s it’s the mailbox money. I mean, we’re all in it for that. And that’s actually kind of a cool one. It’s funny how many times I have this conversation and it all starts with a Craigslist, right?

Bill Glass:
It’s like, because we all did it. That’s how we recruited nobody. Nobody put this on their first grade wish list of what they want to be with. No. Right. No. I want to grow up and be an astronaut. I want to go sling VCs. Five 20s, you know, like so one of the the coolest conversations I’m going to get into PayCompass growth because it’s fun.

The culture and what you guys have created. We’re going to get into that. But I just kind of want to dive into just the ever evolving world of payments. How the hell do y’all keep up with that, right? It’s a lot.

Justin Volrath:
It’s a lot. I mean, really, a lot of it is for me. It’s it’s constantly just learning, diving into things, reading. But coming to these shows, I think is the most important part of it. And not looking at any one like they are your competition or they’re above you or they’re beneath you, but just having conversations with everybody to learn what’s working for you, what’s not working for you. I remember when I very first started PayCompass, I came from the world where we didn’t we didn’t do, you know, cash discounting or search.

And I had no idea how to do it. I remember calling up a guy that was running nine. So that was a friend of mine, and I said, hey, what are you guys using for the terminals to do that surcharge? And he’s like, well, we’re using Dejavoo. That’s the only one that works. I mean, what do you guys use?

I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s us. Do it. Right? Yeah, sure. That’s what we’re doing. Yeah, right. But just, you know, now fast forward today, it’s started talking about ISVs and start talking about stablecoins. Start talking about all the technology changing. I learned so much from just each other. And I think, you know, industry shows like this is really where it happens is, you know, sitting through the classes, but more importantly, the conversations that happen, you know, the lobbying of the bar afterwards.

So what I like asking this question because it’s the Agent led sales approach. Right. Because you have two sides of the fence. You have, oh, that’s the old model. It’s going to die eventually. And then you have it as in, well, that’s stupid because you’re complaining about my Agent model, but you’re out here signing Agent offices. It’s the same concept, right?

And I think I’m really getting granular into recruiting someone that’s not from this space, training them up onto the space. Why has Comp has been so successful at that? So we don’t bring in newbies at all. We only work with experience Agents. I for a long time did that. So my you know, my first 15 plus years in this business was at Heartland and Beyond where we did that.

That was a lot of our model was bringing in brand new people. They might be selling, you know, uniforms or working at a bank or whatever. But they had that, that fire in the belly of that passion for sales and we could teach them the business. So I’ve done that side of it. And it’s, it’s, it’s hard because you really have to you have to hire for the passion, the energy, the the person that has the it, the fire.

I can train all the rest of the things. I, I just always say it really takes three things to be successful. You’ve got to have the ability to set an appointment with you have the ability to run an appointment and you have to know where to get knowledge. I can teach you how to run an appointment and where to get knowledge.

It’s hard for me to teach you how to get an appointment set. You just have to have that ability to talk to other human beings and get through that. Right? So. So for me, when we look at the, you know, our model is 1099 sales Agents across the country. And for us, it’s really just started with building something different, right.

Building something that isn’t just like everywhere else. It stands out as something that’s different. And you know, when you when you talk to enough people and people get burned other places, they’re looking for a home that’s there to take care of them. That’s really been what’s helped us grow. And when you’re looking at Agent growth, you know what is.

Bill Glass:

What would you say has been y’all’s approach to market that maybe maybe one that is struggled with and maybe one that was just extremely successful?

Justin Volrath:

Right. So, you know, for us what the biggest thing I think that sets us apart, that has been really successful for PayCompass is that we just try to be try to put ourselves in the shoes of the Agent.

So our mantra at PayCompass is #AgentFirst, it’s what it’s been since day one, and it’s what guides every decision we make, every partnership we create, every hire we make, every policy of a procedure. Everything we do is about how is this going to make the Agent’s life easier, or how is it going to make them more money?

Or hopefully both. And if we take that approach, we look at it and say, yeah, we’re here to serve the Agents, not the other way around. We’re here to make their lives easier. We know they’re driving down the road, scarfing down a cheeseburger real quick. They’re late for an appointment. They’re driving with one knee. They got the customer calling them because they forgot to change the bank account for them.

Hey, how can we help them out? Like, yeah, not. Oh, no. Sorry. You have to do this. And you have to pull out and triplicate and get the merchants, you know, second board sons, you know, blood sample like. No, don’t forget the fingerprint. That’s right. Let’s figure, you know, it’s for sure. How can we help them facilitate this?

How can we take that? Make life easier right off their plate, right? Yeah. Easier. Let them go do what they do best, which is sell deals, build relationships. Let us take some of that stuff off their plate. So when we really look at everything through that lens, every single person that PayCompass knows, hey, we got to make this Agent First.

How is this going to make their lives easier? And we constantly think about that. That’s that’s really been the biggest thing for us. What we’ve struggled with really, Bill, has been building the ecosystem around that. That doesn’t fall into the trap of being like, oh, well, this is easier for us. So let’s create a policy that makes it easier and more streamlined for us, because at the end of the day, it’s oftentimes that makes it harder on the Agent.

So it’s resisting that urge to say, well, this makes my life easier. So I’m going to create this policy. Yeah. Hey, go online and fill out a ticket when you need us. Well no no no no no. That’s we’re not going to do that. You fill out the ticket, the Agent can talk to us however they want to talk to call, text, email, whatever.

And let’s set that up. So that creates some operational difficulty sometimes some lack of efficiencies. But at the end of the day, it overcomes itself with the age of satisfaction.

Bill Glass:

Do you feel that a lot of ISOs, when they’re trying to break through to that, you know, out of that 1 to 2 million annual revenue range, do you think that they get bogged down in SOPs?

Justin Volrath:
Yes, 1,000%. And everyone at PayCompass can tell like SOPs is that phrase I will just lose my crap on. Yeah, I go crazy about that. Talk about SLAs and SOPs like hell no. Right. That’s that’s not happening if he comes. Because my experience has been from other companies I was at and other partners we work with. If I give you a seven day SLA, the human, you know, human nature is that I’m going to wait six and a half days to start working on that because I’ve got seven days.

Well, how about we just make it as fast as possible? And so we talked a lot about prioritization with our teams, you might you might wake up in the day and say, hey, these are my top five priorities I need to take care of today. But that might change by 9 a.m.. That might change by noon. What that is prior to have to constantly be shifting because new things are coming in at you.

And so we’re just constantly shifting and addressing the most important needs at that time. Then we don’t need SLAs and SOPs. Yeah, I mean, I think SLAs there there is I think both of them have its purpose. But when you lead by that, you’re setting, in my opinion, you’re setting failing expectations for you and your shot.

Because anything is going to come up. It could look like. And it’s a sales guy, right? He wants to get the deal through underwriting. That’s how they make their money. But in reality these guys don’t slow down enough sometimes or girls don’t slow down enough to like review the website. Yeah, it’s a single product for $24.99.

Bill Glass:
It’s affiliate, right? Like, and you’re wondering why I’m giving you so much pushback. And I think I agree with you on that. The SLA thing can be a trap.

Justin Volrath:

Yeah, it is a big trap, not just operationally but, you know, then you have your sales guys calling on day two. What’s going on with this account? Yeah, dude, I haven’t even been able to dig into the file yet.

Bill Glass:

I applaud that that approach. It’s pretty cool because it’s outside the norm. For years and years and years I’ve I’ve been a Simon fan and I one of the most impactful things he’s he’s always talked about that I learned a long time ago is you know, it all starts with why.

Justin Volrath:
You know, if you don’t understand the why, the what and the how does it matter? Right? So if we’re training our team at our office on here’s what you do. Right. Here’s here’s how to change a bank account. Here’s here’s how to get a deal approved. Here’s how to submit this. But if you don’t understand the why behind it.

Why are we doing this? Why did we ask for three months of bank statements? Why did we ask for a copy of the receipt on this risk review? Yeah. Now, when you understand the why there’s power now in that team saying, hey, I figured out there’s maybe a better way to do this, or they can now explain it to the person on the phone who’s upset that they have to turn over this receipt.

Not just hey, I don’t know this what the policy says. So, yeah, that’s a big thing we talk about at PayCompass. And I think that’s really hard to do as you scale. It’s to continue to not go look at the SOP. What the guidelines say. Like that’s simple and risk. And it’s simple and definitely simple in compliance and even to some extent with underwriting.

Bill Glass:
You know moving shifting a little bit into like a high risk mentality is the biggest battle. Is that formula right? As you stick to the formula because everything else for, you know, VP’s, executive directors and above, we understand how to get back into the formula. A sales rep or your basic underwriters? Not. And it’s just a consistency factor.

Justin Volrath:
Yeah, yeah, they have to understand what this really means. The overall picture because they’re the ones at the end of the day, they’re on the phone speaking with the person. There will be an Agent of a merchant. You have somebody there coworker and risk to where they understand okay, I get why we’re doing this, you know. Sucks, right?

Hey, this does suck. But help me. Let me explain it to you. Why? And then really, this just creates an evolution in the business of better, better ways. To do that, you have to have strong managers, their team that understand that and can help drive that every day. The you know, while I’m sitting here on this podcast, the team that’s they’re running this and making this happen, they have to understand that people.

Bill Glass:
Yeah I agree with that 100%. Now let’s get into the fun part. Who the hell is PayCompass, and how did you build your culture, man? Because it is fun to watch all grow.

Justin Volrath:

Man I appreciate that. I mean, at the core of it is, is, you know, my wife Nini and I started this six and a half years ago, a little over six and a half years ago, literally in the corner of our bedroom.

I had parted ways with Beyond in October of 2019, and I had no intention of starting an ISO. There was I was just going to get a job working for another large ISO helped build their sales team. It’s what I do really well. Yeah, but I couldn’t find anyone that I really aligned with on this Agent experience. There was too much status quo talk.

There was too much. Well, this worked before this work here. This is how we do it. The structure, structure, structure. I’m not I’m not good with that sort of stuff. And so meaning I decided I guess it’s time for us to start our own thing. And literally out of the corner of our bedroom, just her and I started it January 1st of 2020.

Great time to start a company, by the way. There was a couple of things happen there. Yeah. But you know, we didn’t think it was going to be larger than that. I honestly thought we’d have 20 or 30 sales Agents. We just served them. It would it would grow. Our goal was to have 30 sales Agents in the first year.

We ended up with 30 sales Agents in about three weeks. And we really underestimated the demand for a place that was super focused on the Agent experience. How do we serve you? Not the other way around. And I think that’s really the underlying factor, is we just come at everything with this, the servant mindset and that really pushes itself out in this Agent First approach is if we just look at everything that we’re here to serve them and create this whole structure and it makes through in everything we do. And so then when it comes to hiring, we hire for culture first, meaning I sit in on every single interview for an employee at Pay Compass and am part of the process of making the final decision because the culture is so important to us.

I can’t teach you to give a damn, but I can teach you the skill of how to do underwriting or do deployment or do file building. We can teach you that. But I can’t teach you to care. I can’t teach you to have human empathy for that. The person on the other end of the phone who needs this deal done so they can pay their mortgage next month.

I can’t teach that. So if we really just focus on that culture, then the rest of it takes off from there. And then I think the last part of it is just we don’t take ourselves too seriously, right? We’re here, you know, we’re not building moon rockets here. We’re we’re selling credit card processing. Let’s have fun with it.

Let’s enjoy ourselves. Let’s make fun of ourselves. Let’s be self-deprecating and all that good stuff. And our marketing, our marketing team does an absolutely amazing job taking that. We just give them free rein to have fun with it and be silly. And, you know, it’s it’s just a fun time for us.

You have the younger shops like we started in 2020 also. So like you have those that are are trying to be more modernized. And I’m going to call it loose right within within reason, you know in trying to be aggressive. But then you have your old school shops set in their way, archaic data systems. Right? They can’t make massive changes because they have to recode the entire system.

Bill Glass:
So, you know, it’s really kind of refreshing to see you guys, if you had to sum it up, what’s a sentence or maybe a few words that define your culture?

Justin Volrath:

At Pay Compass, I’d say challenge the status quo.That is what it is, is we’re not, you know, anyone in this room or anyone working at PayCompass knows if they’re going to come to me with or with a solution that says, well, this is how so-and-so does this, how so-and-so does.

I don’t give a damn how anyone else does it. Let’s figure out what is best for our Agents. Let’s challenge that status quo. Let’s help change this industry for the better by doing that for our Agents. And hopefully that will help drive change in the industry as a whole.

Bill Glass:

So moving to more of that long term outlook for PayCompass, what would you say the next five years look like?

Justin Volrath:
I think it’s, you know, continuing the Agent First approach, continuing to serve the Agents. But we’re taking a really big focus now on how do we help our Agents not overlook the massive opportunities there in ISVs right now. So we know that we’re doing a lot with ISVs. We know there’s a lot of opportunity out there. We know that the the boomer that was running the store and was fine with a cash register and a side terminal, it’s now retiring, selling their business, closing up shop, being replaced by the guy that wants to be at his kids baseball game, looking at his phone and knowing what sales were last hour.

Integrated technology is important and the payments is a very big part of that. You know, there’s a there’s a lot of stuff out there that’s showing that, you know, ISVs are expecting nearly 50% of the revenue to come from payments, right? So we have to play a big part of that. We’re doing a line on that.

But we have many Agents that are trailing behind in that. So we’re spending a lot of time on that side of it, continuing to help drive more on the ISV side of it. And just continuing to ask how do we help our Agents? How to help our merchants use more of our products is another big one.

I mean, I get it, I’d sell payments and then I’m done. I’m down the street on to the next ads. Get in and out. I’m not going back there, you know? But there’s amazing other products that they can use there. There’s banking, there’s lending, there’s payroll, there’s gift cards, there’s POS, all these additional things that can help drive down your attrition all at the same time, helping this merchant have a better experience. So we’re building a lot of systems baked around that as well.

Bill Glass:

So let’s talk about systems because I’ve had the opportunity to use yours. The PayCompass merchant portal, you guys have done a really good job of data aggregation, right? Bringing a lot of stuff in for knowledge is power type thing. Talk us through that, what that is, you know, for anybody listening, is like, hey, I want to pick up the phone call. Talk us through that. What is in that portal? How does that help the Agent First mentality? And how did you get to the point where you’re at now?

Justin Volrath:
So we have two big agent tools that we use at PayCompass. The first one is is Navigo. Navigo is our Agent portal. That was 100% built in-house by us. And that started years ago when we realized, man, we really need to take this next step. We were just using partner portals. We didn’t know. So we examined all the ones out there, all the big ones out there.

I’m not going to name names, but we tried them all and we just couldn’t find something that worked for us. Yeah, we thought it was too expensive. It was too limiting. We we didn’t have the flexibility. So we literally hired a part time developer and said, here’s what we want and build it, built it just built for ourselves.

And it’s obviously a lot of evolutions over the years, but it’s truly that place where we want all of our Agents to live. This is where you go find your compensation information. This is where you go and roll a new merchant. You need to find marketing information. It’s here. You need to find out what the next day funding cut-off times are for this bank or that bank.

It’s all there. We really want them to go and have that all in that spot. And then secondly is we recently released an app called Genie. And Genie is a is meant to be in your hand answers to solutions that you have. So we have a team that if you’ve got a question, you can email them or call them and say, hey, what gateway should I use in this situation?

Hey, I’m looking for a terminal that will work on Wi-Fi and has buttons like things like that. And they’re the to answer that. But really, our team built this app that has all those answers in there now. So has this knowledge base there. It has learning opportunities in there. It has links to to all of our trainings that are in there as well.

But more importantly, it’s got this entire software hardware matrix in there because we support so many different products and solutions, and our Agents can, instead of having to walk away and call in and wait for to get an answer, they can just pick up their phone. Open it up, look for it, use the the the filtering matrix in there to find the answer that they’re looking for.

So those two big those two things have been huge for our Agents. And really big distinguishers in the industry for us is that we’re really trying to invest in let’s just not buy something that everybody else has. Let’s build our own to make sure it works for our experience. Yeah, we went through the same thing. We tested others, right?

We we were using partner portals and everything, and we decided to say, you know what, screw it. Built our own CRM, and now we control workflows. And that’s the most important part is my I tell my team all the time, I would rather get yelled at by a merchant because we over-communicated than we under-communicated any day.

So, you know, building your own system, the control factors big because there’s so many variables in our space. There’s so many different moving parts. You know, we’re real big in firearms. So like two retail firearms merchants, same transaction, same volume. Everything’s going to be different how we approach it and underwriting, how we do all that stuff.

And it’s really nice when you don’t have to be set by limitations, where there’s internal notes for risk and underwriting versus the internal notes for everybody else. And you know, that’s important, right? Because we don’t want the bad actors moving off of firearms to more of, you know, your all these nuanced leads, we’re all getting right. The the product sells, not the affiliate stuff, but like the product sells.

We know two things to be correct. They’re right in today’s society or three things, it’s legit. But if it’s legit, it’s checking out even the eye test or they’re funneling cells into something else. Peptides, whatever, you know, and then there’s just the theft guys, right. They’re going to run up 100k volume, never ship a product, straight up fraud.

And that’s evolved so much that taken that into consideration with with how you just operate day to day. I had a friend of mine, he’s finally making the jump to go start his own ISO. And he goes, what do you think I should start out with? And I go, man, me and Frank go to HubSpot.

Yeah. You know, or go to his hub because you can build your workflow. That’s right. And and now, once you’ve established your workflows and you’re ready to build your own, maybe you don’t want to. Maybe you want to use Zoho or HubSpot forever. But now you have your workflows. Test it out. For us, that was miserable, right? Is we launched an internal CRM.

Everything kept breaking. Breaking. It’s like, man, I sales would be two hours into work, moving and grooving, and then something would break, right? Right. It’s just it’s a nightmare. But it’s a blessing and a curse at the same time. I agree, I agree, it’s great to have it. It’s it’s it’s a necessity. It’s become the core of everything we do.

Bill Glass:
Yeah. You have to. So I’ve got some some cool business minded questions. What do you what would you say when you’re looking at portfolio are your key three key metrics that at a high level you can say, okay we’re on the right path here?

Justin Volrath:

I would say I mean, number one, I think the most important and the largest one is it’s just volume increase, right.

Bill Glass:
Are you seeing volume increasing quarter after quarter?

Justin Volrath:

I don’t like to look month after month. There’s too much, you know, to me to be variables there as a holiday whatever it type of merchants you have. But volume increasing quarter after quarter is is a critical one for sure. Secondly is is attrition. I mean, you know what what are we doing to make sure stay low and is it and we analyze attrition a little deeper is we analyze it on true attrition.

And we define that as if businesses are going out of business. That’s not really, really lose them. Just part of the economy but true attrition of like that. We lost them to a competitor. We lost them somewhere else. That’s really you know, we’ve got to look at that and see that that’s we stay in steady hopefully going down.

You know that’s in the why behind it. Right. The why behind it is important. And then three is I would love to see a strong you know M.C.C. mix in there as well. Diversification. Don’t want to be so loaded up into into one place. You don’t want to be. All we do is restaurants. But what happens if someone comes in like Toast?

Clears out of town, right? Yeah. So you’ve got to have that strong diversification. And so that those are the three things I’m really looking at saying, like, you’ve got to have this stuff to have a healthy portfolio and healthy business. And that’s true from a company standpoint or an agent standpoint. I think I’m driving home to Agents like, don’t get so overloaded in one place or on one merchant that you’re so much your, your, your income is reliant upon that.

Do you ever have to have the conversation? Let me rephrase that. Do you ever have the conversation with an Agent, like leverage us more, not selfishly, right? We want all of our Agents to carry our flag, but building your own brand comes in time, right?

And you can throw. You can try to put all this marketing stuff out there. You can do it, blah, blah. Like we spend a lot of money employing people that this is their job to build PDFs and stuff like that, right? Do you have to have that conversation with them all like, hey, just slow down and give it time and we’ll show you how to transition your brand and still fly our flag?

Yeah, right. You’re you’re a two man shop. You’re a three man shop or you’re a one man shop. Like, focus on selling. Yeah, all the time. All the time. My my kind of shining conversation on that is, is one of our largest Agents was just so fixated on this concept. Tried 2 or 3 different brands. I want a white label.

I want a white label. It’s just I want to do this. I mean, finally, after years of talking about a realized, my gosh, my life is so much easier if I don’t have to worry about that. Everybody calls 800 number or calls me and I call in and get help for it. I don’t need to try to have my own thing here.

I can go and join my family, go enjoy trips. I can, you know, be there and not have to worry about. Oh my gosh, do they? Did I answer the phone correctly or are they answering the phone call? Protect my brand. Because at the end of the day, it’s about building your portfolio. Not necessarily. Now, if you want to build that brand, great, we’re going to help you do that.

We’re going to protect it. We’re going to be we’ll be behind the curtain. We want to ask you, even though it’s us. And that’s fine. But I find most of these people. You’re exactly right. It’s your 2 or 3 people. You’re not quite there yet, so don’t. Don’t try to rush a crawl. Walk, run yourself into a situation.

It’s like they get I’m going to call it that 3050 mid count. And it’s like you are missing something we struggle with daily. It’s it’s fairly easy to put the mid on. Right. Right. It’s really hard to support the mid sometimes. That’s exactly right. So what do you want to do. You want to sit behind a desk and take support calls all day or lean on us.

And I was I was loose conversation this morning with somebody. I said you know that I think is where PayCompass shines is that we’re when you’re a small agent shop or you’re an individual agent and you go get a deal with a large, large ISO, a large FSB, somebody who’s just massive, you’re going to get lost in the weeds, your number, your number, and you’re not going to have the support.

And you’re you’re going to take forever trying to navigate how to do everything there. You don’t know who to escalate things to. You don’t know how to get things. You don’t know how to facilitate change. Yeah. Where pickup is really shines is that we have those relationships and we’re tend to have really influential, you know, abilities of these places where we can move the needle, we can make changes, we can do stuff because we’re a larger player with these companies.

You joining in with us is takes us back to my Midwest roots is it’s kind of like joining a co-op when, you know together there’s a lot of power in this together. So we bring a bunch of agents together and we bring all that volume together. You bring all that that the the new MIDs every month together, something that you have a lot more influence in that.

And that’s where we really play well as like let us do the customer service, let us do the underwriting. Let’s do the deployment for you. We’ll do all that stuff for you. You don’t have to worry about that. You go do what you do best and sell deals. And don’t cry wolf with every problem. Right. That’s just that’s that is that’s going to happen.

Bill Glass:
So before we wrap up, I want I kind of alluded to this earlier, like when I asked five years where do you see PayCompass five years, 3 to 5 years. Where do you see the industry? You think it’s going to be that heavy in AI, or, I think AI is going to play a big part in a, in a I’ve got a I’ve got a kind of a hot take on AI, but I actually think the AI is going to become so prevalent that there’s going to be a push for everyone to go back to more in person.

Justin Volrath:

I think there’s so much out there that scares people, and it’s already tricking people thinking that this is real, this is real, this is real that people are going to return back to. I don’t want to deal with anything like that. I want to talk to the person that is here. Across the table from me who I know is a real human being.

So until I can figure out how to replicate a human being, I think we’re safe on that for at least a little while. But so I think that it’s actually going to be a play, a huge part in our industry from an efficiency standpoint. But I think from the sales standpoint, it’s actually going to push a shift back to the old school palm to palm handshake.

I’m here to take care of them, here to serve you. But in a much higher technological way. You’ve got to be there to run those ISVs. You’ve got to be there to integrate. You’ve got to have the knowledge and the ability to do that, because the deals that are coming across now are increasingly not the individual coffee shop, but the guy who’s building the software to take care of 45 coffee shops or 4500 coffee shops.

And so that’s where I see this going. Is this continued evolution into just the ISVs and just deeper embedded technology? Yeah, I’ve been saying for two years, I think embedded finance is we will evolve, right? I know everybody is on this fintech kick, but like we we will evolve. I don’t think it’s full fintech. If you look at the definition of fintech, a payment processor is what isn’t right.

So you know, I think that that’s it. And I think if companies continue over the next 3 to 5 years to use it as efficiency models and not replacing. And I’m not going to say who it is, but there’s a group amongst us, it’s pretty large that is shifted to their support to being very heavy AI.

And the issue with that is, is they don’t AI is a knowledge base, right? That’s the best way right now to to treat it is you encompass it into your own organization and use it as a knowledge base piece. But for it to think in reality, going back to my two firearms merchants, well, those questions are going to be polar opposite, right.

And that’s where I think people are. Where I’m scared it’s going to continue to evolve. It’s not meant to replace. It’s creating efficiencies. And I think that’s what makes companies like ours that are going to understand that difference, really stand out and succeed over the ones that are looking for just let’s drive efficiency. Let’s cut costs as much as we can, increase profits by by replacing human bodies with AI.

But we’re looking at is using AI to to really supplement and empower us. So imagine you know, we have a knowledge base that our support team accesses for information. You know, somebody calls in and and as the person is speaking AI is listening to that and pulling up the resource that is applicable to what’s being.

So by the time the person finishes their two sentences about the problem, it’s up on your screen. The solution for that that’s now empowering them, that’s speeding up that that’s given a better customer service rate, better replace that. Yeah. No, no tone inflection. Being able to calm someone down, de-escalate situations like AI is never going to be able to do that in my opinion.

Bill Glass:
Yeah, but I appreciate like I said, you coming and joining us. If anybody listening on this call wants to continue the conversation, what’s the best path to get ahold of the team?

Justin Volrath:

I would go go to our website, paycompass.com. There’s a form there you can fill out, which is then going to filter to the appropriate people, including myself, to reach out and start a chat. It’s probably the easiest way.

Bill Glass:

Awesome. All right guys, well, there’s some pretty cool things happening over here, but I think the coolest part about PayCompass and what they’ve done to be so successful is they’re constantly pushing the limit. Go and talk to them. Have a conversation. I can tell you who you choose as a partner means everything.

For the first three years in this industry, 3 to 5 years really, but three years, right? You don’t know what you don’t know and lean on them, giving you tools to be able to be right now effective in the in the field is huge and not have to just call in to your relationship manager every second of every day.

So, you know, as you guys are listening and wrapping up this podcast, reach out to the team, hear them out. They’ve got some great things that could really help you out.

Justin Volrath:

Thanks, Bill. Appreciate that. Yeah man. We’re honored and I appreciate the kind words.