[00:00:00] The world is waking up to the power of crypto. And we are seeing this with new NFT and token launches every day, all using blockchain technologies. We’re also seeing huge marketing spends by crypto exchanges and platforms. And so this season, we are speaking to the marketing leaders of those crypto companies hosted.

[00:00:19] I brave software in me, Dani to Warren,

[00:00:25] you are listening to a new episode of the brave marketer podcast. And this one features no other than Aaron Schneider who you’ll soon learn is my wife’s cousin. And he’s been in the e-commerce FinTech and payments industry for over 22 years. He’s worked for companies like bill me later, which was acquired by eBay and PayPal.

[00:00:44] And before. PayPal credit and worked for bank of America, JP Morgan, and even brave, and always handling business development of partnerships for BitPay. Who’s the largest cryptocurrency payments gateway, you’ll learn a bit pay is actually compatible with 95 different crypto wallets in [00:01:00] 13 different cryptocurrencies and enables merchants to accept crypto payment.

[00:01:04] No volatility risk. And you’re going to love this episode because we discuss crypto utility and the challenges and opportunities with integrating crypto as a payment method at many different e-commerce retailers and also in store. And then we’re going to talk about trends and FinTech marketing, and how to attract millennials and really be relevant and meaningful and timely with.

[00:01:23] So every episode we choose a brand that has run an ad campaign with brave as our pick of the week. And this week we’re choosing by bit one of the fastest growing cryptocurrency exchanges with more than 2 million registered users where you can buy, sell and trade crypto instantly, they run sponsored images with brave, and I’ve seen high engagement from brave.

[00:01:41] Who are crypto enthusiasts and with no further ado, here’s this week’s episode of the breve marketer. Aaron, welcome to the brave marketer podcast. How are you doing today? Doing great [00:02:00] Donnie, uh, excited to be here. Thanks so much for having me. Great. And what are you doing this weekend? Well, a special shout out to Donnie’s daughter, Zoe.

[00:02:09] Who’s having her bat mitzvah this weekend and I’m flying up to Connecticut to be there. Yeah. So Erin, I go way back.

[00:02:17] Donny Dvorin: he is

[00:02:17] the cousin of my wife and they were so close that they call each other Cobra or cosis cause they were like brother and sister growing up. But we’re not going to talk too much about family history.

[00:02:30] We’re going to talk about business. That’s what we’re here to understand and talk about. So why don’t we get into it, Aaron, what’s the most exciting thing that you’re working on right now at BitPay? Yes. A ton of exciting things happening at BitPay. We are smack dab in the middle of the world of crypto, the world of payments, the world of NFTs, the world of Ana Mehta versus e-commerce alternative payments.

[00:02:57] So yeah, it’s a, it’s an exciting space to [00:03:00] be in right now. You know, some examples of projects that I’ve worked on recently, one example would be, the Lamborghini and Ft collection Lamborghini recently ran their first ever NFT collection. And we were super excited to be part of it in partnership with a company called NFT pro, and we were processing significant transactions on their behalf, significant crypto transactions in terms of them selling their first ever.

[00:03:30] And FTS. Got it enough for you to do a whole bit page pitch, but, you know, can you give our listeners a little bit more understanding of what bit pay does in your. Yeah, absolutely. So I’m on the BizDev partnership team here at BitPay and, uh, BitPay is the largest and probably most well known crypto payments company.

[00:03:50] Uh, we have a few different offerings, but ultimately we make it super easy for merchants to accept crypto payments with no volatility risk we send silly are [00:04:00] converting the crypto instantaneously into Fiat. And paying the merchant in us dollars or euros or pounds, Sterling, or other Fiat currencies. So we make it super easy for merchants to accept crypto, without having to take the risk of holding crypto.

[00:04:14] And that’s one of our main offerings. And then we also are doing some cool things around crypto payouts, crypt, over awards and things like. But, but yeah, we’re working with a ton of great brands that have launched crypto payments. Recently we launched with AMC theaters, super excited to work with those guys as well as PACS on.

[00:04:33] Um, and then we have other clients who’ve been accepting crypto payments for years, like new ag and Atmos. Cool. Is it always, uh, e-commerce on their website or is it ever like in store, at look at theater locations? Yeah. Great question. So, you know, historically for the past, probably nine of the 10 years we’ve been in existence, our focus has been e-commerce.

[00:04:54] And part of the reason for that is crypto payments typically are not. As [00:05:00] fast as credit card transactions. And so crypto payments could take a few minutes, for example, to get confirmed on the blockchain. And so there was a great fit between e-commerce and crypto and, and BitPay in that most e-commerce merchants.

[00:05:16] Don’t mind waiting a few minutes to get a confirmation, but we are working on something super exciting at BitPay around the point of sale, because we did realize, you know, I think most people in the crypto industry would agree. You know, crypto is awesome. Crypto is cool, but long-term crypto needs more utility.

[00:05:33] You know, people at some point are going to get tired of just logging into their crypto wallet or their crypto exchange account and seeing, oh yeah, my crypto went up or my crypto is flat today. You know, at some point crypto has to be usable and there has to be utility around it. And so, you know, probably one of the last big missing pieces of the crypto ecosystem is giving crypto more utility.

[00:05:56] And so that’s really what we’re in the business of doing is enabling customers to [00:06:00] use their crypto, to make purchases. And so we are moving into the point of sale. We did sign a deal with Verifone, which is the largest credit card terminal manufacturer in the world about eight months ago. And we’ve been.

[00:06:11] Working on probably one of our biggest integrations ever with them. And in the next few weeks, you should see some announcements coming from BitPay and Verifone around starting to launch some national brands at the point of sale. And so we’re super excited about. That’s awesome. Could you see one day for brave, where like someone could use bat at basic attention token at specific e-commerce retailers and BitPay basically take care of, uh, that transaction and in paying out the retail.

[00:06:44] So I, I can’t give away too much because there’s lots of cool things happening behind the scenes. Yes. I can definitely envision brave being involved in some future projects around the point of sale. And I asked that because I’m in [00:07:00] sales and I have no connection really to the biz dev department. So it wasn’t sharing any confidential information.

[00:07:05] I was just kinda saying, Hey, what if, yeah. Yeah. So, so one thing we’re doing is, you know, BitPay partners with crypto wallet. So we’re compatible with about 95 different crypto wallets today, including companies like. Coinbase FTX, Gemini cracking, Mehta, mass ledger, atomic trust, et cetera. And so, um, one of the wallets that, uh, we hope to partner with in the future is the brave crypto wallet.

[00:07:34] And, uh, we have, you know, definitely started some discussions around that. Gotcha. And can you give us a sense of the transaction size? Like, um, how many transactions or, or put it into Fiat terms? Millions of dollars are transacted with. We do about a billion dollars a year in crypto payments today, but we are envisioning hyper growth over the next 24 months based on what we’re currently seeing happening [00:08:00] in the industry.

[00:08:01] You know right now, uh, we’re seeing a ton of interest from any brands that are really wanting to focus on millennials. I saw a statistic recently from pew that said 68% of millennials who make over a hundred thousand dollars a year now on crypto. So there’s really no better way to appeal to millennials than accepting crypto.

[00:08:22] And the fact that you can accept crypto and the fees are less than credit cards and there’s no charge backs and no fraud. Makes it kind of a slam dunk from a merchant’s perspective, particularly in the e-commerce world. And now moving into the point of sale world. Today we’re supporting about 13 cryptocurrencies.

[00:08:40] So we work with Bitcoin, Ethereum, those coin light coin ship, us DC, Bitcoin cash, and a handful of other stable coins. And you should see some announcements in the next few months from us around adding a few additional currencies as well. you know, this podcast is all about brave marketing moments.

[00:08:58] What would you say is your brief marketing? [00:09:00] Probably a few examples of brave marketing moments. You know, one thing that I like to do is, is help companies find incremental marketing opportunities, incremental revenue opportunities. I think over my 22 year career, I’ve really made it a point of, um, representing companies and products that provide incremental value, both on the marketing and sales front.

[00:09:26] And so, you know, I’ve worked with. You know, a ton of fortune 500 companies, you know, think the United airlines of the world, the Lowe’s of the world, the Schwinn bicycles of the world, the FedEx’s of the world to help them find incremental pockets of revenue, incremental pockets of customer growth. You know, that’s really been my focus.

[00:09:47] So for example, I worked at eBay for six years and. You know, one thing that that eBay did for six years was we were reaching out to major brands, major well-known brands and saying, Hey, do you [00:10:00] have any older model inventory? Do you have any refurbished inventory?

[00:10:03] Do you have any products that, you know, for whatever reason, didn’t sell that? Well, this season that you would be open to selling on eBay. at a significant discount, worked with a ton of brands, including some of the ones I mentioned, like, like Schwinn bicycles, for example, and help them liquidate millions and millions and millions of dollars, the bicycles on eBay.

[00:10:24] And this was just inventory that was sitting in. You know, a couple of warehouses collecting dust, and we were able to turn it into actual, you know, revenue in the form of millions of dollars. So that would be just one, you know, kind of small example and, you know, being in the payments and e-commerce and alternative payment space, you know, there’s always ways to market your products in a different way.

[00:10:48] There’s always a different customer base that maybe you’re not appealing to today. There’s always a new. Pocket of revenue that you’re probably not capturing today. There’s always a way to [00:11:00] reduce abandonment. So those are all just, you know, some things over the course of my career that I’ve focused on and trying to come at it from a very consultative angle.

[00:11:09] When you’re selling BitPay, who is the target market? Who are you sexually selling to? Primarily the CMO has a big say in, in crypto. And, and whether or not a company is willing and thinking about crypto payments, CEOs are super excited about it generally. And then the CFO often is the one who might be the most pessimistic about the idea to start with because, you know, 99% of CFOs that I talk to say, well, I don’t want to touch crypto.

[00:11:40] I don’t want to hold crypto. I don’t, I don’t want crypto on my balance. But the beauty of the BitPay solution is that we’re able to pay the merchant in us dollars or euros or pounds Sterling. So we’re able to satisfy that issue pretty quickly with the CFO. So, but it’s definitely a C-suite decision, particularly for larger [00:12:00] brands and larger merchants.

[00:12:01] Some CEOs are really embracing it, take like the management team at a company like AMC theaters or new ag, like they’re huge fans of crypto they’re going on. Their Twitter feeds and their LinkedIn feeds, every week or two and mentioning that they accept crypto payments and they’re getting. You know, thousands and thousands of likes from fans of Bitcoin and fans, a ship and fans of those coin.

[00:12:25] So, you know, crypto there, there’s a huge marketing element just around offering crypto payments that in some cases is actually. bigger than the actual ROI that merchants are seeing, you know, the, you know, you might have a, a merchant that does $500 million in sales. And from an ROI perspective, they might see a one or 2% increase in sales due to accepting crypto.

[00:12:49] But they’re okay with that because of the one or 2% that they are seeing are highly incremental. We’ve done. Research with Forrester showing that the [00:13:00] incrementality about 22 to 35% of customers that do pay with crypto or incremental new customers. So that’s huge for marketing and also just the social side of it.

[00:13:09] You know, getting thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of likes when the CEO is tweeting out, that we’re going to start accepting. Crypto is super exciting for these. That’s great. Yeah. I mean, there’s obviously a huge buzz on crypto and FTS, blockchain. Metaverse everything that you had just a named and it totally makes sense that, once they struck a partnership with you, they’re going to tell their millennial community about it to the companies actually see a lift in business, or like, how are they measuring the success of the.

[00:13:43] Yeah. I mean, it’s still early, you know, it’s still early days in the world, the crypto payments, you know, so I’d say most merchants are seeing a one or 2% increase in sales. Uh, but of the, that increase in sales, they’re seeing somewhere between 22 and [00:14:00] 35% of the customers that are paying with crypto are incremental new customers.

[00:14:04] And so. You know, we’re seeing really creative marketing coming from some of these merchants. For example, I, I heard recently that new ag actually bought a billboard on one of the busiest highways in LA talking about accepting crypto. So, you know, they’re viewing it more from a marketing lens than from a pure ROI lens.

[00:14:24] And I think because crypto is still early because you know, maybe 10% of large merchants are accepting crypto and 90% of merchants. Are still kind of researching it and looking into it. You know, I think things will shift over time. Just like, you know, for example, the buy now pay later market, you know, five years ago, buy now pay later might be, might’ve been 1% of sales.

[00:14:46] Now, most merchants are probably saying it’s closer to four to six or 7% of sales. So I’m expecting the same type of thing to happen in the crypto market over the next couple of years. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. There’s obviously a lot of growth. [00:15:00] You can see the market cap of all the crypto companies increasing and it’s becoming, I mean, I think specifically because of the NFTs, it’s becoming part of popular culture, so it makes sense that they do the integration and then are using it from a marketing standpoint for the brand.

[00:15:17] Just to see that. To seem relevant, to seem timely, you know, um, versus like they’re expecting this huge bump. Yeah. It’s it’s it’s Hey, this brand is innovative. They’re accepting crypto, right? They’re accepting crypto and nobody knows this, but behind the scenes, the CFO knows I can accept crypto without actually taking any risk.

[00:15:36] And so, you know, that’s what makes it an easier offering versus a harder offering, because obviously there are, there are offerings out there where it’s. The merchants have to accept crypto and have to go open a crypto wallet and then have to maybe lose sleep if the crypto drops overnight. And so, you know, we’ve really tried to tackle that issue, but there’s so many cool use cases to, you know, like [00:16:00] think about an NFT marketplace, for example, more working with a few large NFT marketplaces now.

[00:16:06] And. You know, there’s opportunities on the acceptance of crypto. Like the NFT marketplace needs to accept crypto when someone’s buying an NFT, but there’s also use cases to send crypto as well. So like, you know, somebody has to pay royalties to the artists of those NFTs, or there’s also a huge reseller marketplace for NFTs, uh, where crypto is, is being used as a payment medium, we expect the same.

[00:16:32] To happen, you know, as more and more metaverse projects evolve. For example, you know, we’ve started working with metaverse.com. They have a new project that they’ve recently announced called the mall, uh, which aims to be one of the largest, maybe the largest virtual metaverse shopping mall in the world.

[00:16:51] And they’re expecting to accept crypto payments in their. Hm. Do you ever go the other way around? I was thinking about that with the [00:17:00] NFTs where somebody wants to use cash, but they can only buy it with crypto. So instead of going from crypto to cash cash to. Yeah. So there, there’s definitely, you know, different buckets of customers, right?

[00:17:13] There’s buckets of customers that are like hardcore crypto enthusiasts. They want to do everything they can with crypto. Then there’s the other end of the spectrum, which is, you know, I have a credit card. I don’t own any crypto today, but I want to buy an NFT. How do I do that? Um, and then there’s probably a whole bunch of people to fall in between.

[00:17:31] There’s the need for offering multiple payment options. If you’re an NFT marketplace, I, I, by no means, would ever say. Oh, you should only offer crypto payments. So most of the NFT marketplaces we’re working with are working with credit card processors who are going to just enable somebody to whip out their credit card and pay for an NFT with a credit card.

[00:17:52] There are other solutions out there where you essentially have to go out and buy the crypto and then. On the NFT [00:18:00] marketplace. There’s also, I’ve seen some business models where you’re actually buying coins or buying some sort of credit on the NFT marketplace or on the metaverse and then using a credit card or using crypto.

[00:18:14] And then. You’re transacting with the credit that you have within that ecosystem. So there’s a, a few different business models that we’ve seen, but you know, the exciting thing is that crypto is becoming part of all of them being day in, day out, uh, you know, hearing the strategies of these companies in an NFT space, in the metaverse space, in the e-commerce space, in the gaming space.

[00:18:39] Like there’s just so many different use cases that we’re working. Hmm. That’s awesome. Switching gears to ours, you know, marketing in general, from your perspective, what are you seeing as the biggest trends in marketing right now? Yeah, so, you know, I kind of touch marketing day to day, mostly from the crypto and.[00:19:00]

[00:19:00] And, you know, I think it comes down to how do you find incremental millennial buyers of your product or service that you’re offering? And so there, there’s lots of different ways to do that. We think, you know, offering crypto payments is one way, but you know, appealing to millennials is also about user experience.

[00:19:19] You know, for example, I was just reading, you know, totally outside the world of. I was reading about Neo banks and fintechs that appeal to millennials. And somebody did a study that showed which fintechs in which neobanks offered the best user experience. From the perspective of how easy is it to set up a new account, or how painful is it to set up a new account?

[00:19:41] And somebody did a study showing. You know, some neobanks required like 80 clicks or 80 characters before you could sign up and other neobanks required, you know, 175 clicks before you could set up an account. And so, you know, In the millennial crowd [00:20:00] in particular, you know, you want to offer innovative solutions.

[00:20:03] They need to be super user-friendly. You need to kick the tires around before you just go launch something and you know, it can’t be buggy and you know, that the list goes on and on. But yeah, from a marketing perspective, I’d say just, you know, being innovative and interacting in a big way with. With your customers and asking them like, you know, what are you looking for?

[00:20:26] You know, there’s that famous Lauren Michaels quote, if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room. And so I think just listening to, you know, the expertise of your team, listening to customer feedback and designing products and services around that is really critical going forward.

[00:20:46] And, you know, kind of know it, all companies that. I don’t have their feet on the ground and aren’t listening very carefully to that feedback. Probably won’t be here in 10 years. Yeah. That’s a really good point [00:21:00] that, you know, you have to market to the millennial and be innovative, even if you’re an older brand.

[00:21:05] I mean, even if you’re, I’ll give an extreme example, like ARP, you gotta be user-friendly you gotta have a good UI. You got to seem like you’re trendy. Even if you’re marketing to like the oldest community. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you, you know what, why can’t ARP do a, a crypto 1 0 1 educational session or an NFT 1 0 1 educational session.

[00:21:26] Like it doesn’t have to be only for millennials. So yeah. I mean, we’re working with some brands, a BitPay that are brands that some people would say are older and more conservative, but they’re, they’re accepting crypto payments. And so we think that’s exciting, but yeah, absolutely agree that you always have to.

[00:21:45] pushing the limits, looking for new angles. I, I dunno the audience probably doesn’t know this, but I actually worked at brave in the past. And so, you know, one of the reasons I was super excited about brave and had a great experience, there was, you know, brave is [00:22:00] really pushing the boundaries.

[00:22:01] A brave is saying like, well, privacy actually matters. And like, it matters. The customer’s data should be protected, you know, and now with the brave crypto wallet that they’re offering, you know, another super innovative offering and, you know, some of the other projects that I was involved in when I was at brave, you know, in terms of like using basic attention token within different gaming ecosystems, and then those gaming ecosystems also had usability, uh, with the basic attention token.

[00:22:31] So really just constantly pushing the boundaries and looking for those new pockets of incremental costs. Yeah, that’s great. What are the challenges that come up in selling BitPay? Why do people not buy? I was talking with, you know, a big brand that we’re working with right now. Yesterday about that same question.

[00:22:49] And the woman I was talking with, I said, so, so what is the pushback? If any, that you’re getting internally when, when you’re talking to folks and she said, well, people can’t quite [00:23:00] wrap their heads around. How is this safe? How is this not vile a tile? How is this not risky? And you know, my answer was, Hey, we’ve been doing this for 10 years.

[00:23:09] We’re instantly converting the crypto into USD. We’re going to pay you in USD. So you’re not, not actually holding the crypto. You’re not touching it. It’s not volatile. Uh, your CFO doesn’t have to worry about if it goes up or down. And she’s like, yeah, I like I’ve explained that to like six different people, but they’re just crypto naysayers.

[00:23:28] And so, yeah, I mean, you know, there’s an element of like, you can explain things and provide crystal clear answers, and sometimes there’s an element, you know, of customers that just don’t get it, or don’t want to get. Or, you know, maybe they just are vehemently opposed to crypto kind of like, you know, maybe your 99 year old grandmother that just doesn’t want to learn how to use email or use the internet.

[00:23:54] So that there’s always going to be some element of customers that, you know, are going to be the last [00:24:00] adopters. But obviously it’s our job to find those customers that are going to be the, you know, the earlier adopters. Yeah. And then. Any marketing challenges that you see there. So like when you’re talking to different marketers, besides like the whole crypto way, you know, like, uh, it’s too volatile, what are the challenges that you’re seeing marketers are faced with today?

[00:24:20] There’s just a lot of marketing happening in the crypto space. Right? You look at the Superbowl, you look at crypto companies buying Superbowl commercials, you know, and, and so if you’re a CEO and you’re interested in crypto payments, for example, Well, how does Coinbase fit into this? Or how does FTX fit into this?

[00:24:38] Or how does Gemini fit into this? Or how does this other company fit into this that I saw a commercial for? And just, I think there’s a lot of education that needs to happen. Particularly with people that haven’t dove into the rabbit hole of crypto and NFTs and Mehta, versus just to educate themselves on, like, what do each of these companies do?

[00:24:58] What, you know, where [00:25:00] did they play? What, what is their specialty? What’s their niche? Are they an exchange? Are they a custodial wallet? Are they a noncustodial wallet? Are they a payment processor or a. A company that does disbursements, are they a company that does rewards there? There’s so many different angles.

[00:25:16] And so, you know, a lot of my time is spent just helping to educate companies on who does what in the world of crypto. Nice. How can people get in touch with you if they want to learn? Oh, yeah, absolutely. First of all, I’m a huge believer in LinkedIn. As you know, Donnie, I’m probably probably been on LinkedIn for 12 or 13 years now.

[00:25:39] I think I have about 18,000 connections. I make it a point every day to try to connect with a few new people on LinkedIn. So I would probably say, just reach out to me on LinkedIn and just say, Hey, you heard me on the Donnie D show and the brave podcast, and I’ll be happy to accept your connection.

[00:25:58] Well, Aaron, thank you [00:26:00] so much for coming on the show. We really, really appreciate it sounds so exciting what you’re doing at BitPay and growing and breathe and BitPay can grow together. So. Absolutely. Absolutely. We’re expecting to do some great things with brave here in the, in the coming months and keep a lookout on the BitPay website and the paid LinkedIn site and, and the brave website and brave LinkedIn.

[00:26:26] You’ll hear some announcements, hopefully in the next few months on ways the BitPay and brave are working together. And yeah, been great to, to join this podcast, super excited to hear from your listeners. And like I said, they’re welcome to reach out on LinkedIn

[00:26:38] Sounds good. Thanks Aaron. Thanks.

[00:26:40] Donny: If you like what you heard today and found it valuable, it would be super helpful.

[00:26:45] If you took one minute to leave us a short review in apple podcasts, every review counts and helping us get to our show and more ears on one final note, if you have a. Product or service that you’d like to get in front of Braves over 50 million [00:27:00] users. Please email us@adsalesatbrave.com. And let us know you are a podcast listener to lock one of two perks.

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[00:27:32] And until next time .