Jared Isaacman

I mean, we were, you know, it's not that, by the way, that we were that good.

It was just everybody else was so bad.

All the big banks in the late 90s and early 2000s, all they cared about was pushing credit cards on people.

They just wanted to get consumers to spend.

And the belief was that businesses, no matter how painful the process is or was, would conform to how consumers wanted to spend.

So they put all their energies, resources, and innovation into pushing credit cards on consumers, and the whole acceptance side was neglected.

So it wasn't hard for us to create a lot of...

operational efficiencies and good process workflow.

And as a result, we were just winning customers over left and right.

It was just so bad the way everybody was doing things.

Everybody was outsourcing everything.

The banks just could care less about acceptance.

I mean, the example I used to give all the time is if you were 18 and

And you wanted a credit card in 1999.

You went on the internet, and in 60 seconds, you got an instant approval of credit cards in the mail.

But if you were a pizza shop in 1999, and you wanted to accept credit cards, the paperwork was like getting a commercial mortgage.

It was 60 pages, copies of your passport, everything was like, why is this so painful and complicated?

Because I was selling it.

I mean, this is what I was doing when I worked at that company, Merchant Services.

I had exposure for six months of trying to sell the service.