Zero To A Hundred – Episode 31: Banking The Unbanked: How SPARE Is Leading The Financial Inclusion Revolution With D’ontra Hughes

Accelerators! 🚀

This week, we’re joined by D’ontra Hughes, founder of SPARE, a revolutionary virtual ATM network that’s changing the way small businesses and communities access and manage money. Funded by Mark Cuban on Shark Tank, D’ontra shares how SPARE is tackling financial deserts, driving foot traffic for merchants, and creating financial equity for underserved communities. If you’re an entrepreneur looking to blend profit and purpose, this episode is for you!

What’s on the Menu:

🏦 How SPARE transforms merchants into virtual ATMs and drives revenue.

🌍 Solving financial inequity in underserved communities.

💡 How SPARE leverages technology to bridge the gap in modern banking.

Why Tune In?

Learn how SPARE is disrupting traditional banking and helping small businesses save money while building stronger communities. Whether you’re a business owner, entrepreneur, or just love innovation, D’ontra’s insights will leave you inspired!

💬 Gem from D’ontra:

“Your business can be a pillar in the community while growing profits—it’s not one or the other.”

Get in Touch with D’ontra:

📧 Reach out to D’ontra at CEO@GotSpare.com or connect with him on LinkedIn.

Don’t miss out—hit that subscribe button and let’s take your business from zero to a hundred! 💥

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Banking The Unbanked: How SPARE Is Leading The Financial Inclusion Revolution With D’ontra Hughes

In this episode, we have a unique special guest. It’s a little bit outside the box of what we typically do. I’m very happy to introduce D’ontra Hughes, who is the Founder of SPARE, a virtual ATM network that serves customers. Business owners and merchants, he was a contestant on Shark Tank and got funded by the one and only Mark Cuban. The topics that we’re going to go over are how you as a business owner can become a financial service provider, drive more traffic to your business, get paid for it, and do good for your community.

For those of you who do not know me, I am the Founder of BoxFi. We are the nation’s leading payment consultant, providing business growth solutions through payment processing. I’m very happy to share the network that I have built over my entrepreneurial journey to help you grow your business and become more profitable. Ladies and gentlemen, let’s accelerate together.

D’ontra, thank you for joining us.

Jarrod, thank you for having me.

Tackling Financial Deserts And Changing The Banking Industry

I’m very excited about this conversation because it’s a bit outside of the box of what we typically talk about but it’s still around financials, what your business is doing to change the banking industry, and how it could benefit the merchants, business owners, and entrepreneurs that are our audience. What I want to dive into first is talking about how you are tackling what you refer to as the financial deserts and what inspired you to create your business model to change banking for all Americans.

Thank you so much for having me. When I think about the problem that we’re solving, there is a forgotten subset of the US population. It’s surprising that roughly about 20% of the US population still lives paycheck to paycheck but they spend roughly 7% of their annual income accessing their money. There’s an entire alternative financial services marketplace out there that generates about $100 billion a year for this demographic of the US population.

With our advances in technology, it only makes sense that a company like ours would come along and be the bridge between these folks who are paying these exorbitant fees and someone who is banked like you and me who never have to pay these alternative financial service fees. We’re very excited that we’ve had a team that’s dedicated to not only lowering the financial liability threshold for some of these folks but also working on this growing epidemic of a banking desert that we’ve started seeing due to the digitization of finances over the past few years.

Seven percent sounds like a lot of money that they’re using to access their funds. What does that mean? Does that mean somebody who’s going to Western Union to cash a check or a check-cashing business? Is it someone who doesn’t have a traditional bank account? What’s happening?

When you think about it, it’s the idea that you have $100,000 in your pocket or I’ve got $100,000 that’s owed to you in my pocket. For you to access that, you’ve got to give me $7 of it. You would probably reach across the counter and probably choke me to death because that seems absurd but we allow that to happen to marginalized communities and lower economically sufficient communities all across the United States.

That’s whether we’re talking about regular visits to the ATM, check-cashing, money grab, and all of these types of places, even remittance. It’s about us moving money inside of our community that has anything other than digital transactions. There’s a pretty large portion of our population that deals outside of the digital platform. That’s either whether they prefer it or the digital banks decided that they couldn’t be part of that network or for a myriad of different reasons but our technology is designed to bridge that gap.

Virtual ATMs: How SPARE’s Technology Works for Consumers And Merchants

Let’s talk about your technology, which you refer to as virtual ATMs. This is something I want the audience to read because we are going to get to after explaining how the business model works and how it impacts you as merchants who might be in some of these communities so you can serve the community and benefit from it. Talk to me about how your technology services first, the consumer, and then we’ll talk about how it services the merchants.

When we look at how our technology supports consumers, You would log into your digital wallet, any digital that’s currently carrying SPARE as a partner. Right next to that Find ATM button, you should see a Request Cash button. What you’re going to do is press that button and tell our system or network how much cash you’re looking for. In real-time, we’re going to give you the local options in the form of bodegas and small businesses that are within a 5 or 10-mile radius that you can go in and access that cash.

Once you select that location, you’re then going to submit that request. You put that cash on reserve for anywhere for about ten minutes or so. You’re going to walk in with your phone and probably an ID card. You go directly to the register and authenticate with your phone. The merchant’s going to verify your ID. They’re going to hand you cash and you’re going to go on your way.

That’s one of the most used services inside the virtual ATM. However, we’re starting to see a lot more adoption with the cash-in requests as well as check-cashing. Later in 2025, we’re going to see some additional services such as bank account opening. We’ll be able to pair you with the best bank for your circumstance directly at a local POS inside of your favorite bakery, deli, pharmacy, and what have you.

Let’s say I’m a consumer and I want to access $20 or $100. I’m using your application to do that. I’m walking into a local grocer and saying, “Here’s my ID and the application. I want to withdraw $100.” They’re going to give it to me from the register. Where is that $100 coming from if I’m unbanked?

When we consider the unbanked demographic, one way that they utilize SPARE is this built-in digital wallet. If you’re going to SPARE’s platform and we’re accepting you on as a user, if you’re coming directly to us, we’re effectively funding into a digital wallet. That funding source might come from your prepaid debit card or a check that you issued through us from cashing.

If you’re accessing us from a secondary digital wallet and this is a digital wallet that’s built into your employer, a check-cashing service, or something to that effect from a digital environment, that’s how we’re getting access to those funds. That partner is effectively telling us this person’s account is good for this amount. Whether or not that’s a paycheck or a check that’s been issued to you and the bank, whoever is underwriting that is telling us these folks are cleared for this amount. That’s how we’re integrated and they’re getting that access.

As a customer who walks into that local grocer, I withdraw $100 because my employer paid in my check to my SPARE account. How do I, as the grocery store owner, benefit from providing the SPARE service of being a virtual ATM?

The Benefits Of SPARE For Businesses And Communities

When you consider the benefits for businesses in and of themselves, we have quite a few here. Right off the front, we’re looking at driving foot traffic. Someone’s coming into your store. They’re going directly to the register so it’s some of those last-mile transactions, whether you’ve got cookies on the counter or something like that more enticing because they’re right there up front. The first thing is traffic through the door. On every one of those transactions, if there’s a fee assigned to it. You’re going to get a portion of the fee. There’s a little bit of revenue generation there. If you’re able to sell them something while they’re at the counter, fantastic. There’s a little bit of sales that comes along with that.

The fourth major benefit is that the cash that’s leaving your register would have been cash that you would have had to take to the bank, whether or not you are a small business and you’re walking that cash down to the bank yourself, or you’re a larger business where you’re hiring a hard car service like Brink’s, Garda, or Loomis. We know that small businesses across the US spend anywhere between $300 to $1,600 per month managing their physical cash. SPARE becomes a service that offloads that cash for you.

One final, which is the fifth benefit that we think is probably the most important, is that merchants engaging in these transactions become financial pillars of the community. If you are a cheaper alternative or for consumers to access their finances, there’s a little bit of coalescing of the community around you because you are helping to recirculate cash in the community at a much cheaper rate. In some cases, it’s even free. That’s a benefit that people want to have around. That’s a business that they want to stay in their community.

It was in the late ‘60s that ATMs were created because a lot of the large retailers had noticed that their customers had to come up to the register and not have enough money to buy what they wanted to buy in terms of cash in hand. When you go to the Walmarts of the world at the time, you could withdraw that $200 to buy $200 worth of goods when you were only coming in there with $50 in hand. It benefited the merchants in a major way. To your point, they were in your store and were buying more items because they were withdrawing that cash from the store.

The provider of the ATM or the bank was making the money. This is putting it in the merchant’s hands where the merchants can earn some type of fee by distributing the cash. The customer is potentially buying products from them because it’s not a guarantee. They’re already in the store. You’re not paying credit card fees on it because it becomes a cash transaction. You’re hitting aid to provide money for someone to potentially buy something from you. It’s brilliant. How in the heck did you come up with this idea?

I appreciate the compliment. Thank you. The team has worked hard to try to figure out where are some of the loopholes that exist in the financial services system. One of the places that we found that didn’t have a whole lot of competition was the ATM and the cash transit space. It was about our team looking and saying, “Where’s some opportunity where we can insert technology and offer the maximum amount of benefit to not only the consumers in the ecosystem but also the participants?”

SPARE Vs. Traditional ATMs: A Cost Comparison

Going back to one of the things that you mentioned, traditionally, the credit card companies and the payment processors are the ones that make a bulk of the transaction fees when these transactions take place. When we looked at it, we said, “Can we help eliminate a lot of those players? If we eliminate those players, do we eliminate a cost structure in that feature that doesn’t need to be there?”

When you eliminate and trim the fat on those fees, you see that you can drop fees down rather substantially. When you consider that the average ATM in the marketplace is about $4.97, the average fee in SPARE’s network is $3. We still have a long way to go but what we’ve started to do is introduce competition into the marketplace because of saturation.

When that happens, merchants are still going to make some money but the consumer on the end is going to benefit because they’re no longer paying almost $5 and that 7% that we talked about earlier. Our aim is that if we could even knock 2% off of that alternative financial services costs, we’re saving folks a substantial amount of money on an annual basis.

Consumers who are unbanked are paying about 7% of their annual income to access their money. You had mentioned a number for cash transfer that business owners are paying the banking system to transfer that money to the bank. What was that number?

What we found since COVID is that businesses were spending anywhere between $300 to $1,600 per month managing their cash.

What do those management costs cover?

If you go to some of the websites like Loomis or Garda, they’ll have a calculator there, depending on your business type and the amount of money that you deal with. Feel free to go ahead and check those numbers because a lot of our numbers came from their websites. We use their tools but what it comes down to is it has a lot to do with the transit of the cash and the storage if you’re using something like a smart safe or a cash recycler. In cases where you’re a small business and you have that little blue baggie that you carry to the bank, you’re talking about man hours and loss of business hours at the end of the day. You’re committing to make sure that cash safely gets to the bank.

One of the things that I didn’t mention that is the hidden sixth benefit of the SPARE system is once that customer comes in and takes that cash from you, we instantly deposit it into your account. These are almost de facto instant cash deposits that are being made by these consumers. To some degree, we use the Uber model for cash deposits for businesses. I’m always gentle when I say that but that’s what ends up happening. That customer comes in and you end up with that money in your bank account.

The customer withdraws from their SPARE app. They pay a fee for that. A portion of that fee goes to the business owner. The business owner hands them the hundred dollars. Is it 3% of the fee that they’re paying?

It’s $3.

Is that $3 flat if it’s $20 or $200?

That’s correct. Yes.

Let’s use round numbers. Are you handing them $97 or $100 as the business owner?

In most circumstances, you’re going to be handing them the amount of money that they’re requesting. If you go into SPARE’s wallet, you’re going to say, “I want $100.” You’re getting $100. We’re going to tell you that your wallet is going to be deducted $100 minus the fee.

When you say you’re telling us, it is me, the consumer. If I’m requesting the money, you’re deducting it from me, correct?

That is correct. Yes.

As a business owner, I own a retail shop on Main Street and I give somebody $100. The minute that I tap on my system that I gave them $100, you instant transfer that $100 to me as the business owner.

That is correct. If there’s a fee split in there for you, you get $100 plus the fee.

That is interesting. It sounds like you’re creating a lot of financial equity for underserved communities but also for business owners who have their ecosystem. Am I looking at that the right way?

That’s correct. When we look at how money is moving inside of our communities, we’ll see that someone gets paid. Someone external from the community pumps money into the community by paying one of the community members. The community member then goes into this particular target demographic and goes directly to an alternative financial services mechanism, whether that’s a check-cash, an ATM, or something to that effect.

Let’s use $100 as a prime example. They’ll go to the ATM and say, “I want $100.” The ATM will pull $5 from it. They have $95 worth of buying power. They’ll go to a merchant and buy $95 worth of goods. If they paid for that in cash, then there’s not a whole lot additional there besides taxes. The business on that side, when they’re paying with cash, gets to take in $95 minus whatever the local taxes are. They take that money and move it to the bank.

The bank is going to say, “Thank you very much, small business, for being a part of the network. We’re going to take $25 from you for your banking services on a monthly basis,” if you’re lucky. The bank gets a little bit of that. That $95 very quickly becomes significantly less than that. When the business wants to move that money back into the community so let’s say that business is paying its employees, it pushes that money back to the employee via the mechanism of a check, prepaid debit card, or something to that effect.

Fees come out of it. What we’re seeing is this perpetual loss of value as it gets back to the participants in the community. What SPARE has done has limited that entire loop of transactions down to two components. You’ve got the consumer and the merchant. When you’ve reduced all of that additional friction slack and opportunity to waste money, you’re allowing for the money to move faster but also lean and fee-free through the community.

The Community Reinvestment Act And SPARE’s Impact On Banks

You’re benefiting the consumer and the merchant. Let’s talk a little bit about how it benefits the banking system. We have something called the Community Reinvestment Act. I’d love for you to talk a little bit about how the business model helps the banks solve some of the CRA requirements and also generate revenue.

When we consider the CRA implications for SPARE, one of the very early objectives for us was not to just go out and solve the problem for a handful of folks. We were looking at the entire ecosystem as a whole and said, “Where are some of the gaps? Where can we add value?” The early work with the virtual ATM had us questioning whether or not the Community Reinvestment Act requirement could be filled from a services requirement like a traditional ATM does.

We’re very fortunate at the beginning of 2024. We went out and got some legal opinions drafted for us that indicate that these virtual ATMs like physical ATMs enhance the service abilities and geography of banks. When we’re talking about under the CRA requirement, that kind of rating in these early stages, the virtual ATMs would qualify for CRA credit. How much of an impact it’s going to have? We don’t quite know.

What we do know is that it’s a lot easier to deploy a virtual ATM than it is a physical one. Beyond ease of deployment, we’re talking about deployment costs being about 90% to 95% less than an actual physical ATM. When we consider how this technology will impact the banking infrastructure in the future, whether it be for the small community bank and their regulations or the larger banks that subscribe to or follow CRA, we see that there’s an immense windfall of benefits that start at the head with the bank that significantly less cost for infrastructure and geographical expansion without the massive CapEx requirement. Those trickle-down benefits end up in the pockets of the consumers.

How are you working with banks on your platform?

How we’re working with banks on the platform is that we are integrating directly into their digital wallets. We want to make sure that their consumers are getting access to our network as often as they’d like. You’ve got a myriad of different banks out there that are already using their version of a digital wallet. We don’t want to recreate the wheel. We have inserted ourselves as an additional service provider inside of that existing digital platform.

SPARE’s Resilience And Evolution

Let’s talk a little bit about your team and when you created this, which I believe was a little bit before COVID. I’d love to know how it impacted your business model and how you were able to pivot, be resilient, and still build a tool that is growing in the market.

When we think about the evolution story of this company, we are a good story around resilience. The one thing that our team has learned to do and survived in the tough times is the marketplace. We initially deployed this technology in Q4 of 2018. We were doing well, leading up to COVID. By the time we got to Q1 of 2020, we were looking at a very large acquisition. We were on track to be the largest ATM network within the domestic US. We wouldn’t own a single ATM, mind you.

We were doing well. All of a sudden, cash had cooties. When we think about what ensued next, we still tried to offer value to the community by cashing stimulus checks and things of that nature. I went back to my co-founder and said, “If this is still a business, look at the data. Let’s make a decision on how we’re going to go forward with this company.” As a challenging digital wallet in the face of things like cryptocurrencies and the digitization of banking, it seems less likely that a company like ours is going to get the support that it needs from the VC community to grow.

What we require our VCs is that they’re a little bit of a contrarian in their nature. Most folks are chasing the 75% of the marketplace. They’re not looking at the opportunities in the 25%. What we found was the data was screaming at us that not only was the problem that we were chasing or solving for existent. It was getting worse. Every cycle, we hear that small businesses are the backbones of our communities. There were supposed to be plans and services out there to help them.

When we looked at what was being given to small businesses, there’s not a single service that we can think of that drives physical foot traffic into a business. If you went to your bank and said, “Bank, how do you support me as your business client,” there’s nothing that they can give you that says, “I’m going to put a body in your store.” It’s the same thing on the consumer side. When you go to your bank and say, “Bank, how are you supporting,” they’ll go, “We have this ATM network that you can use a few times a month. As long as you don’t go over that, then you’re not going to have any issues.”

That’s one way that they do that. They partner with someone else but the bank themselves is not offering a solution to you that’s lowering your fees other than the ATMs that they promote themselves. SPARE’s technology does all of that for both of those participants, significantly cheaper than anyone out there. Where we are is we became that digital at first because we wanted to test the idea, hone it in, and see if we could solve it.

COVID came in and showed us, “You’re going to need to work a little bit harder at this and figure out a different way.” That was our test. Our test was you want to do this as a digital wallet but solve big problems. You need to go out and partner. Our pivot into SaaS enterprise was the Holy Grail for us. That change in our methodology is what led us to the success that we’re having.

Cash Vs. Digital Wallets: Misconceptions And Data Challenges

Let’s talk about the misconceptions around cash and digital wallets. Have you encountered many? If so, how have you overcome it? What are some of the data challenges? One thing that I’d like to understand with that two-prong question is cash availability for the merchant to be able to extend cash. How are you tracking that? It sounds like there’s got to be a lot of coordination in here if I’m a merchant who’s interested in signing up for this program.

It’s not a whole lot of integration. We use a lot of the tools that are already existent at these merchant locations. There’s not a heavy lift of onboarding. You don’t have to go out and buy anything when it comes to SPARE. You’re plugging technology into your pre-existing POS system, which is one of the major benefits. A lot of where SPARE comes from is around the notion of SPARE cash. It’s not extra cash. We don’t need you holding an extra $1,000 or $10,000 to cover our system.

What we’re doing is looking at your POS transactions that happened that day. Any of the cash transactions that occurred that were tallied in your system are the SPARE cash or the extra cash that was generated over your opening tell. You feed that information to us. We outbound messages to our network saying, “We’ve got some businesses here for you folks who pick up cash regularly. We’ve got a list of businesses here that you can go into. You can access this cash generally for free.”

That’s been our target all along. We’d mentioned that $3 fee earlier. Merchants have the ability to put a price tag on those transactions. However, many of the merchants in our network want the foot traffic. There is a substantial amount of them that are willing to treat you like a banked individual, where showing up to pull that cash out is a service to them. They make those transactions free.

SPARE’s Integration With POS Systems

Let’s talk about what the integration would look like in the POS system for the merchant. What systems does it work with? Let’s start there.

When we consider the POS systems that we use, we target most of the Android-based POS devices out there. Whether you’re looking at Dejavoo, Pax, AMP, Clover, and some of those big names. As long as they’re Android-based technology, it’s a very simple integration. You download the app and we get set up. A lot of those integrations are already pre-configured on our end. Once you download it to your POS system, it’s ready to go.

What industries have you seen the biggest adoption in thus far?

The largest industries that have been drawn to us are predominantly driven by our partners but we see a lot of coffee shops and bakeries. Those are places of convenience. Coming in early 2025, we’re seeing a large batch of gas stations and convenience stores that are going to be added to the SPAREs network by way of integration.

That is stellar. Compare the cost of withdrawing money from an ATM versus using your system.

Consider the comparative cost of the ATM. The average cost in the US is about $4.97. When most people go to an ATM, they don’t realize that the fee is stacked in there. That’s not always the only fee that the consumer ends up with. It’s the one that’s being delivered at the ATM. You might say, “The ATM down the street gives me $3.75,” but that card, once all transactions are said and done, might have some additional fees. The SPARE system is very simple. The fee that you see on the front end as a consumer is the fee that you get. If it says that it’s a $3 fee, that is a $3 fee.

The $3 is the average in the network. Do we have merchants that charge a little bit more than that? Yes, they do. They max out however at $5. One of the big differentiators between SPARE and a physical ATM is that our thresholds for the individual costs of a transaction are higher. Whereas an ATM might max you out at $200, $350, or something in that range, depending on the comfortability of the merchant, we have virtual ATMs that allow you to pull out up to $1,000 or in some minor cases, $5,000 in a single transaction.

That’s through the POS systems. You know which businesses have cash on hand. If I’m a consumer and I’m using your app, I’m looking to say, “I need to withdraw $2,000,” there will be a number of locations within my geographic area that I’m pulling up on my smartphone that say, “You could go here to withdraw that $2,000.”

That’s correct. For customers who ask for $2,000 specifically, there are a few checks and balances that they have to go through before they can ask for that amount. Especially when you get into those high dollar amounts, you want to protect the merchants. We’ve got a lot of built-in security and compliance that we adhere to but theoretically, if you’ve got a customer that’s got a $2,000 balance and looking for a merchant that has $2,000, we pair them up and make sure those transactions are done securely.

Let’s talk about if I’m a consumer and I want to sign up. What is the process?

One of the major pivots for us is that you have to come to us through an existing digital wallet. We don’t do a whole lot of direct-to-consumer anymore. It would be that your employer deployed their digital wallet and that gives you access to us. There’s no direct route to SPARE for an end consumer. You can go to our website and see who our partners are. As long as you’re doing business with any of those partners, that’s how you access us on the consumer side of the equation.

Give me an example of maybe 2 or 3 different partners that you have on the platform.

Our technology is being integrated into a large partner by the name of Green Dot. You might be familiar with them. They have Walmart and Dollar General at their disposal. You’ll see us primarily in that wallet. We’re still testing with a few others. Unfortunately, we can’t tell you who those are. We are locked in the NDA. There are several other clients. As we get into early 2025, we’ll be able to discuss those more openly. If you’re part of those wallets, you know them already. About twelve million users across the US are supported in that group of wallets.

You’re already working with Dollar General and Walmart.

It’s via a partner Green Dot. Those locations will be available in early 2025.

If you are a merchant and you want to sign up for SPARE, what is the process?

One of two ways is you could head on over to the website and book a demo with our sales team. A much easier way to do it is you go to the person who sold you the credit card services that you have at your register and reach out to them. The ISO partners or Independent Sales Organizations have direct access to us. This is another one of those methodologies where as much as we enjoy the direct merchant relationships, it’s the ISOs that come in and manage a lot of those for us. Either one of those two routes is how merchants get to us.

The Future Of SPARE: Expansion And Partnerships

That is phenomenal. I’m blown away by this because you don’t typically see something so unique in banking that is not advanced level or geared towards someone who is a higher income earner. This is some very interesting democratization that you’re providing in the banking industry. Kudos to you. This is great. Talk to me about what your vision for scale is and what SPARE looks like in the next months.

When we look at how we want to scale and what’s on our plan, we’ve got a little over 7,200 locations across the US. However, our partnerships that are lined up would add roughly about 150,000 locations to the SPARE network over 2025. One of the things that we’re very excited about is the ability to expand very quickly with our partners and also grow a network that has a meaningful impact very quickly across the US.

We’re in a lot of your major cities, especially across the South. We’re primarily targeting cities, counties, and states that have a higher degree of folks who are part of the demographic that we’re servicing. You’re going to see a lot of metropolitan cities and some rural areas pop up as the SPARE locations grow across the US. When we look into the next years, we’ve got some fantastic partnerships. Unfortunately, I can’t talk about them yet but they are going to dramatically expand the network for access movement of cash across the US.

We have some very encouraging bank partners who are looking at this technology and realizing that it solves a very real need, not just for the traditional banking space but for the banks as they plan to continue to grow in general. We’re very proud of the fact that we’re not just looking at solutions that are going to solve issues for folks who are financially well-off. We have developed a system that’s designed to be plugged into the ecosystem of the existing banking world and bring more people into it as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible.

You were solving a big problem. Kudos to you. This is incredibly appreciated for what you’re doing for all communities. Great work.

Thank you.

Rapid Fire Round With D’ontra

We’re going to go into the rapid-fire section. Coffee or tea?

Neither. Both put me to sleep.

What is your libation of choice?

I drink a lot of water. I drink water with B12 supplements and things of that nature. I’m pretty boring when it comes to that kind of stuff. I wish I could.

It’s all good. You’re doing exciting stuff in other parts of your life. There’s a zombie apocalypse and you have to get out of your home and protect your friends and family. What is your weapon of choice?

It’s anything that creates distance. I am a gun owner but the thing is you’re going to eventually run out of bullets. I’m going to probably grab the longest pole with the sharpest edge. As long as we can create distance, we’ll be all right.

I like how your brain works. What is one of your favorite business books that you would recommend business owners read?

I finished a gigantic book and it’s called Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss. That is one I would say that if you’re starting down the road, dive into it. It is a big book. It does feel a little bit intimidating when you start reading it but there’s a lot of good stuff.

If you had the opportunity to have dinner with anyone of your choice, dead or alive, who would it be?

Let’s go with alive. I’d either say Denzel Washington or Morgan Freeman. Either one of those gentlemen, I would love to sit down and have dinner with them.

Tell me your why.

The why is that when we look at our community and trailblazers for our community, one of the things that as younger men do not do is we do not tap into our elders enough. There’s a wealth of knowledge that these individual men have lived through, whether it be in the entertainment industry, philanthropy, or anything adjacent to those. To teach us the lessons that you’ve learned hands down, especially as gentlemen in the spotlight, there are things that you get to experience that teach you about people because of you having had that exposure.

Give me three things that business owners can do in 2025 to save money.

First off, when it comes to your people, make sure you’ve got the right people in the right places. A person that you’ve hired who is not in the right position will cost you not only time but also money and missed opportunities. The second thing that I would say to save money is partnership. A lot of the services that exist, whether it’s marketing or some of these services that we use, we can get them a lot cheaper if we find the right partners.

One thing I would say is if you’re in a space where you can tack on some partnership, do it. Cross-marketing and things of that nature will help you save some money. Everyone’s looking for an angle to attract the largest following for the cheapest cost. One of the things that we need to learn is how to build community and partnership on the business side of things.

The third thing that I would say when it comes to saving money is if you’re a small business that during COVID, you got your POS system and that was your first time getting into card processing and stuff of that nature, you might’ve been one of those folks that went out and you got a Clover system. You got hit with the $299 plus $0.35 or something to that effect. Do not be afraid to go back to that provider and ask for a better discount or ask for a discount in general.

A lot of folks don’t do this because they say, “I got my card.” It’s already taken care of. They already had this agreement. Those folks on the other end want to retain the business. Even though the website told you one amount, you can go back and talk to your customer service person and say, “I’ve been with you for a couple of years. We’re low risk so you should be reevaluating my rate.” Do not be afraid to get your processing rates reevaluated.

As the audience knows, payment consulting is my business and that is 100% accurate and true. Always negotiate those fees and see if you can get discounts because they can be provided even by some of the big players. That was great advice. Here’s the last question, last but not least. What is the biggest obstacle that you had to overcome to build the success that you have realized in your business?

When I think about the biggest obstacle, it didn’t come from the outside world. There are lots of people out there who want to see you fail but there are even more people who want to see you succeed. The biggest obstacle was my inner circle and the inner circle even included me. I wasn’t always on the entrepreneurial path. I came out of the regular business world. I used to work at JPMorgan a long time ago and thought that at one point in my life, I wanted to be a lawyer.

Life brought me down this road and I’m in my third company. I had to get over a few things, one being my ego or my inability to ask for help. Circling back to something I mentioned when we were talking about how to solve problems, community. I had to learn how to rely on other people and trust other people who came into this business to do their jobs.

We make sure they have the resources that they have but as a leader, I have to show up and say, “As a person that I’m bringing to this role, I need to trust that you can do this thing. If you say that you can do it, you’ll show up and do it. I’m not going to do it for you.” Sometimes, as leaders, we want to produce a certain outcome. We try to stick our hands into the mechanisms to try to produce that outcome. Ultimately, if you’re a small business owner or a single-person machine, then that works fine for you.

If you’re trying to build a large-scale enterprise, there’s not a single business out here that is on the Fortune 500 that’s run by a single person. You need to understand that if you’re trying to build a business of scale, you need more bodies, hands, and minds. The toughest thing that I had to do was to realize that regardless of what my background was, even though I was sitting in this captain’s chair, there were a lot of people that I relied on to make sure this business ran. I have to put my faith and trust in my team that they’re going to deliver.

Can you tell the audience where they can connect with you if they’d like to do so?

If you’re interested in perhaps having a discussion or connecting, feel free to shoot me an email. CEO@GotSPARE.com. That’s generally the best way to meet me or pop on LinkedIn and say hi or something like that. It’s either one of those two. If you type in D’ontra Hughes, which I have a unique name, you’ll be able to find me that way too.

D’ontra Hughes, thank you for joining us.

Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Important Links

• SPARE
• BoxFi
• Green Dot
• Tools of Titans
• CEO@GotSPARE.com
• D’ontra Hughes – LinkedIn

About D’ontra Hughes

D’ontra Hughes is an innovative entrepreneur and the visionary Founder & CEO of SPARE, a cutting-edge fintech company revolutionizing access to financial services through its virtual ATM platform. With a mission to bridge the gap between traditional banking and underserved communities, D’ontra has spearheaded SPARE’s development into a transformative solution for basic banking, cash-in/out services, and more.

Under his leadership, SPARE has secured strategic partnerships, cultivated a $60M sales pipeline, and attracted attention from industry leaders and venture capital firms. A passionate advocate for financial inclusion, D’ontra is committed to empowering consumers, merchants, and enterprises with seamless, scalable, and secure financial solutions.

D’ontra’s entrepreneurial journey and insights into fintech innovation have made him a sought-after voice in the industry, inspiring others to challenge the status quo and think boldly about the future of money.