Payments on Fire™

The payment industry's responses to ongoing payment security are many. We have procedural approaches and technical ones. For example, we are requiring merchants to attest to their compliance with PCI security standards that themselves include procedural requirements. Technical solutions are also called out by PCI and are, of course, being applied across the ecosystem. Encryption of payment data in...

In the US, there's the automatic assumption that payment cards and perhaps PayPal are the way to pay online. But if you're an ecommerce merchant trying to sell in the Netherlands, you'd better support the domestic system known as iDeal. Connectivity into domestic payment systems is an important and complex issue. There are over 150 such systems across dozens of countries around the world. While no...

Knowing who you're dealing with online is critical if you're taking transaction risk. Digital identity is tough. To address that challenge - and it is a challenge - relying parties, those who take on risk, employ two broad categories of technology: active tools that require user interaction and passive network-based approaches. When the user is required to explicitly provide identifying informatio...

Alexa. Siri. Cortana. We're talking to or at our machines. I walk into my office and say "Hey Google, what's the weather?" or "Hey Google, when's my first appointment?" When I'm driving in a strange town, it's "hey Google, navigate to the [fill in the blank] hotel." This kind of hands-free access to information is hugely helpful and hugely popular. But there's a long way to go toward a general pur...

During the Glenbrook Payment Book Camp  we make clear that national payments systems are domestic by definition. Each country has its own set of systems to effect payments. We point out that national payment systems differ in many of their details. Regulation, operating rules, governance, ownership, technology, and more are highly variable. At the same time, we also point out that major components...

In this second discussion with First Data execs, George and Scott MacKay, Vice President, Strategic Solutions talk digital commerce in the automative space, both at the fuel pump and in the Connected Car. The importance of full stack security, whether it's sole sourced or the result of an integration effort, to successful deployment of mobile commerce is a theme here. Enabling the mobile experienc...

In this, the first of a two-part podcast series with First Data executives, Ajay Guru, VP of Merchant Fraud Solutions at First Data and George discuss the impact of fraud on the merchant, what the merchant has to do to manage it, and the classes of tools and techniques available to mitigate fraud. Ajay addresses machine learning technology's remarkable ability to identify anomalies and makes candi...

Online trust requires a context-based understanding of who we transact with. Attributes about us are needed to build that trust but in many transaction contexts we share more than we need to. To pick a simple example, the law says you must be 21 to buy alcoholic beverages but our current method of proof is to show our driver's license, an unnecessary oversharing of personal information. Why show t...

This episode of Payments on Fire covers two topics - payments in Atlanta and the essential challenge of online authentication and identity. May in Atlanta - Fintech South and Glenbrook Payments Boot Camp Everyone in the payments industry knows that Atlanta is a hotbed of activity. Coming shortly to Atlanta are two fintech-focused events that will add to the goings-on. The Fintech South conference...

The rise of Chinese mobile payment systems is the top global mobile payments story of the last few years. Alipay and WeChat Pay serve hundreds of millions of users with payments, loyalty programs, merchant coupons, and more. QR codes are used to initiate many of these interactions especially within the point of sale (POS) domain. When there isn't a legacy payment infrastructure in place, software...

Mid-market financial institutions have enormously strong relationships with their banking customers. But their size makes home grown IT difficult because it is simply too hard, and too costly, to meet all the B2B finance needs of their enterprise customers. The answer, of course, is deeper integration to third party software systems like SAP, Oracle, JDA and the growing set of fintech providers br...

"Digital cash" has been a dream of the internet age for, well, almost the entire internet age. That goal requires instant payment settlement. It's more than just sending a message that a payment has happened; it means the money has actually moved. In this wide ranging conversation with Laurence Cooke, founder and CEO of nanopay , he discusses the platform his firm has built to move value between p...

Episode 69 is all about how the PCI Security Standards Council is responding to changes in security technology and how it is expanding its role and technology coverage across important new geographies. If payment security is on your screen, join Glenbrook's George Peabody , partner and host of Payments on Fire , and Troy Leach, CTO for the PCI Security Standards Council as they discuss standards u...

Digital identity is a crisp sounding term that belies a complex layer of concepts. There is identity proofing. Identify verification. Identity assurance. Each addresses one element of the many questioned raised by digital identity. How does a bank really know the digital presence at its banking portal is associated with the accountholder? How can you, as an individual, release only the amount of d...

Voice is the natural user interface and the robots are coming to take it on. Enabled by high volume consumer devices like Amazon Echo, Google Home, Apple's Siri and powered by artificial intelligence engines like Amazon's Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple's Siri, we are headed toward making voice-enabled commerce and payments a common experience. Russ Jones is Glenbrook 's "tech whisperer," an ex...

Payment innovation runs at multiple speeds. Changes in how a payment is initiated happen almost every day. Payments infrastructure change is a lot slower. But it's happening. Nudged forward by the Federal Reserve's Faster Payment Task Force, we are seeing the launch of the first entirely new payment system in decades. Called Real Time Payments (RTP) the new system switched its first real-time paym...

Once upon a time, text messaging systems didn't interoperate. But when they did, usage skyrocketed. Many of the world's mobile money payment systems still operate within that old "walled garden" model, limiting the ability of citizens in areas like Southern Africa to send money home to family, pay utility bills, and, most important, enjoy the benefits of an national economy that is payments enable...

The intersection of new tech, faster payments capabilities, and forward looking regulation is enabling significant innovation in B2B, and consumer, payment services in the UK and EU. Join Glenbrook's George Peabody and Myles Stephenson, CEO of business payments platform provider  Modulr , as they discuss how modern tech and updated rules have created opportunities for fintech service providers. Th...

Payments standards typically operate deep within a payment system, invisible to most of us. But before long a new standard for web browsers will touch us all. Known as the Payment Request API, it is one of the newer projects of the Word Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Supported by browser builders Mozilla, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and more, this new API should simplify web payments for consumers and m...

If you're planning on attending Money/2020 in October, the Glenbrook team will be there in force. This short, not entirely serious, podcast previews the sessions we are leading there on two of the hottest topics around: B2B payments and the faster or real-time payments systems coming to the U.S.

We all know that the evolution of payments systems in the U.S. is accelerating. That's why Glenbrook has just published the third edition of our book, Payments Systems in the U.S. - Third Edition: A Guide for the Payments Professional , the definitive guide to the how and, in particular, the why of our multiple payments systems. The third edition addresses that evolution through updated examples a...

Interchange is fundamental to open look card system economics and a mystery to many, especially to merchants who must pay it but don't perceive any benefit from it. It's a non-optional component of what the merchant pays to accept cards. It's one element of the merchant discount fee. Despite the stubborn fact of it, there are ways for some merchants to make sure they pay as low a rate as possible....

B2B payments are huge. Taken together, these supply chain payments exceed the gross domestic product. But supply chain payments remain an imperfect art. While consumers pay for one purchase at a time, a B2B payment may cover multiple invoices, each with different commercial terms. Given the amount of data about the payment that's necessary to crisply communicate between a buyer's accounts payable...

The  Faster Payments Task Force  has brought together a broad constituency with the payments industry thoroughly represented. And thanks to participation by organizations like Consumers Union, the people who bring us  Consumer Reports , the voice of the consumer has been well represented in determining important evaluation criteria. Christina Tetreault , staff attorney at  Consumers Union , joins ...

Merchant adoption of EMV capability isn't a done deal in the U.S. Glenbrook's own estimates show that we're only halfway there. Few people have as much insight into merchant payment acceptance and the technology that enables it as Larry Godfrey of Global Payments ' Heartland Payments business. Take a listen to George and Larry's discussion as they cover: The EMV terminal transition The chargebacks...