Payments on Fire™

Launching a payment product requires big moonshot thinking alongside a lot of agonizing over the details. Understanding the market, the customer journey, and the technology - from every angle requires patience, persistence, and a beginner's mindset to learn from every success and failure. Thinking about launching a new form of currency, however, is on another level altogether. There's an entire po...

It is a rare occurrence when we get to have ALL the Glenbrook partners in one episode of Payments on Fire!  Glenbrook is kicking off the new year with a (lengthy) conversation on what payments industry trends and developments we think are the most interesting, compelling, and controversial at the moment, and what to watch as we move into 2024.  

Debbie Bartoo, the editor of Glenbrook's daily Payments News , guest hosts this Fanning the Flames episode of Payments on Fire alongside colleagues Justin Pituch and Will Eisler. Listen in as they discuss some of the top payments headlines of the year - fast payments, rising interest rates, BNPL, mobile wallets, identity, CBDCs, and (just a bit of) regulation. If you want to stay on top of the rap...

What if every time you went to pay for something at a store, the clerk behind the counter had a different terminal for each card network - one for Visa, another for American Express, and a few others for local domestic networks? That was what much of the world was like decades ago - and it still is a bit like that in some countries today. But in 1999, collaboration entered the picture when Europay...

Debit routing - once again, all the rage. On July 1, 2023, the US Federal Reserve's clarification on Reg II went into effect. The clarification confirms that Reg II - which required unaffiliated debit network routing as part of the Durbin Amendment - also applies to CNP environments.  What were we thinking in 2015 when debit routing at POS, contactless payments, and chip and PIN were "of the momen...

Glenbrook's Bryan Derman, Chris Uriarte, and Drew Edmond are back from a few days of learning, networking, and speaking (including a live broadcast from the Money Pot) at this year's Money 20/20 conference in Las Vegas. Chris and Drew talk with Yvette Bohanan about the noteworthy payments trends they observed at the show and what related themes our team is paying attention to.

Creating a great purchase experience may start with a frictionless checkout process, but it doesn't end there. In fact, it takes a lot of effort to create a well-functioning payment platform and a cross-functional operations environment to keep a business running smoothly and customers happy. Like most things in life, it's easier to talk about doing this than to do it. So it helps to learn from so...

"So, have fees gone up?"  Yvette Bohanan starts with the tough question in this Fanning the Flames episode.  In our August Payments Post, Chris Uriarte and Justin Pituch observed an underlying theme of broad downward pressure on the cost of merchant processing as well as fee backlash directed towards card networks.  Tune in to hear our thoughts on these fees and the impact on stakeholders across t...

We get the opportunity to work with many different types of merchants in our Merchant Practice at Glenbrook: Global omnichannel retailers, marketplaces, commerce platforms, utilities, you name it. One of the major categories that we work with is subscription merchants, and they come with their own unique needs and perspectives.  Subscription merchants and merchants that have recurring payments as...

Last week, we hosted the first Payments on Fire Live Stream event on the future of fast payments in the U.S. This episode highlights the panel conversation with Bernadette Ksepka, Federal Reserve Financial Services, Elena Whisler, The Clearing House, and Bryan Derman, Glenbrook Partners. 

Policy abuse, a form of first-party fraud, occurs when a customer - whether legitimate or a professional posing as a legitimate customer - manipulates a business's policies for financial gain.  In this episode, Yvette Bohanan and Chris Uriarte sit down with Eyal Elazar, Head of Product Marketing at Riskified, to discuss policy abuse trends and the implications of consumers and professional crimina...

Government leaders, policymakers, and a host of incumbent and new providers are focusing on cross-border payments. Innovating to increase transparency, lower cost, and make funds available in near real-time is showing up on agendas and roadmaps across the globe. Money and resources are being thrown at this problem from every possible angle. Yet friction points persist. Money does not get to benefi...

Globally, cross-border payments represent $156 trillion annually - roughly 25% of global GDP - and are projected to reach nearly $250 trillion by 2027. From a payments industry perspective, these transactions account for approximately $40 billion of $2.1 trillion in fee-generated revenues, excluding foreign exchange ( 2022 McKinsey Global Payments Report ). These attention-grabbing numbers have be...

The payment provider space is a complex and crowded field in the payments universe, particularly when it comes to supporting merchants. Independent Sales Organizations, Payment Facilitators, and Commerce Enablers all work to simplify payment acceptance for merchants, yet they each craft specific go-to-market strategies and differentiated value propositions. The diversity of these stakeholders unde...

Each month, Justin Pituch recaps the news that got Glenbrook talking in his Payments Post. In a "double feature" for June and July, Justin covered two major themes: 1) organizations responding to greenfield opportunity in fast payments and 2) organizations recalibrating their post-COVID fintech bets. In this Fanning the Flames episode, Justin and Yvette Bohanan discuss these developments, as well...

We find ourselves pondering many questions since the FedNow® launch, the third fast payments network introduced in the US. To gain perspective on the questions that have been asked and answered, and those that remain, we're giving a second listen to Episode 10 - when George Peabody sat down with Carol Coye Benson to discuss The Clearing House's announced plans for a multi-year effort that resulted...

Issuer tokens, network tokens, EMV tokens - whatever you call them - continue to be a hot topic for merchants, payment service providers, issuing banks, processors, and the networks themselves. This "sleight of hand" substitution of a payment account number with an indistinguishable alternative carries with it a robust set of capabilities that have promised to reduce the value of breached payment...

Payments on Fire Episode 21, originally aired: June 15, 2015 Network tokenization - the promised land of payments. Like most promised lands, the journey there is epic and, well, hard. One question we hear from our clients, workshop participants, and the folks in our Merchant Round Table is: Are we there yet? We dug into our vault to understand the journey - where we started and how far we've come....

While payment facilitation has opened up a new segment of service providers within the payments industry, embedded finance is opening up the world of payments to every company. The allure of embedded finance is rooted in the deepening of the customer relationship through offering meaningful financial products. This deeper relationship comes in the form of increased customer loyalty - or "stickines...

With all its associated technologies (neural networks, symbolic reasoning, search algorithms, probabilistic reasoning, expert systems, and more), AI has been evolving in universities, the government, and corporations for decades. But only those with a keen interest in this technology have been paying close attention to its progress. Meanwhile, a chatbot helped you when you contacted support. Or yo...

Payments on Fire Episode 1, originally aired: September 7, 2014 Innovation in the payments industry is a funny thing. Sometimes payments lead. Sometimes technology leads. Increasingly around the world, regulators lead. In preparing for an upcoming podcast on AI, Yvette thought about Glenbrook's first Payments on Fire podcast episode - in 2014 - on Bitcoin. So we're pulling it from the vault to sha...

In Part 2, Yvette Bohanan continues the conversation from Episode 206 with the commercial practice team at Glenbrook. We cover some new topic areas, including banks, risk and fraudsters, and the investment community in this macroeconomic environment. Listen in to see what we're watching, where we might see some blind spots, or where the next set of curveballs will be coming as we get into the back...

Russ Jones chats with Yvette Bohanan about Glenbrook's new Payments Boot Camp Intensive  workshop. Listen in to hear more details including agenda highlights, workshop format, and who should attend.

Each month, Justin Pituch recaps the news that got Glenbrook talking in his Payments Post. In May, he observed a burst of news highlighting new technology reshaping how American consumers make purchases and verify their identity. At the same time, other articles underscored how American consumers are struggling to fulfill financial obligations against the backdrop of continued economic uncertainty...

Some people know Glenbrook for our Payments Boot Camp workshops, some know us for our book - Payment Systems in the US - while others know us for this podcast. Interestingly, while we do all of those things, we are , in fact, a consulting firm. A consulting firm that believes educating industry professionals is a great way to make the industry stronger. Our consulting practice gives us a front-row...