Payments in Enterprises
Enterprises often to come to Glenbrook with three core goals:
1. Increase Sales
2. Lower Costs
3. Improve Customer Experience
To support these goals, we bring expertise to help your team answer questions like:
How can we optimize revenue by improving authorization rates and managing chargebacks?
How are our payment providers performing? Are we using the right partners?
How are our key payment metrics performing? How could they improve?
Is our tokenization strategy effective? Does our payments architecture support our objectives?
How can we lower processing costs?
Is our organization structured effectively for managing payments?
How we can help
Glenbrook provides payment acceptors with strategic and operational expertise by conducting assessments of current operations and partner performance, optimizing acceptance rates and payments costs, supporting vendor selection, and developing targeted payments strategies. The practice builds upon Glenbrook’s 22+ years of experience, where the firm has developed a reputation as the most trusted name in the payments industry. Glenbrook’s team of experts combines decades of operating experience at enterprises, card networks, and payment service providers with exposure throughout the payments industry.
Common focus areas and services include:
Payments Operations Assessment and Strategy
- Conduct a comprehensive assessment of payment operations to identify inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and areas for improvements
- Develop a tailored payment strategy that aligns with business goals and enhances customer satisfaction
- Identify cost-saving opportunities, streamline processes, and recommend technology enhancements to optimize payment operations and maximize profitability
RFP Management and Vendor Selection
- Create customized RFPs that reflect unique requirements and objectives
- Evaluate vendor responses objectively, using custom scorecards based on priorities
- Support negotiations to secure favorable terms, pricing, and service level agreements (SLAs) with selected vendors
Authorization Rate and Involuntary Churn Optimization
- Analyze authorization and related data to identify patterns and trends affecting approval rates and involuntary churn
- Develop strategies to increase approval rates, reduce declines, enhance checkout experiences, and retain customers
- Develop customized KPIs and data dashboards for ongoing analysis and monitoring of authorization rates and other indicators
Price Benchmarking and Negotiation Support
- Benchmark current pricing against industry standards and competitors
- Develop strategies to reduce payment processing costs while maintaining service quality
- Review contracts to ensure they align with negotiated terms
- Provide expert guidance and negotiation support to help secure competitive pricing and favorable terms with payment service providers
Team education on the payments industry and customized topics
Glenbrook’s public and private payments workshops, and on-demand modules
Access to Glenbrook’s team through expert retainer agreements
Customized, deep-dive strategy workshops
Enterprises Case Studies
Resources
Articles
Glenbrook shares our perspectives on activities in the industry.
Mid-Year Payments Check-In: Revisiting Our 2026 Predictions
The Glenbrook team is taking stock in June 2026 to see how the payments trends predictions from our January Payments on Fire episode are holding up.
The Missing Context Layer in Agentic Commerce: Part 3
Glenbrook’s Drew Edmond explores the specific implications for the payments and agentic commerce industry: how discovery changes when agents mediate it, how payment selection shifts upstream, how merchants need to prepare differently across categories, and who ultimately controls the agent layer.
The Missing Context Layer in Agentic Commerce: Part 2
Glenbrook’s Drew Edmond examines why the agent’s role in agentic commerce varies significantly by purchase category, where the context layer is being built today, and how far along it actually is.
Podcasts
Glenbrook speaks with industry leaders to share a variety of perspectives on the latest payments trends and activities.
Episode 296 – Fanning the Flames – Beyond Borders: Navigating Your Global Payments Strategy
Going global with your payments strategy requires far more than choosing a single payment provider: companies must weigh local acquiring versus cross-border acquiring, country-by-country payment preferences, entity structure, tax implications, compliance requirements, authorization performance, currency handling, and provider coverage.
In this episode, Chris Uriarte joins Glenbrook colleagues Samantha Gordon, Simon Skinner, and Drew Edmond to explore the complexities and potential benefits for merchants and platforms to consider when expanding payments globally.
Episode 295 – Fanning the Flames – 2026 Mid-Year Payments Industry Trends Update
The Glenbrook team is taking stock in June 2026 to see how the predictions from our January episode are holding up. Tune in for updates on trending topics in payments, including agentic commerce, stablecoins, cross-border and instant payments, risk and fraud, and the regulatory landscape. We also share insights on the “hot off the presses” news on tokenized deposits and the Visa/Mastercard interchange settlement.
Episode 294 – Zelle’s Evolution in the Payments Landscape, with Preston McCaskill, Early Warning Services
In this episode, Russ Jones welcomes Preston McCaskill, COO for Zelle, an open loop fast payments network owned and operated by Early Warning Services, to discuss the network’s growth, settlement process and alias directory, and expanding use cases.
News
Glenbrook objectively curates the news to keep you abreast of important daily headlines in payments.
Illinois Passes Law to Protect Buy Now, Pay Later Borrowers
"Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signed legislation to protect people who take out Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) loans from hidden charges, unaffordable loans, and other risks. The Illinois law covers loans with four or fewer installments or a term of 120 days or less. The...
The European Banking Authority Consults on a Draft Methodology for Setting Fines Under the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA)
"The European Banking Authority (EBA) published a Consultation Paper with a draft methodology for setting fines in its role as supervisor under MiCA. The objective is to ensure that fines imposed on issuers of significant crypto-assets are consistent, proportionate...
Africa’s Largest Lender Wins China Approval to Clear Yuan Payments Across 19 African Countries in Major Trade Shift
"China has authorised Africa’s largest lender, Standard Bank, to jointly clear yuan transactions across 19 African countries. The move gives businesses across the continent direct access to China’s onshore financial system for the first time. It comes as China deepens...
Ready to see how Glenbrook can support your enterprise to be as efficient and effective as possible?