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.
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.
The Missing Context Layer in Agentic Commerce: Part 1
Glenbrook’s Drew Edmond discusses the critical role of a persistent, cross-application context layer, ideally provided at the operating system level, in enabling the envisioned future of agentic commerce where AI agents can proactively and intelligently assist consumers in transactions.
Podcasts
Glenbrook speaks with industry leaders to share a variety of perspectives on the latest payments trends and activities.
Episode 290 – The Evolution of VAMP and Card Network Fraud Monitoring, with Keith Briscoe, MRC, and Allan Shearer, J.P. Morgan
In this episode, Chris Uriarte welcomes Keith Briscoe, VP, Advocacy and Education at the Merchant Risk Council, and Allan Shearer, Executive Director, Head of TMT Relationship Management at J.P. Morgan, to focus on the evolution of card network fraud monitoring programs, and in particular, VAMP, Visa’s Acquirer Monitoring Program, which combines fraud and dispute metrics to better manage risk at both merchant and acquirer levels. Listen in as the group discusses industry reactions, data transparency and reporting challenges, and implications for enforcement of new thresholds.
Episode 289 – Stablecoin Infrastructure in Emerging Markets, with Chris Maurice, Yellow Card
In this episode, Chris Maurice, the CEO and co-founder of Yellow Card, joins Drew Edmond to explore how stablecoins are transforming global payments, especially in emerging markets, by addressing liquidity issues, reducing costs, improving compliance transparency, and enabling faster cross-border transactions. Listen in as they highlight the challenges of legacy infrastructure, regulatory evolution, interoperability, and the evolving role of banks and technology platforms in this ecosystem.
Episode 288 – The First 25 Years of Glenbrook – Fanning the Flames with our Founders
For Glenbrook’s 25th Anniversary, we speak with the three founding partners – Carol Coye Benson, Scott Loftesness, and Allen Weinberg – to celebrate the progress of the industry and the firm.
Listen in as they recall the early days of the firm, discuss how Glenbrook’s strategy work expanded to form our education and global practices, consider the evolution of the “payments professional”, and reflect on payments industry shifts over their years both in and out of Glenbrook.
News
Glenbrook objectively curates the news to keep you abreast of important daily headlines in payments.
Visa Launches Validator Node on Tempo Blockchain
"Visa announced it launched its validator node on the Tempo network, marking a milestone in Visa’s advancement of blockchain infrastructure leadership and shaping stablecoin payments. The launch underscores Visa’s commitment to running blockchain operations in-house....
Trust, Privacy Concerns Holding Back Consumers From AI Shopping Tool Adoption
"Consumer interest in artificial intelligence is strong, but trust still remains a barrier to full adoption. Only 39% of Americans trust AI agents to make everyday purchases on their behalf, and only 34% are comfortable with AI-driven purchasing for larger items,...
American Express Debuts Agentic Commerce Experiences (ACE)™ Developer Kit and Announces Industry-First Protection for Registered Agent Purchases
"American Express is building for the next era of commerce. As AI agents reshape how Card Members make everyday transactions, the company is bringing its longstanding tradition of trust, security, and service into AI-powered commerce. Today, American Express is...
Ready to see how Glenbrook can support your enterprise to be as efficient and effective as possible?