Marketplaces and Platforms
Marketplaces and platforms enable commerce, by connecting remote buyers and sellers. By embedding payment acceptance in their solutions, they make it easy for businesses to accept payments from their customers, often across a wide range of payment methods. These capabilities can come in different flavors: end user visibility, digital wallet capabilities, additional payments adjacent features, and multiple settlement and disbursement options are variations to consider. The three major capabilities that these solutions have to solve for are:
1. Onboarding (which includes regulatory compliance considerations)
2. Payment Acceptance
3. Payouts to End Users
Platforms and marketplaces also have to manage multiple types of risk compared to a traditional merchant, which requires decisions about risk sharing, fraud vendors, operational structure (in-source vs outsource) and how a risk control strategy should be developed.
This enabler role offers opportunities and challenges. To perform it well, marketplaces and platforms often come to us with questions like:
How do we respond to upcoming or newly implemented regulatory changes?
What strategic payments plays are our competitors doing?
What role are we obligated to play in fraud and risk management? What role should we play?
What could we do to make payments a source of revenue?
Are we working with the right partners? Do we have the right contracts in place?
How we can help
Assessments
of current operations, of partner performance, of market opportunities, and of regulatory environments
Research
qualitative, quantitative, and mixed method research and analysis
Strategic advisory
Education
Marketplace & Platforms Case Studies
Resources
Articles
Glenbrook shares our perspectives on activities in the industry.
Payments Post #18: The Year of the Anti-Regulator?
In this Payments Post, we’re thinking about the tension that’s emerged in the regulatory space as a result of the recent change in government with an eye on the controversial CFPB. Read our (not legal advice!) thoughts on what we see playing out in Washington, and what it might mean for the payments industry.
Payments Post #17: Cutting Costs
In this Payments Post, we discuss the DOJ bringing a lawsuit against Visa that alleges the company operates an illegal monopoly in the debit card space. Does the argument have merit in our non-legal minds? And if so, what could the DOJ’s move mean for an evolving payments landscape?
Payments Post #16: The Apple Drops
It’s time for another edition of Payments Post and (surprise!) we’re thinking about the Visa Flexible Credential again. Now that Apple has plans to open up the NFC chip and Secure Element to third party developers, we’re scratching our heads. Who benefits from this newfound NFC access? What opportunities can fintechs unlock? How will conventional financial institutions react? And to tie it all back, does the VFC still matter?
Podcasts
Glenbrook speaks with industry leaders to share a variety of perspectives on the latest payments trends and activities.
Episode 256 – Banking on Fintech, with Anthony Sharett, Pathward
In this episode, Anthony Sharett, President of Pathward, joins Glenbrook’s Bryan Derman to share insights on the evolving partner banking space, the importance of risk and compliance frameworks, and Pathward’s mission of financial inclusion. Tune in as they also discuss potential policy and regulatory changes due to implications of major discrepancies in the banking-as-a-service arrangement between fintech platform Synapse and its banking partners.
Episode 255 – Glenbrook’s On-Demand Learning Launch and Behind the Scenes with the Payments Education Team
Debbie Bartoo and Russ Jones join Yvette Bohanan to discuss Glenbrook’s focus on payments education and share some of the fun and fascinating things that have happened in facilitating workshops for 34,000 (and counting) payments geeks. Listen in to hear behind-the-scenes insights from their workshop experiences and highlights from the latest offering, On-Demand Learning, as Glenbrook continues to evolve payments education with the changing industry landscape.
Episode 254 – Reshaping How We Move Money with Booshan Rengachari, Finzly
Booshan Rengachari, CEO of Finzly, joins Glenbrook’s Elizabeth McQuerry and Simon Skinner to discuss how software, fast payments, and open banking are reshaping the banking industry and the way we think about financial services.
News
Glenbrook objectively curates the news to keep you abreast of important daily headlines in payments.
Powell Squashes the Possibility That the Fed Will Develop Its Own Digital Currency
"Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell asserted Tuesday that the central bank will not develop its own digital currency as long as he is in charge. Ending several years of speculation whether the Fed would join some of its global counterparts, including China, in...
How Core Values Shape Our Relationship With Cash
"What drives our choices when it comes to using cash versus other forms of payment? For Dr Julia Pitters many influences come into play when we make that decision: from the sense of trust and security that make cash appealing through to concerns surrounding the...
Socure Launches RiskOS™: The First Risk Decisioning Engine Built on the Industry’s Most Comprehensive Identity Graph
"Socure announced the general availability of its new RiskOS platform. RiskOS builds on Socure's strategic acquisition of Effectiv by integrating its sophisticated orchestration and decisioning engine with Socure's market-leading identity verification and fraud...
Ready to see how Glenbrook can support your marketplaces and platform company to be as efficient and effective as possible?