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.
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.
The Numbers Are In: Soaring Volume, Participation Mark Three Years of the FedNow® Service
"Three years strong, the FedNow Service continues to drive innovation and power instant payments nationwide. Explore this infographic for a snapshot of the network’s growth, recent enhancements and what’s ahead. Quarterly FedNow Service Statistics:...
Why Does the RBI Want to Keep Cryptocurrencies Out of India’s Banking System?
"The Reserve Bank of India has told the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance that virtual digital assets such as cryptocurrencies threaten the economy and should not be legalised. RBI's arguments: Cryptocurrencies are privately issued assets outside central...
Bridge (Stripe’s Stablecoin Infrastructure Platform) Secures MiCA and EMI Authorisations Across All 27 EU Member States
"Bridge has secured both a Crypto-Asset Service Provider authorisation under the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) and an Electronic Money Institution license in Luxembourg. This dual-licensing covers all 27 EU member states. This milestone compounds the...
Ready to see how Glenbrook can support your marketplaces and platform company to be as efficient and effective as possible?