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 301 – Casting Light on the Digital Euro, with Nicola Branzoli, Banca d’Italia
In this episode, Nicola Branzoli, Head of Division for the Digital Euro Regulation, Research, and Technical Support at the Banca d’Italia, joins Glenbrook’s Ashley Lannquist and Simon Skinner for an in-depth exploration of the digital euro. Listen in as they cover the objectives and value proposition, design choices and pilot details, and what the digital euro means in the broader European payment context.
Episode 300 – Reflecting on 12 Years of Payments on Fire
2026 is a milestone year for Glenbrook as we celebrate the 25th anniversary of the firm. We also find ourselves airing the 300th episode of our Payments on Fire podcast – founded by George Peabody in 2014, nurtured by Yvette Bohanan, and now continued on through the hosting efforts of most of the team.
We thought there would be no better way to mark the 12 year achievement – and pay respect to what George and Yvette built – than to revisit the journey with clips from the first 299 episodes. From early episodes on digital currency and AI, to fast payments evolution and financial inclusion efforts (and how could we leave out tokenization), listen in as Bryan Derman and Jill Wurst guide you through significant moments in the podcast’s history.
Episode 299 – The Evolving Payments Regulatory Environment in the European Union, with Scott McInnes, Bird & Bird
In this Payments on Fire episode, Glenbrook’s Chris Uriarte and Samantha Gordon continue their global payments regulation series with Scott McInnes, Partner at Bird & Bird, focusing on the European Union.
Tune in as they explore the EU’s highly regulated landscape, the challenges of inconsistent national enforcement across 27 member states, and developments on current regulatory topics.
News
Glenbrook objectively curates the news to keep you abreast of important daily headlines in payments.
PhonePe CEO Breaks Silence on UPI Charges
"The new Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) framework for UPI transactions will not impose any charges on customers. The move is necessary to make India’s digital payments ecosystem financially sustainable, PhonePe CEO Sameer Nigam said. The CEO clarified customers will...
Mastercard and Trip.com Pave the Way for Agentic Commerce in the Travel Sector [Video]
"Mastercard and Trip.com have joined forces to showcase AI powered booking experiences for the travel sector. Powered by Mastercard’s Agent Suite for Merchants and in partnership with Network International, the organizations are showcasing how consumers will be able...
Pidgin Partners with Millennium Corporate Credit Union to Bring Unified Instant Payments to Nearly 300 Credit Unions
"Pidgin, a secure, unified instant payments platform built for the future of payments, has partnered with Wichita, Kansas-based Millennium Corporate Credit Union, giving its nearly 300 credit unions across the Midwest and beyond access to FedNow, RTP, and stablecoin...
Ready to see how Glenbrook can support your marketplaces and platform company to be as efficient and effective as possible?