Card Acceptance Card Payments iPhone Merchant Acquirers Mobile Payments Square

Innovations in Card Acceptance

What Drives Innovation? More often than not, the successful innovations that surprise us come from disrupters who focus in a laser-like way on unserved market opportunities. In doing so, they are able to successfully fly below the radar of the incumbents (to use Christensen’s familiar terminology). The incumbents, after all, have a laser-like focus on […]

Banking Banking Industry Card Issuers Card Networks Card Payments Debit Cards Federal Reserve Financial Regulators Interchange Regulatory Environment

Thinking Through Moves and Countermoves on the Durbin Chessboard

After months of speculation and hand-wringing, last Friday we finally got a relatively complete reading on how the Federal Reserve will likely implement the prescribed regulation of debit interchange and debit network competition. My partner, Carol Benson, has also shared a summary of how various payment domains and players might be affected in the near […]

Card Issuers ECommerce Ecommerce Payments Mobile Payments Mobile Technology

The Commerce Context

Last week my partner Russ Jones and I were exploring some of new ideas in the mobile payments space when we came across the notion of the “Commerce Context” – defined as when you and I, as consumers, are in an environment (a context) that’s enabled for commerce. The last fifteen years of the eCommerce […]

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FinovateFall 2010: Day 2 / Session 2

Glenbrook’s Bryan Derman is live blogging from FinovateFall 2010. This is one of several posts; you can find an index to his coverage here. Seeking Alpha: Site has 3.5 MM unique monthly visitors — investors, bankers, high net worth individuals — accessing the filtered content on investments Now adding investment tools to the content — the […]

Bryan Derman Conferences & Meetings Finance Finovate Innovation Technology

FinovateFall 2010: Day 1 / Session 3

Glenbrook’s Bryan Derman is live blogging from FinovateFall 2010. This is one of several posts; you can find an index to his coverage here. Betterment: Dashboard for investment geared to simple review of portfolio value, overall return and asset allocation Money is automatically invested in simple set of ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds) based on the […]

Amazon Bill Payment & Presentment Cash Payments ECommerce Ecommerce Payments Erin McCune Mobile Banking & Payments

PayNearMe Refreshes Kombini Payments For The US

You are a bona fide payments professional if that headline makes senses to you. For everyone else, here’s an explanation. Kombini Payments Before we take a look at PayNearMe, let’s first explore how Kombini payments work. Kombini (variously spelled Konbini, Kombini, or Combini) or convenience store payments are an important element of the Japanese payment […]

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Survey Results: U.S. Market Contactless Terminal Penetration

Last week we asked readers to help us capture a snapshot of U.S. market contactless/RFID terminalization. We were pleased to get 43 brave souls to respond. Here are the (admittedly anything but scientific) results:

Card Payments Innovation Merchant Acquirers

The Card Payments Ecosystem - and Fragmentation

In a post titled “Great since day one“, Marco Arment blogs about what makes the iPhone different – in essence he writes that Apple makes products that are great today. Android isn’t. Reading his post brought to mind the fragmented nature of the card payments ecosystem that we live in – and how it’s so […]

Banking Banking Industry Bryan Derman Card Payments Debit Cards Financial Regulators Interchange Regulatory Environment

Getting Real About Durbin

I’ve been amazed by what I’ve been reading of late from the “analyst” firms commenting on the Durbin Amendment. A lot of what I’ve seen makes me wonder whether these folks should turn in their analyst licenses and simply register as paid lobbyists for their big bank clientele. (The Durbin amendment, for those not in […]

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Tidbits and Sound Bites from the 2010 Chicago Fed Payments Conference

While I don’t manage to attend every year, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s annual payment conference remains one of my favorites. The Chicago Fed has a great payments team that works hard at putting together a timely program, but I like this event because it really is what it purports to be – a […]

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When Worlds Collide [NACHA Payments 2010]

I’m here in Seattle today at NACHA’s Payments 2010 conference along with Russ and Erin.  I’m mulling over a couple things I heard in sessions today, trying to draw the line between them. Early this morning, I sat in on a briefing by eCom Advisors about a study they did in partnership with FIS and […]

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Glenbrook’s Perspective on Visa’s Acquisition of CyberSource

A number of us self-proclaimed “payments geeks” awoke this morning to learn of Visa Inc’s intention to purchase CyberSource for approximately $2 billion.  Over the course of the day, Glenbrook’s been getting a flood of emails generally asking, “What’s the REAL reason Visa’s buying this big gateway company?”

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Is Global eCommerce Really Such a Dark and Scary Place?

Here at Glenbrook, we work closely with eCommerce merchants on issues and opportunities that they confront every day. Increasingly, the questions we hear surround the topic of “going global” — “What countries should I sell into? What local payment methods are important? Who can provide my company’s payment services over seas? It seems that U.S. […]

Conferences & Meetings ECommerce Erin McCune Facebook Micropayments NACHA P2P PayPal Russ Jones Social Media Social Payments Technology Web 2.0 in Financial Services Web/Tech

Glenbrook's Model for Social Payments (A Work in Progress)

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about social payments, and have reached two conclusions. The first is that a payment facilitated by a social network is not a social payment—it’s just a normal customer-not-present payment. The second is that social payments are, by definition, social in nature and involve multiple parties. Hear me out on […]

Allen Weinberg ECommerce Ecommerce Payments Hosted Payments

Hosted Payment Pages and Fields

As a volunteer at several non-profits, I have, of course, jumped or gotten pulled into those organizations’ payment issues. Accepting donations over the Internet is increasingly important and there are a staggering array of specialized service providers that offer turnkey payment acceptance. Over the past year though, we at Glenbrook have noticed more and more […]