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Glenbrook's Retailing Framework

I’ve been thinking a lot about how payments and payment-related technologies fit into the emerging world of multi-channel commerce or omni-commerce as some people call it. When a lot of companies describe their omni-commerce strategy, they are usually talking about recognizing customers across channels and being able support a sales cycle that starts in one […]

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Adventures in Attribution - The Apple vs. MCX Dialog

Like many payments industry insiders, we have been following the recent impassioned industry dialog about the relative merits of Apple Pay and MCX’s CurrentC wallet with a combination of amusement and despair. The barbs and accusations being exchanged by the rival camps in this technological holy war between NFC and QR codes suddenly reminded me […]

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Let's Just Skip Sig and Go to Chip and PIN

Last week I was in Victoria, British Columbia doing one of our Glenbrook Payments Assessments. In anticipation of my trip to the North American Land of Chip andPIN, I had both a Visa and an Amex card reissued in the chip format. Neither of my issuers supported PINs on my credit cards, so I was […]

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Considering Bitcoin as a Payment Network

Wikipedia says, “Bitcoin is a software-based online payment system.” But what sort of payment system is it? We get this question all the time when we talk about Bitcoin in our workshops. At Glenbrook we like to start each Payments Boot Camp talking about payments systems fundamentals and the common attributes that can be used […]

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A Central Bank Takes on Mobile Payments

Ecuador’s Central Bank has embarked on an ambitious course to launch an affordable and widely available mobile payment scheme.  In fact, it will be the national wallet. With some uncertainty, it appears that Ecuador’s initiative may be the second central bank effort to enter this space. Jordan’s central bank has launched “JoMoPay”, but for those […]

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ApplePay, NFC, QR (Oh My!) and the New POS

First There is a Mountain, Then There is No Mountain, Then There is… I’ve been thinking about what the future of the point of sale environment will look like from a consumer perspective. Of course, 10 years ago, we all knew what it was going to look like: consumers tapping their mobile phones to Near […]

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The Loosely Woven Threads of Sibos 2014

I’m just back from Boston and the marathon known as Sibos 2014. In a post earlier this week, I shared a couple of observations from the show floor and the conference sessions. Now that the conference has closed, I’m thinking about the themes that spoke to me. And, this year, I didn’t get the sense […]

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Report from Sibos 2014

Time is a vacuum at Sibos. It’s a great time to catch up with old friends and meet new colleagues.  The exhibition floor is overwhelming, even now after banks have scaled back their presence at events like these.  There is a plethora of panels on a broad range of topics to choose from. It’s a […]

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Out of Africa: Watching the Evolution of Mobile Money

It turns out you don’t have to be unbanked to like M-Pesa I had the opportunity earlier this month to visit the mecca of mobile payments, which –with all due respect to the recent accomplishments in Cupertino — remains Nairobi, Kenya. The “Kenyan miracle” in payments has been well documented, particularly in terms of how […]

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Apple Pay: It’s Your Life?

These are some personal observations on Apple Pay, after an exciting week of reading announcements from Apple and reactions from bloggers. (If you want a Glenbrook business view on the announcement, read Wednesday’s post by my partner George Peabody.) For several years we’ve been talking, at Glenbrook, about how mobile payments take a back seat, in […]

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Do You Want a Million Dollars?

I was delighted and fascinated to see that the Gates Foundation has issued a “Grand Challenge” on enabling universal acceptance of mobile money payments.  The Foundation’s previous best-known challenges have been in healthcare, notably for toilets and condoms, so this is quite a change! The Foundation is soliciting two-page proposals on innovative devices, software or business […]

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Apple Pay Stirs, But Doesn't Shake, the Mobile Landscape

The Apple Pay announcement finally came yesterday and the company’s orchestration of much of the complex and fractious card payments ecosystem demonstrates Apple’s insight into how the current payments ecosystem works and how it must be aligned in order to meet its own needs. Combining NFC, Apple’s Passbook wallet, Touch ID biometric reader, cards stored in the […]

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SEPA for Cards - The New Ballgame

We are delighted to feature another post by Manfred Schuck, a terrific payments consultant from Frankfurt, who will co-lead with Elizabeth McQuerry our upcoming Payments in Europe Insight workshop to be held in Mountain View, CA on October 9. Now, it’s about cards.  Here’s how the European Payments Council (EPC), the self-regulation body of the […]

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IBAN the Terrible and Other EU Payment Issues

As the summer holiday period close, I find myself in a back to school mode even though I haven’t been enrolled for nearly twenty years. Europe is especially on my mind as we prepare for the Glenbrook Payments in Europe workshop next month. What are the big payments issues in Europe today, what’s the context […]

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Who’s a Better Fraud Investigator — You or Your Bank?

Last month, I invited everyone to participate in a survey about card fraud detection. It asked a simple question: “Who’s better at card fraud detection? You or your bank?” The results are in and, well, it looks like it’s more or less a tie: cardholders initially detected card fraud slightly more often than their issuers. […]