Bitcoin FinCEN George Peabody Math-based Currencies Regulatory Environment

Dark Wallet and Bitcoin Regulation

Here we go again. The discussion and debate over Bitcoin’s legitimacy and its labeling as the province of anarchists and criminals is about to get louder again. Why?  Because Dark Wallet, an easy to use browser plug-in that makes bitcoin transactions far harder to trace, is coming on the scene. The release of yet another […]

Bitcoin Carol Coye Benson Erin McCune Glenbrook Payments Education Innovation Security

Transactions Get Smart

Glenbrook held a great “Innovations in Payments” workshop this week – a group which energetically debated many topics, including Bitcoin (of course), tokenization, beacons, authentication, wearables, interoperability and mobile ad spend. As I reflect on the day, it seems that an interesting theme emerged.  Many of the topics were about payment transactions that are – or […]

Bill Payment & Presentment Card Acceptance Card Payments Jay DeWitt Merchant Acquirers Merchants

Merchants and Billers: Leverage = Options x Time!

Every three years or so, merchants and billers have an opportunity to reconsider their card processing agreements with their acquirers. This is an opportunity to negotiate lower rates — especially if business is booming – and also the time that a merchant or biller could consider changing to another service provider. Sadly, many merchants and […]

ACH Banking Industry Elizabeth McQuerry Online Banking P2P Remittances

Walmart, ACH and the Elusive P2P Solution

Walmart’s announcement that it would offer store-to-store money transfers has a number of interesting aspects worth pondering.  At a high level, this seems like a no brainer. People need to send money to other people and lots of folks find themselves in Walmart’s stores throughout the week. Indeed, if it wanted, the world’s largest retailer […]

Big Data Dennis Moser Merchants Point of Sale (POS) Security

Dennis Moser on Merchant Payments Complexity

Dennis Moser is Glenbrook’s payments systems expert.  He’s worked on building the engines that make payment networks run, especially the critical component of the POS and payment acceptance infrastructure.  He’s also been neck deep in payment data management systems, both as a designer and as a data mining practitioner. Dennis and I have worked together […]

Bitcoin George Peabody Innovation Math-based Currencies Technology

Glenbrook Launches Insight Workshop Bitcoin: Basics and Beyond

Any reader of Payments Views knows that most of us at Glenbrook are impressed by the potential of math-based currencies (MBCs). And all of us agree that participants in the payments industry (in the broadest sense) need to understand Bitcoin and its crypto-currency relatives. Having seen so many Internet technologies grow from concept to first […]

Banking Industry Bitcoin Carol Coye Benson Innovation Math-based Currencies Virtual Currency

Bitcoin is like...

As is the case with many people in our industry, I’ve been giving  a lot of thought recently to Bitcoin.  When ever I run into something new, or puzzling, I try to find comparisons to help me understand it.  And comparisons abound in Bitlandia.  Many people compare it to the Internet, in terms of significance.  […]

Big Data Card Technology Innovation Personal Financial Management Purchase Details Russ Jones Start Ups Uncategorized

Plaid - A Modern API for Card Data

Our work in payment data cuts across many areas. Who has what data? How is it best monetized? How can it be put to use for better decision making? How can it be augmented and enhanced. It’s in this last area of “enhancements” that we’ve become fascinated with a new startup company called Plaid. They […]

ACH B2B Payments Banking Industry Carol Coye Benson Checking Accounts Fast Payments NACHA P2P PayPal

Same Day ACH – A Step (or Lurch) Ahead

NACHA recently announced plans for a phased introduction of same-day settlement for ACH.  I spoke with NACHA President and CEO Jan Estep this morning about the initiative. First of all, I congratulate Jan – and the ACH community – for picking up the fallen banner, for as we know, a previous version of this was […]

Bitcoin George Peabody Math-based Currencies Virtual Currency

What Comes After Bitcoin?

Since the media latched onto Bitcoin as good fodder for the 24 hours news cycle, the hard focus has been on Bitcoin, its merits, and shortcomings, as a currency, commodity, and as next generation payment rails. My thinking on its currency and commodity aspects is straightforward. If you don’t understand Bitcoin, don’t buy it, caveat […]

Banking Elizabeth McQuerry Fast Payments Global Payments SWIFT

How to Get Along and Do Good

Recently I shared my views about the developments underway in the mobile and payments space in Latin America. In that story, I address how individual countries are taking big strides toward reshaping their national payments landscape. Another remarkable, and equally little known, story is happening in southern Africa where the payments infrastructure in 15 countries […]

Authentication Banking Industry Current Events Innovation Mobile Payments Scott Loftesness

EMV, Data Breaches, HCE and the Pace of Change in Payments

One of the pleasures of joining Glenbrook has been getting to know what and how the other Glebrookers think about what’s happening in the payments industry.  We talk a lot at Glenbrook. Over iChat, email, mobile phones, Skype, Google Hangout with voice and video, through Google Docs, and whenever we meet up for client work […]

Card Payments Card Technology Carol Coye Benson Ecommerce Payments Google Wallet Merchants Mobile Wallets

Cards and Wallets and Mobile Oh My!

I can’t help it – I’m a consultant; I love putting things into categories and into context.  I always find pictures and “maps” help when things get confusing.  So here’s my latest attempt at making sense of what’s going on with mobile payments and cards. What really jumps out for me is the issue of […]

Allen Weinberg Card Fraud Card Payments Chip Cards Point of Sale (POS) Security

Is the Target Breach the Chernobyl of Payments?

Chernobyl is certainly at the top of the list of man-made disasters.  In light of recent events, I’ve been thinking that the Target breach has become the Chernobyl of the payments world. As a group, we Americans never thought that much about payment security – we really didn’t have to.  We are protected by federal […]

Contactless Debit Cards EMV George Peabody NFC Payments Views Point of Sale (POS) Security

Dispatch from the Smart Card Alliance Payments Conference

For those companies and individuals most committed to building the EMV and NFC ecosystems, the place to be February 3rd through 7th was Salt Lake City where the Smart Card Alliance hosted both an EMV Migration Forum meeting and its annual Payments Summit.  Over 525 people attended, representing the chip industry, payment processors, card brands, […]