B2B BNPL Consumers Economic Outlook PaymentsPost

Payments Post #8: Glenbrook's October Roundup

At Glenbrook, we’ve been watching rising interest rates and vacillating economic conditions over the course of the year; while economists debate the likelihood of further rate hikes and the odds of a near-term recession, we dig into the real impact of these uncertain conditions on the U.S. payments landscape. Samantha Gordon joins us this month […]

Tags: Fintech

Regulatory Environment

PSD3: Implications for the U.S.

Much has already been written about the Third Payment Services Directive (PSD3) and its anticipated scope following the release of the draft texts earlier in the year, but, understandably, mostly from a European standpoint. Arguably, PSD3 is likely to be more of an evolution than a revolution, with the transition from PSD2 to PSD3 less […]

Open Banking

From Open Banking to Open Finance: Redefining the Financial Services Landscape

By Bethany May The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) just released proposed rules for Open Banking in the U.S. which offer a framework for understanding Open Banking roles, role-based requirements and rights, and timelines for implementation, among other things. This long-awaited proposal lays the groundwork for a more mature approach to Open Banking in the […]

Cross-border Payments Financial Inclusion Global Payments

Decoding a cross-border business payment to Rwanda: detailing the journey, the costs, and our observations

By Elizabeth McQuerry, Cici Northup, & Victor Malu   Introduction Glenbrook is based in the U.S., but we work on projects around the world; our global practice often supports clients in emerging markets. From time to time, for more formal proposal processes, we are asked to provide a corresponding bid security. For anyone not familiar […]

Financial Inclusion Identity Merchants Technology

Could Amazon’s Just Walk Out Technology Address the Scourge of ‘Shoplifting’?

I read with some sadness last week about Target’s decision to close nine of its stores in the New York, Portland (OR), San Francisco/Oakland, and Seattle markets due to what it called not “shoplifting”, but “theft and organized retail crime”. The closures will be abrupt (effective October 21) and the company cited both the financial […]

Cross-border Payments Global Payments PaymentsPost

Payments Post #7: Glenbrook's September Roundup - Sibos, India, and a Connected Future

This month, Payments Post is going global. We’ll jump to Canada as we explore themes from Sibos and then to India to take a look at a leader in next-generation national payment schemes. We’re joined by Cici Northup, Associate Partner in our Global practice, alongside our usual curator Justin Pituch. Sibos highlights global payment aspirations […]

Tags: Fintech

Merchants

Involuntary Churn: Measured and Managed

In our previous post on involuntary churn, The Payments Playbook for Challenging Churn, we explored the challenges faced by business in managing recurring billing operations. The post explored various tactics to manage and reduce involuntary churn, such as dunning communication, payment timing optimization, local payment methods, account updater, network tokenization, and dynamic routing. In this […]

BNPL Lending

Buy Now, Pay Later: Where Have the Months Gone?

At the beginning of the year, I hypothesized that four issues needed to be addressed for sustained Buy Now, Pay Later success. What happened this year? To what extent did we mature our BNPL market?  Let’s take a look at 2023 progress: Issue 1: BNPL Education January recommendation: We need more and better consumer education […]

Merchants PaymentsPost

Payments Post #6: Glenbrook's August Roundup

Chris Uriarte and Justin Pituch put their heads together to sift through the August news in search of a broader storyline. Looking back at headlines surrounding merchant surcharging, fee backlash, and Adyen’s lackluster H1 performance, we noted an underlying theme of broad downward pressure on the cost of merchant processing. Companies like Toast and Adyen […]

Tags: Fintech

Fast Payments PaymentsPost

Payments Post #5: Glenbrook's June/July Roundup

Payments Post was on vacation last month; your editor was making his way from Berkeley, CA to a new home in Chicago, IL. But now that I’m settled in the Windy City, I’m happy to present this “double feature” post, covering developments in both June and July. Two major themes span these two months: 1) […]

Tags: Fintech

Cross-border Payments Fast Payments Global Payments

On the journey to fast and low-cost cross-border payments (not yet at the destination)

Impetus to improve cross-border payments Whether you are deep in the cross-border payments space or have sent (or tried to send) a cross-border payment, you know these are not as easy as paying for your morning coffee or sending money to a local friend for last night’s dinner. Domestic payments have become faster, if not […]

B2B Payments Data Fast Payments ISO 20022

Fast Payments, Rich Data

FedNow – the Federal Reserve’s new instant payment service – went live earlier this summer, and it could signal big changes ahead for B2B payments. Why? It comes down to data. B2B payments are rife with data challenges. In my last post, I described that the funds transfer component of a B2B transaction is often […]

B2B Payments

B2B: Why the Pain?

B2B payments keep commerce moving, but B2B transactions can be incredibly painful for both senders and receivers. Check usage remains stubbornly high in the B2B space, even post-lockdown. Manual processes abound. So what makes B2B transactions so difficult, even as digitization transforms other business processes and areas of the payments world? And what technologies are […]

Tags: Real-time Payments

Customer Relationship Management

Poor Account Management: The Silent Killer of Payment Service Providers

The major global payment service providers (PSPs) are in perpetual competition to provide their target merchants with the highest quality of payments acceptance technology. However, one of the most common reasons that Glenbrook sees merchants leave their PSP has nothing to do with technology. They leave due to poor account management. Account management is the […]

Visa

Is this the Future of Reducing 3D-Secure Friction in the Long Term?:  A Look at Visa’s Digital Authentication Framework (DAF)

In this post, Glenbrook provides a solutions review. This is a new type of Glenbrook payments views post that deep dives into a particular market solution.  Once in a while, we run into a few topics and innovations that we think could have a major benefit to the payments industry but aren’t being discussed in […]

Tags: Risk Management