Apple Authentication Banking Industry Bitcoin Blockchain Card Fraud Card Technology Chip Cards Economic Outlook Fast Payments Financial Regulators George Peabody Innovation Interchange Marketing & Offers Merchants Mobile Payments Security Starbucks

Payments 2017 – One Month In

Business evolution—whether it’s automotive, bioscience, or in the payments industry—proceeds along a predictable path of incremental improvements and optimization. Until it doesn’t and a step function takes effect. Last year was sleepy compared to what we can expect during the next eleven months. 2016 was characterized by the more familiar path, through themes set in […]

Elizabeth McQuerry Global Payments Interoperability Mobile Banking & Payments Mobile Payments Remittances SADC

Expanded Frontiers in Mobile Payment

One of the payments obsessions here at Glenbrook is understanding the ways in which mobile payment and digital financial services are taking hold around the world. Once effectively limited to the early success of M-PESA and P2P payment in Kenya, today there are a number of services underway. M-PESA itself, in around a decade, has […]

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Merchants Just Want to Sell Stuff

Anyone who’s been in a Glenbrook Payments Boot Camp session with me has heard me emphatically stress that merchants “just want to sell stuff – they don’t want to be in the payments business”. Of course many larger and more sophisticated merchants have figured out how to use payments strategically to increase sales – think […]

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Election cycles and payments systems development

It’s election time here in the United States and potentially big changes are ahead. Elections define the beginning and end of political eras.  Walter Dean Burnham, the distinguished professor of American Politics, elaborated a theory of party change and realignment.[1] Burnham’s theory noted that critical issues bubble up from time to time and their impact […]

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Enough with the 2016 Predictions – Let’s Think Bigger!

As I was slogging through the many payments-related articles and blog posts reminiscing about 2015 events and making predictions for what may or may not be ahead in 2016, I thought of a conversation I had with Scott Loftesness around 20 years ago, sometime in 1995 or 1996. Both of us were at First Data […]

Card Payments Cross-border Payments Fast Payments Foreign Exchange Glenbrook Payments Education Global Payments Remittances Russ Jones SEPA SWIFT UK

Inside the Payments Boot Camp - Global Payments

Last year we expanded our Payments Boot Camp program to include a series of one-day workshops that give us an opportunity to dive a little deeper into a topic to share our experience and insights in a more interactive forum. And no topic has as much “real-world” demand as Global Payments. It’s a broad area […]

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Glenbrook's Elizabeth McQuerry is IPFA CEO

This week, I began an important new assignment. I am now the CEO of the International Payments Framework Association (IPFA). If you haven’t yet heard of it, the IPFA provides rules, standards, operating procedures, and guidelines to improve cross-border payments. It’s now five years old and moving into the next, exciting, and supercharged phase of payments […]

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Nothing More Social

I read the Facebook announcement of payments through Messenger with interest, and just a touch of “about time”! After all, there is nothing more social than sending money to family and friends. And although much attention is paid in the press to the friend-to-friend use cases, I suspect that the family-to-family opportunities are much greater. […]

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Now What? Immediate Funds Transfer in the U.S.

The Federal Reserve’s recent announcement that it would not build a new payment rail for processing faster payments created some disappointment for many who are unsatisfied with our country’s current payments system capabilities. In a welcome move, The Clearinghouse (TCH) has announced its intention to fill this void and build new real-time “rails”. There are, […]

Banking Banking Industry Bitcoin Conferences & Meetings Cross-border Payments Elizabeth McQuerry Fast Payments Federal Reserve Global Payments Math-based Currencies Mobile Money Uncategorized

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 […]

Banking Banking Industry Card Payments Cross-border Payments Ecommerce Payments Elizabeth McQuerry Glenbrook Payments Education SEPA

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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Full SEPA is Here, At Last

This week, we are delighted to feature a post by Manfred Schuck, a payments consultant from Frankfurt.  Manfred will co-lead with Elizabeth McQuerry our upcoming Payments in Europe Insight workshop to be held in Mountain View, CA on October 9.  On January 1st, 2001 fifteen European countries introduced notes and coins of a new common […]

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Back from the Future: Bitcoin2014 Musings

Last week I was in Amsterdam for the second annual conference hosted by the The Bitcoin Foundation. As a strategist and advocate for ever-better payment solutions, I was very curious to learn how the Bitcoin protocol and its emerging enablers can address some of the most intractable challenges facing payments. For the most part, payments […]

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There Is No Such Thing As An International Wire

As globalization increases, businesses of all sizes buy goods and services from overseas suppliers and turn to new customers in overseas markets to drive growth. As a result, the demand for cross-border transactions steadily increases. The vast majority of these transactions takes place through correspondent banking relationships and collectively described as “international wires.” The reality […]

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The State of Payments: 2014

What a year it has been! Twelve months ago, there were still people in our industry who didn’t know what Bitcoin was. There were still people who believed that EMV would roll out in the U.S. just like it did in the U.K. There were still people who thought that the developing world would build […]

Tags: state of payments