PAYMENTS ON FIRE RESOURCE CENTER

Smart thinking for smart payments professionals

Payments On Fire is the industry’s leading resource center for payments professionals. Here, you’ll find the resources and thought leadership that only Glenbrook’s experienced team can provide. Curated news stories, insightful opinion papers, provocative podcasts, and more – it’s all the thinking you need to stay competitive in a dynamic payments world.

October 8, 2008

GTNews: Credit Crisis Spotlight

Timely articles at GTNews: Europe's Response to the Market MeltdownSanjima DeZoysa, Editor, gtnewsIn Europe, it's every country for itself as the continent reacts to the credit crunch. Depositor guarantees and state intervention are the key talking points right now, but what does this mean for the future of Europe's banks and financial institutions? Effective Risk […]

October 7, 2008

Dr. IBM Has a Cure for your Global Finance Department

[via CFO.com]  Managing the finance infrastructure of a large global company is a messy, convoluted business. Regulations and proesses vary from country to country. Redundancy and inefficiency plague the global treasury and finance departments of multinationals. Now IBM has a cure: Enter IBM, with software that attempts to normalize and standardize the complex process of […]

Global Repercussions of the Credit Crisis (The Economist)

This week The Economist has a sobering article on the global impact of the credit crisis that contains pragmatic recommendations for government cooperation (easier said than done). By some measures, many European banks look more vulnerable than their American counterparts do—and that is saying quite something, given the past week’s forced sale of Washington Mutual, […]

Fed to Purchase Commercial Paper

Today's big news (at least so far)… efforts turn to addressing the shortage of short term liquidity. [Read the Fed Announcement] via Bloomberg:      Oct. 7 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve will create a special fund to purchase U.S. commercial paper after the credit crunch threatened to cut off a key source of funding […]

October 2, 2008

CFOs Battle the Financial Crisis (a case study)

The WSJ features a case study of Alfred Giammarino who took over as CFO at FairPoint Communications Inc. a month ago and "was promptly hit by the worst financial tsunami since the Great Depression." "This is a period when you really can't take anything for granted," he said. And he expects the challenges to grow […]

October 1, 2008

Credit Crisis Impact on Corporates (AFP Research)

The Association of Financial Professionals just published research on short-term credit access for corporates. The survey was originally conducted in early September and was supplemented by a shorter survey conducted in last week to reflect evolving market conditions. Highlights: The recent turmoil in the financial markets has had a direct impact on the ability of […]

September 29, 2008

Meet up at Finovate2008? Oct 14 in NYC

I'll be in NYC for Finnovate 2008 on October 14. Twenty-four hot new financial companies will present their new products and recent updates. They each get 7 minutes to demo – no PowerPoint allowed. If it's anything like FinnovateStartup (I live blogged that event here) it's going to be great. Here's the lineup: Details here.

Analysis of the Bailout Deal

After a weekend of negotiations Washington has come up with a Bailout deal… you can read it for yourself here. And if that's too much legalese for your taste, here's the summary (courtesy of the WSJ). Meanwhile, stocks worldwide are tumbling. Coverage: Wall Street Journal The Economist American Banker (subscription required) New York Times: news […]

The 25 Most Powerful Women in Banking 2008

On Friday US Banker published its 7th annual ranking of the most powerful women in banking. The list was compiled earlier this summer and some of the women no longer hold the roles they had at the time of publication (Krawcheck) and at this writing some of the banks may cease to exist, at least […]

September 15, 2008

Recent Payment Views

A Deposit By Any Other Name?

What’s the difference between card acceptance and a deposit? In both cases, money is being delivered into a merchant’s bank account – in fact, a purist would point out that a deposit actually is the last stage of card acceptance for a merchant. But consider instead a...

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The Biggest Mobile Payments Story You’ve Never Heard

As we move into 2014 – yet (again) the year when many say mobile payments are destined to gain traction – let’s look at some key developments in the space. No, I’m not talking about the newest pilot participant in ISIS or whether Apple will be the new sheriff in town....

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The Age of Context and Security

The news from Target, increasing the number of cards compromised to 70 million and the expansion of data loss to mailing and email addresses, phone numbers, and names, affirms that we’re in a security crisis.  As my colleague Scott Loftesness puts it, card data is,...

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Bitcoin in 2014

Last year was, of course, the break out year for Bitcoin.  Incubating in geek-nurtured obscurity during its first few years, 2013 saw the international media, global investors, entrepreneurs, and even a few just plain citizens jump onto the math-based currency (fewer...

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