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.

April 19, 2013

Annual Glenbrook Payments Survey: Tell Us About YOUR Payments Organization

We are conducting our third annual payments organization survey to learn how companies’ internal structures are evolving to manage the ever-increasing complexity of payments. We are eager to learn how your company manages payments, and how your payments organization is changing – whether you are a biller, eCommerce merchant, or retailer; whether you sell to consumers or businesses (or […]

March 18, 2013

The Rise of the Smart Transaction

When I was a baby consultant some twenty years ago, I remember standing in Kepler’s Bookstore in Menlo Park (remember book stores?) thumbing through a paperback book called “The Rules of Marketing”. Rule #7 that said all successful markets will subdivide into submarkets as they grow over time. One of the examples cited was how […]

March 14, 2013

Machine Learning: A Road to Smarter Payments

I recently had the time and opportunity to bone up on machine learning.  The opportunity that presented itself was a 10-week on-line course taught by a well known Stanford Computer Science professor, Andrew Ng.  The course, offered by coursera.org included lectures, quizzes, and programming exercises. It was great. And it really got me thinking about […]

March 13, 2013

Faster, Better, Cheaper - Like it or Not

A new wave of payment capabilities is hitting shores around the world. This wave is made up of better, faster, and cheaper “credit-push” systems.  That means that transactions enter the payments systems from the sender’s bank (like a wire transfer) rather than from the recipient’s bank (like a card or check).  Credit-push payments have a […]

October 17, 2012

September 24, 2012

The State of Payments – U.S. Market 2012

It’s hard to believe that the end of 2012 is in sight – and it’s almost equally hard to believe that three years ago, a few of us at Glenbrook were thinking, “gee – all the exciting stuff in payments has already happened”. Yet we don’t think we’ve ever seen so much action in the […]

August 18, 2012

August 13, 2012

June 11, 2012

May 25, 2012

PayPal’s Offline World Domination?

Over three years ago I wrote a cheeky headline about “PayPal World Domination” (covering the 2009 eBay Analyst day) and that post has remained one of the top 10 Payments Views pages ever since – evidence of the enduring curiosity, anxiety, respect, and skepticism that PayPal evokes in payment professionals, whether they are incumbents or […]

May 8, 2012

May 7, 2012

The Dawn of a New Era for Small Biz Banking? [Dispatch from NACHA Payments 2012]

I was at NACHA’s annual payments conference last week and the most interesting things I heard and saw had to do with small business banking and payments, a long suffering, underserved segment of the market. There’ve been glimmers of hope for small business off and on over the years but I haven’t witnessed a groundswell […]

April 9, 2012

March 15, 2012

PayPal Takes on Square and the Square Wannabes

As anticipated, and widely leaked, PayPal today announced PayPal Here, its mobile payments acceptance solution, at a private event in San Francisco. At a high-level it matches – and in some cases, exceeds – the features offered by Square and the other mobile POS vendors. In context, this has been a big week for PayPal, […]

February 28, 2012

Recent Payment Views

Ready for U.S. Faster Payments 2.0?

Ready for U.S. Faster Payments 2.0?

Today's U.S. faster payments market is not the one we envisioned. In market for five-plus years now, RTP® and Zelle® laid the foundation of faster payments in the country but, as with most new payment systems, challenges inhibit adoption. Volumes in both networks have...

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Where are fast payments systems headed in the U.S.?

Where are fast payments systems headed in the U.S.?

We are in the early stages of fast payments here in the U.S. Zelle and RTP are live and the FedNow Service is about to launch. In the near-term, I expect fast payments ecosystem stakeholders will stay hyper focused on simple yet critical enablers of connectivity and...

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Payments Post #2: Glenbrook’s March Roundup

Payments Post #2: Glenbrook’s March Roundup

Surprise! We spent a lot of the past month thinking about banks. March confronted us with stumbling blocks for fintechs and their sponsor banks, a bank-led battle for the checkout page, and a clearer view of the path forward for U.S. fast payments. Let’s dive into it...

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Opportunities in U.S. Fast Payments

Opportunities in U.S. Fast Payments

At Glenbrook, we believe that efficient and inclusive financial services are vital to economic growth. In support of this mission, we have worked on fast payments initiatives in 55 countries or regions to date. For example, we have developed principles for inclusive...

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