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.

July 9, 2018

Cici Northup

Welcome to CFSI EMERGE

Recently, I attended the Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI) EMERGE Financial Health Forum. The event, held June 6-8, 2018 in Los Angeles, is intended to help organizations working in financial services and financial health learn about current trends, insights, research, and policy updates. This was my first time attending and I wanted to share […]

October 11, 2017

July 26, 2017

March 30, 2017

Two Remarkable Women - And the Mobile Payments Systems They Have Built

I had the good fortune last week to be part of the Glenbrook team attending the FinTechStage Inclusion Forum in Jakarta. Happily, among the attendees were two women I have known for several years: Maha Bahou of the Central Bank of Jordan and Carolina Trivelli of Pagos Digitales Peruanos. Peru and Jordan are two of […]

March 23, 2017

Demystifying India’s Digital Payment Infrastructure

There is a growing curiosity about India’s payments systems. These systems, and their role in the “India stack”, have been the subject of many articles speculating their importance in shaping India’s future. Despite this attention, there is still considerable confusion about what these initiatives are, and how they interact with each other. This led me […]

December 14, 2016

The ITU Digital Financial Services Focus Group Wraps Up

Last week in Geneva, the ITU wrapped up a two-year project – the “Focus Group on Digital Financial Services and Financial Inclusion”. Several hundred organizations and people participated in the Focus Group, which produced research papers and policy recommendations on a wide variety of topics. The papers are available on the Focus Group website. Glenbrook’s […]

October 27, 2016

September 6, 2016

June 13, 2016

Merchant Acceptance in the Developing World – Mobile Payments’ Essential Missing Link

Over the past several years, my colleagues and I at Glenbrook have been working on a variety of projects focused on bringing low-cost financial services to the poor in developing countries. While there has been a lot written on how mobile or eMoney payments systems such as M-PESA in Kenya have grown in many developing […]

March 1, 2016

Reflections: Back to the Future

Today, Glenbrook celebrates its 15th birthday. It’s been quite a journey – an amazing one in so many ways – yet it also sometimes feels like we’re still on Day One! There’s so much happening in payments – and, more broadly, in commerce, financial inclusion, and crypto currencies! I was very fortunate to make a […]

September 28, 2015

The eGovernment – ePayment Conundrum

The interdependence of eGovernment and government ePayments is yet another classic payment chicken and egg challenge. As we work with governments to build their electronic payment strategies we sometimes need to temper their expectations given this all-too-familiar challenge. There have to be enough digitally delivered government services to warrant digital payment infrastructure, but you also […]

September 15, 2015

September 2, 2015

The Global Struggle of Government Payments

Over the last year, I’ve been focused on government payments – a compelling mashup of traditional bill pay and multi-channel retail requirements against an intriguing backdrop of policy, economic, and political interactions. Although many countries have made solid progress implementing eGovernment initiatives (UN E-Government Survey 2014), the level and sophistication of ePayments implementation lags the […]

February 26, 2015

October 3, 2014

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 […]

Recent Payment Views

Payments Post #13: At the Intersection of Tech, Regs, and Business Partnership

Payments Post #13: At the Intersection of Tech, Regs, and Business Partnership

This month, Cici Northup joins regular contributor Justin Pituch to recap positive news in the form of fast payments growth, new fraud mitigation strategies, and evolution in cross-border transfers. All reflect, to varying degrees, the unique dynamic in the payments industry created by the intersection of technology, regulation, and new business partnerships.

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Payments Orchestration: What Comes Next?

Payments Orchestration: What Comes Next?

Orchestration providers have certainly come a long way, and can enable powerful capabilities and benefits for the merchants that employ them. This post explores some of the possibilities Glenbrook has been thinking about for where Orchestration (and even orchestration) can go next.

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Payments Post #13: At the Intersection of Tech, Regs, and Business Partnership

Payments Post #12: Lessons from Change

In this month’s Payments Post, we want to draw your attention to several recent fraud incidents that underscore the criticality of effective risk management to your business and the safety and soundness of the payments industry.

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