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.

June 16, 2021

Heather

The Open Banking Phenomenon, Explained

Time to Read: 9 minutes Highlights: An introduction to open banking, its key concepts, and implications for payments industry participants  A framework for understanding open banking principles Adoption and usage statistics   What is Open Banking and Why Does it Matter? Over the last few years, the concept of open banking has gained popularity with […]

June 9, 2021

Nicole Pinto

ACH is Hot

Time to Read: 8 minutes Highlights: ACH, though a 50-year old payment system in the U.S., continues to grow The ACH ecosystem is evolving to meet modern-day needs: Nacha, the rule-making body, plans to implement a series of enhancements that address shortcomings in ACH usability Dynamic payment service providers (PSPs) and fintech infrastructure players are […]

April 29, 2021

Justin

The True Cost of Being Underbanked

Highlights It’s expensive to be a low income American, driven in part by the high cost of financial services available to such consumers. In this post, we break down where cost comes from, and how fintechs are changing the way working class Americans are able to access affordable financial products. Fintechs have an opportunity to […]

March 18, 2021

Laura

Where is Financial Inclusion in the U.S. Today?

At Glenbrook, international financial inclusion work has long been a major focus area. Given the challenges racial equity concerns raises for the U.S., Glenbrook as a firm has returned our focus to financial inclusion here at home. To begin that examination, we look at the state of financial inclusion in the US and what are […]

August 28, 2020

Beth

The Latest on Cannabis and CBD Payments

Hosted as part of the Mobile Payment Conference (August 24-26) this inaugural conference brought together fintech influencers, payments experts, and providers to address issues facing financial services companies serving the Cannabis and CBD industry. Setting the Stage I was honored to kick off the workshop with an overview of the cannabis payments market. I stressed […]

July 31, 2020

A stack of dollar bills and calculator on a calendar

COVID-19 and the Income Domain

The Income Domain consists of payments to individuals for salary, benefits, rebates, and expense reimbursements. In the U.S., these payments are made primarily via direct deposit through NACHA’s ACH system, and to a lesser extent, paper checks and payroll cards. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to widespread business shutdown, and as a result, caused mass […]

June 4, 2020

A person user types in their credit card information on a laptop

Remote Commerce Domain Takes Center Stage

Expansion Under COVID-19 The Remote Commerce domain is home to e-commerce, many mobile payments, and the venerable mail-order, telephone-order method (MOTO). The growth in transaction volume in this domain has been nothing short of phenomenal accounting for a: 56 percent of overall U.S. retail sales growth in 2019 47 percent increase in U.S. sales forecasted […]

May 27, 2020

A merchant runs a credit card at their POS

Point of Sale Domain - The Pain at the POS

The POS Domain is Synonymous with the Retail Industry The POS Commerce domain is the land of brick and mortar retail, representing the majority of retail activity. Despite the steady double digit annual growth of the Remote Commerce domain, the POS Commerce domain was responsible for  some 84% of retail sales in 2019. That said, […]

April 9, 2020

Elizabeth McQuerry

Where Necessity Meets Innovation - Government Disbursement in the Time of COVID-19

Given the coronavirus pandemic and its pressure on governments and individuals alike, Glenbrook’s Global Practice has been looking into how emergency social disbursements can be made quickly to the most vulnerable populations. This is not an easy task for a number of reasons: Governments want to be certain that the intended person is indeed the […]

February 12, 2020

June 22, 2019

Bryan

In Zuck We Trust?          

We got the first real details this week on the Facebook-sponsored Libra cryptocurrency. Opinions are still taking shape around Glenbrook, but it’s fair to say that the team is deeply intrigued by the possibilities and sees it as both a novel and potentially very practical application of blockchain technology. We think the consortium-based governance, open […]

May 21, 2019

Nicole Pinto

Creative Tension Shapes the Fintech-Bank Ecosystem

In my last post I covered the proliferation of challenger banks, the mobile-first, digital-only neo-banks and what differentiates them from the incumbents. While the media lens is usually focused on the front-end, the user experience, I’m always curious about what’s powering these operations under the hood. From the traditional banks’ perspective, fintech companies are just […]

May 1, 2019

Elizabeth McQuerry

Prepaid Power and Financial Inclusion at Fintech South

Georgia is a nexus of global payment processing and merchant acquiring activity. Some two-thirds of all U.S. purchase volume is processed there. That’s a lot of debit and credit card transactions. But what are those same companies doing to improve payments for the underbanked? That combination of payments technology and financial inclusion concerns was the […]

March 14, 2019

Nicole Pinto

Challenging the Challenger Banks

Fintech startups have begun a phenomenon some call the “unbundling of financial services” through standalone products such as unsecured consumer loans, credit cards, checking and savings accounts, or personal financial management tools. A cohort of entities known as “challenger banks” or “neo-banks” have also entered the market in an attempt to take on digital banking […]

January 14, 2019

Russ Jones

The Five Biggest Trends in Payments

All of the 2019 prediction stories got me thinking about the mega trends in the payments industry. These are the year-over-year tectonic shifts in the industry that you can bet your company’s strategy on — maybe even bet your career on. In a landscape of trees, this is what the forest looks like. Trend #1 […]

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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