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...

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...

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...

Money2020: Impressions & Observations

I’ve nearly recovered from the payments overload that was Money2020 last week in Las Vegas – it was initially exhilarating, then incredibly exhausting, but I had a fantastic time. Here’s my admittedly subjective take based on having attended only two sessions (one of...

Local Knowledge, Global Payments

Certainly one of the most daunting aspects of cross-border payments is the complexity inherent in the fact that different countries have different payment systems. Many payment systems require data specific to the local processing environment. Sort codes, IBANs...