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...
I’ve just returned from SIBOS 2017, the annual SWIFT convening of global transaction banks and all things associated with cross-border payment. And right now I’m in flight, heading to the payments industry grail otherwise known as Money 20/20 USA, getting ready to...
As the U.S. payments industry is preparing to enter another exciting phase as immediate funds transfer options come online, I’m thinking back to my interaction in the Fall of 2013 with the inquisitive team at Planet Money. Perplexed about why it took so long for...
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...
The always-interesting Federal Reserve Bank Chicago Payments Symposium just closed, and predictably, a lot of the discussion (and argument!) was around “faster” – the evolving progress of the United States towards improvements in our payments systems. I was...
One of the payments obsessions here at Glenbrook is understanding the ways in which mobile payment and digital financial services are taking hold around the world. Once effectively limited to the early success of M-PESA and P2P payment in Kenya, today there are a...
It’s been just over two years since we first reached out and asked for your views on the question of faster payments. There have been a number of interesting developments in that period – the launch of FAST in Singapore, the announcement of the New Payments...
It’s election time here in the United States and potentially big changes are ahead. Elections define the beginning and end of political eras. Walter Dean Burnham, the distinguished professor of American Politics, elaborated a theory of party change and...
2015 has been an exciting, tumultuous year for payments. Our once "under the radar" industry now makes for daily headline news with stories and commentary (some breathtakingly uninformed) on new ways to pay, M&A activity, regulatory actions, competitive...
This week, I began an important new assignment. I am now the CEO of the International Payments Framework Association (IPFA). If you haven’t yet heard of it, the IPFA provides rules, standards, operating procedures, and guidelines to improve cross-border payments....
