Bicycles are my preferred form of transportation so I was eager to explore London using the Barclay’s-sponsored bike share program. Unfortunately, you need a Chip & PIN card to rent a bike using the automated stands and all I have are U.S. issued mag stripe cards. I was foiled: After I tweeted about my disappointment […]
The Future of B2B Payments – And Suggestions on How We Might Get There
I am in London this morning, where I had an opportunity to present a vision for the future of business payments at Experian‘s Payments Strategy Conference 2013. Acknowledging that it is always dangerous to make predictions, this is what I envision for the future of B2B payments: Interoperability — I expect the future of business […]
Is AribaPay a Game Changer for B2B Payments? Maybe. For now we have more questions than answers.
Recently Ariba/SAP and Discover announced that they intend to “transform” commercial payments. AribaPay is either the most significant B2B payments news in decades or just one more courageous entrant into the discouraging battlefield of B2B payments networks. We’re optimistic, and encouraged to see two strong players enter the fray. We hope they will tackle head-on […]
Live Blogging Finovate Spring 2013 San Francisco
It’s Spring in San Francisco, so it must be time for the annual Finovate conference. Once again, Eric and Jim have pulled together an impressive group of companies and all my favorite payments geeks are in attendance, eagerly awaiting the start. Up on stage for the kick off Eric tells us this is the biggest […]
Sharp Turn Ahead: Is your organization facing a payments inflection point?
Glenbrook is kicking off a new payments organization optimization project for a biller client. Each time we do one of these projects, our client – with some embarrassment – admits that they think they are the only ones facing payments challenges. Nothing could be further from the truth! In fact, the smooth-running, optimized payments organization […]
Dreams of Glory: Business Payments and Network Fantasies
At Glenbrook we talk about “network fantasies” a lot. These are hopes that payments innovators, and incumbents, have about the so-called “network effect” in payments. Many a payments start-up has sat in our conference room and predicted the flood of transactions that will come their way due to the network effect. The payments industry features […]
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 […]
Live Blogging Finovate Spring 2012 San Francisco
Good morning! Gearing up for the two-day typing marathon that is Finovate. We’re at a huge venue this year (same as last year, apparently – someone else from Glenbrook was here then), a cavernous exhibition hall that has plenty of room for the 1200+ attendees; I can remember when there were 250 attendees. Congrats to […]
Co-Dependence Between Banks and Their Technologists: Hampering Innovation
Talking to banks and the biggest bank technology vendors at NACHA’s annual payments conference last week I couldn’t help thinking how they suffer from similar challenges. Big banks are hampered by their complex technology environment of legacy solutions with layers of more modern solutions built on top. Products and customer segments are managed in silos defined […]
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 […]