Payments Views

Bryan Derman

In Zuck We Trust?          

By Bryan Derman on June 22 2019

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 […]

ACH

Scheming and Processing – Faster

By Bryan Derman on March 8 2016

Last week’s news that MasterCard was exploring an investment or outright acquisition of VocaLink really lit up the “News” channel on our Slack system at Glenbrook. For those unfamiliar, VocaLink is a company currently owned by 17 large U.K. financial institutions, which operates the U.K.’s main ATM network (Link), its ACH-equivalent system (Bacs), and most […]

Allen Weinberg

Farewell 2015

By George Peabody on December 27 2015

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 dynamics, security, and its future evolution. In consumer payments alone, 2015 was the year that things finally got […]

Bryan Derman

Merchants Go on Offense in Digital Payments

By Bryan Derman on December 16 2015

The evolution of the digital wallet has seemed to accelerate in recent months, weeks and days, led, in my mind, by some important payment product launches by the retail community. These developments combine the long-standing heft and influence of America’s largest retailers with a seemingly more aggressive stance by these companies to both assert their […]

ACH

What’s Next for US Payments

By Bryan Derman on September 9 2015

We’ve spent so much time the past several years obsessing about how mobile proximity payments would be deployed in the U.S. and the rest of the developed world. Now we know. This week, Apple Pay celebrates the first anniversary of its launch, and a new generation of payment-enabled iPhones will be announced. Later this month, […]

Apple

Adventures in Attribution – The Apple vs. MCX Dialog

By Bryan Derman on November 10 2014

Like many payments industry insiders, we have been following the recent impassioned industry dialog about the relative merits of Apple Pay and MCX’s CurrentC wallet with a combination of amusement and despair. The barbs and accusations being exchanged by the rival camps in this technological holy war between NFC and QR codes suddenly reminded me […]

Banking

Out of Africa: Watching the Evolution of Mobile Money

By Bryan Derman on September 30 2014

It turns out you don’t have to be unbanked to like M-Pesa I had the opportunity earlier this month to visit the mecca of mobile payments, which –with all due respect to the recent accomplishments in Cupertino — remains Nairobi, Kenya. The “Kenyan miracle” in payments has been well documented, particularly in terms of how […]

Bryan Derman

Square Grapples with the Payments “Poultry Problem”

By Bryan Derman on May 14 2014

Bilateral Adoption Claims Another Victim Word came earlier this week that Square had sunset its consumer-facing app, Square Wallet.  The app had pioneered one of the great parlor tricks in payments, enabling a merchant using the Square Register POS app to recognize the presence of a Square Wallet consumer in its store and allow that […]

Bryan Derman

FinovateFall 2011: Day Two / Session 4 of 4

By Bryan Derman on September 21 2011

Glenbrook’s Bryan Derman is live blogging from Finovate in New York City. This is only one of a series of posts featuring Bryan’s impressions as over sixty payments technology companies perform 7 minute demos (no PowerPoint slides allowed!) over two days. The index for Bryan’s Payments Views coverage is here. Now in the home stretch…