Despite decades of payment industry efforts, businesses have remained stubbornly dependent on checks. Back office processes (and personnel) can be remarkably change resistant despite being mired in paper, regardless of the size of the business. At Glenbrook we believe the Covid-19 pandemic is a watershed moment for B2B payments. B2B supplier payments – invoiced, accounts […]
Dispatch from the 2020 U.S. Women in Payments Symposium, February 10-11, 2020
This Women in Payments event has been going on for at least 5 years and this was the first time I attended — I regret that it took so long! Hats off to Kristy Duncan and her team for putting together a substantive event with a refreshing mix of industry insight and professional development and […]
Farewell 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 […]
The eGovernment – ePayment Conundrum
The interdependence of eGovernment and government ePayments is yet another classic payment chicken and egg challenge. As we work with governments to build their electronic payment strategies we sometimes need to temper their expectations given this all-too-familiar challenge. There have to be enough digitally delivered government services to warrant digital payment infrastructure, but you also […]
The Global Struggle of Government Payments
Over the last year, I’ve been focused on government payments – a compelling mashup of traditional bill pay and multi-channel retail requirements against an intriguing backdrop of policy, economic, and political interactions. Although many countries have made solid progress implementing eGovernment initiatives (UN E-Government Survey 2014), the level and sophistication of ePayments implementation lags the […]
Sympathy for the Biller – the Unsung Masters of Payments Complexity
At Glenbrook we take pride in, and place great importance on, our historical focus on end users: consumers, enterprises and small businesses that make and receive payments. Recently, we’ve been working with and thinking about billers – the unsung masters of payments complexity. Consider the table below. What other players in the industry accept as […]
Mobile Payment Unintended Consequences (or How I Locked Myself Out of the House, Again)
I am writing this post sitting on the front steps of our house in San Francisco. I have locked myself out three times recently, more than I have in the past three decades. Is it dementia? No, I blame mobile payments. Last summer I bought a case for my iPhone that had handy little pockets […]
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 most intractable challenges facing payments. For the most part, payments […]
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 transactions takes place through correspondent banking relationships and collectively described as “international wires.” The reality […]
Transactions Get Smart
Glenbrook held a great “Innovations in Payments” workshop this week – a group which energetically debated many topics, including Bitcoin (of course), tokenization, beacons, authentication, wearables, interoperability and mobile ad spend. As I reflect on the day, it seems that an interesting theme emerged. Many of the topics were about payment transactions that are – or […]