Download a PDF version of this document here. Read our introductory discussion here. Regulatory Background The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) sets global standards for combating money laundering (ML) and the financing of terrorism (TF) and proliferation. While its recommendations are not binding, they are broadly accepted by regulators as guidelines for national rules. FATF […]
UPDATED: Balancing KYC Regulation and COVID-19 Relief in Emerging Markets
Download the PDF of our Regulatory Analysis of KYC for Covid-19 in Emerging Markets or read the web version. Among today’s most pressing questions for emerging market governments is how to get assistance funds into the hands of those who need it given the COVID-19 crisis. This need is especially acute in emerging markets that lack […]
Lowering the Cost of Remittance – the Southern African Development Community (SADC)
There was an estimated $55b billion in cross-border remittances in 2015. But how much of that, per transaction, arrived in the wallet of the intended recipient? Unfortunately, not as much as many of us would hope. The cost of remittances is quite high with the average cost worldwide nearing 8% in 2015. And in some […]
Expanded Frontiers in Mobile Payment
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 number of services underway. M-PESA itself, in around a decade, has […]
Merchant Acceptance in the Developing World – Mobile Payments’ Essential Missing Link
Over the past several years, my colleagues and I at Glenbrook have been working on a variety of projects focused on bringing low-cost financial services to the poor in developing countries. While there has been a lot written on how mobile or eMoney payments systems such as M-PESA in Kenya have grown in many developing […]
Faster Payments Survey – Your Immediate Reply Requested
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 Platform in Australia, development of an instant payment scheme […]
Inside the Payments Boot Camp – Global Payments
Last year we expanded our Payments Boot Camp program to include a series of one-day workshops that give us an opportunity to dive a little deeper into a topic to share our experience and insights in a more interactive forum. And no topic has as much “real-world” demand as Global Payments. It’s a broad area […]
Glenbrook’s Elizabeth McQuerry is IPFA CEO
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. It’s now five years old and moving into the next, exciting, and supercharged phase of payments […]
A Different Type of Start Up: Payments in Afghanistan
Imagine a country where less than 10% of the adult population has a bank account and only about half of those account holders have a debit card. Credit cards are virtually non-existent. There are only a couple dozen banks in the whole country. Cash truly is king. Now imagine decades-long political and sectarian conflict that […]
A Central Bank Takes on Mobile Payments
Ecuador’s Central Bank has embarked on an ambitious course to launch an affordable and widely available mobile payment scheme. In fact, it will be the national wallet. With some uncertainty, it appears that Ecuador’s initiative may be the second central bank effort to enter this space. Jordan’s central bank has launched “JoMoPay”, but for those […]