Interchange galvanizes the attention of regulators around the world like iron filings to a magnet. Everyone in card payments watches their moves closely because of its economic impact on merchants, card networks, acquirers and, in theory, consumer pricing. European regulators are among the most recent to weigh in. Based on the EU’s Multilateral Interchange Fee legislation, effective December 9, interchange on many card products is now capped at 0.3% for credit and 0.2% for debit. The ripples are...
Dec 14, 2015•22 min
Sending money in real-time is a capability that is growing around the world. “All bank” systems in the UK and Mexico are thriving. Mobile money services like M-Pesa are changing economies and individual lives in developing countries. But in the US, “things are complicated.” We have a crowded landscape in the US without, as in many global markets, a clear mandate from a regulator. In this Payments on Fire podcast, Glenbrook’s Carol Coye Benson and Dwolla’s Jordan Lampe join George Peabody for a d...
Nov 24, 2015•26 min
Since the first promise to pay was made, knowing who you’re dealing with has been a requirement. Authenticating the identity of a trading partner - a customer, an accountholder, a business or even a computer - is a burden that falls on the one extending trust because the giver takes on the transaction risk. In online and mobile transactions, the job of authentication has fallen on the password’s sagging shoulders in combination with other credentials such as a payment card or drivers license. Th...
Oct 12, 2015•23 min
With the EMV liability shift only days away, consumers and merchants are facing any number of changes in the point of sale experience. Unlike some other countries where the EMV change-over took place on a single day, the US EMV transition is going to be a long one, too. Not every issue is ironed out either. Join Glenbrook’s George Peabody and Philip Andreae , VP, Field Marketing North America at Oberthur Technologies in a discussion about EMV and debit, EMV transaction speed, and prospects for c...
Sep 24, 2015•23 min
3D Secure, the protocol that connects ecommerce merchants to the cardholder’s issuer, has had a rough go. But after ten years, smarter application of the tool and, in particular, risk-based usage makes it more attractive to both issuers and merchants. In this conversation with Mike Roche, VP of Consumer Authentication at Cardinal Commerce, we take a deep dive into 3D Secure, its implementation and continuing evolution, expectations of increased card not present fraud due to EMV’s US arrival, and...
Aug 20, 2015•21 min
The Internet’s designers quickly realized that no one’s very good at remembering IP address numbers. Unless you type the same number over and over again (and I did when I ran an ISP) a human readable version is a lot easier. That’s what the domain name system or DNS is all about, connecting human readable names to specific IP addresses. You can imagine then that Bitcoin, with its long alphanumeric addresses, suffers from similar challenges. That insight is what this podcast is about and the reas...
Aug 12, 2015•25 min
Every payment pro in the US is also a shopper and we all know that the largest retailers are poised to support EMV. Nearly all have EMV capable hardware. A few have turned it on. Most are waiting for the October liability shift so the temporary pain and awkwardness of clerk and consumer confusion is spread across everyone. But what about the small and medium business (SMB) market? Mike English, VP of Product Development, at Heartland Payment Systems has a front line view on the EMV transition of...
Aug 05, 2015•25 min
Host card emulation ( HCE ) was invented back in 2012. It was supposed to do for NFC on Android what Apple Pay has done for NFC in the iOS ecosystem. But it’s taken longer, a lot longer, for a robust Android-based NFC capability to get deployed. In this conversation with HCE inventor Doug Yeager, CEO of SimplyTapp , we review how HCE works, what it requires, and take a look at why it’s taken so long to gain momentum. The good news is that momentum is increasing with a growing set of HCE technolo...
Jul 29, 2015•23 min
The domain of point of sale (POS) has three legs to its security stool: EMV, point to point encryption, and card number tokenization. Card not present (CNP) merchants and issuers have the more challenging task of assembling fraud mitigation tools on their own. The networks have had, until EMVCo’s move into payment card tokenization, not much more than 3D Secure to offer. Merchants and card issuers have a lot of transaction and fraud data and when that data gets shared, improvements are possible....
Jul 21, 2015•19 min
Tokenization is, and will continue to be, a hot topic in payments. After all, it's what powers Apple Pay. Last week I chaired the Mobile Payment Innovation Summit where tokenization was a recurring theme. I asked Glenbrook partner Russ Jones to return for an update, to help us dig deeper into what’s happened over the six months and to consider where tokenization is going. He’s bullish on the capabilities of this technology and likes what he’s seen so far. Take a listen to what Russ has to say....
Jun 26, 2015•22 min
We all know EMV is coming to the U.S and that it will take years to build a complete EMV security perimeter. But the work starts with issuers sending out chip cards to their customers. Take a listen to this conversation with Chase’s Dina DeMerell, Director, Card Services Chip Security, to hear how Chase is deploying EMV credit, debit, prepaid and co-branded card products. She wasn’t kidding about their accelerated push of credit cards to frequent transactors. I received my new EMV United co-bran...
Jun 16, 2015•18 min
Decisions about point of sale transactions are largely made using card data alone but in e-commerce the merchant has to use a rich mix of data sources to manage fraud. The merchant is, after all, liable for both the transaction as well as the goods or services lost due to fraud. E-commerce merchants use publicly sourced data from firms like Whitepages to perform both automated and manual reviews. This discussion with Tom Donlea , Director, e-Comm/Retail Practice at Whitepages , looks at how the ...
Jun 08, 2015•27 min
This week's CNP Expo in Orlando brought together some 1,000 fraud technology vendors, processors, merchants, commerce-focused entrepreneurs and others to discuss the arrival of EMV in the US, global payments, and more. We took the opportunity to speak with two enterprise focused firms, Nu Data Security and CardConnect. We also spoke with the founder of mobile shopping service SelfPay. Nothing like good conversations!
May 21, 2015•45 min
Paying invoices and moving funds aross borders for small and medium business (SMB) is expensive and full of uncertainties. How much does the recipient actually get once the transaction is finished? (Hint: it's not always what was sent.) How long does it take a San Francisco firm to pay an invoice to a contractor in Berlin or Hyderabad? (Hint: it's hard to know exactly when it gets there). Since there's no such thing as an international wire , entrepreneurs in the virtual currency space have been...
Mar 30, 2015•31 min
EMV and its moving parts presents a far more complex payments method for merchants, ISVs, payment processors, and financial institutions than the good old magstripe. It continues to have ramifications throughout the payments ecosystem. As Executive Director of the Smart Card Alliance and director of the EMV Migration Forum, Randy Vanderhoof has shepherded a sometimes fractious payments industry as well as encouraged a a skeptical merchant community toward EMV adoption. Now that the US EMV deploy...
Mar 24, 2015•38 min
It’s always intriguing to watch how a good idea evolves into new areas. Such evolution often happens when designers find new applications for their ideas. Brian Merritt and Ryan Hildebrand were part of the early team at Simple that was subsequently sold to BBVA. In mid-February, they announced the formation of Seed , a Y Combinator firm, designed to bring small business banking into the mobile and SaaS-based worlds. Listen to this conversation between Glenbrook’s George Peabody and Seed CEO Bria...
Mar 16, 2015•28 min
Tablet-based ePOS cash registers are growing in popularity and capability. A boon to smaller retailers who have been laggards in store automation. But without technical support staff on hand, solving issues when they arrive, never mind securing systems, is an expensive proposition. Join Glenbrook’s George Peabody and payments industry veteran Chip Kahn, founder of Boomtown, a marketplace for merchant tech support pros, for a discussion on tablet POS trends, what SMB retailers needs, and the paym...
Feb 19, 2015•27 min
Aaron Press of Lexis Nexis Risk Solutions joins Glenbrook's George Peabody for a discussion on mobile fraud trends based on the firm's True Cost of Fraud mCommerce report. While the mobile channel presents fraud and risk professionals with a wide variety of tools to mitigate losses, the report concludes that the mobile channel represents a disproportionately large loss vector. In this Payments on Fire podcast, we talk about why and what needs to happen to fix the problem.
Feb 09, 2015•30 min
Glenbrook's Elizabeth McQuerry and George Peabody talk with CBW Bank's Suresh Ramamurthi on payment innovation, risk management, and international remittances. Suresh is also founder of Yantra Financial Technologies . He and his wife were featured in this NY Times Dealbook article last month.
Jan 23, 2015•36 min
Glenbrook's George Peabody discusses Bitcoin and blockchain evolution with Sean Safahi, co-founder and CEO of Bold Financial Technologies , a provider of math-based currency services to the banking industry. Applications that make use of the bitcoin blockchain and consensus-based approaches are proliferating. We discuss these including the newly launched Stellar , a non-profit infrastructure provider for currency exchange and asset transfer....
Dec 01, 2014•38 min
In this interview with Glenbrook's founding partner Carol Coye Benson, we discuss the prospects for a faster payments system in the US. Responding to the October 22 announcement by The Clearing House, Carol expresses her caution and hope for ways to accelerate replacement of today's system for credit push payments.
Oct 27, 2014•16 min
Realtime, consumer-facing authorization of card payment transactions has been available for some time but few of us have it offered to us by our issuers. Today, there's a number of technology providers selling truly realtime notifications and two-way approval requests based on the live authorization stream. Glenbrook's Russ Jones takes us through what's on offer while George gets grumpy over what he's got today. As more consumers become thorougly alarmed over data and privacy breaches, this coul...
Oct 20, 2014•25 min
Join George Peabody in a conversation with Stockpile's Dan Schatt on virtual banking, innovation, and the future of PayPal. Dan is former GM of Financial Innovations at PayPal and the author of Virtual Banking: A Guide to Innovation and Partnering , a new book that includes a chapter on Bitcoin and math-based currencies by Glenbrook's George Peabody. We also discuss Stockpile's innovative approach to equities ownership, a business model that will be fascinating to watch develop....
Oct 13, 2014•40 min
Apple Pay's announcement has brought attention to biometrics and their role in payments security and to the broader, if amorphous, concept of online identity. Steve Wilson of Constellation Research and I discuss local and cloud-based biometrics, identity attributes, and the vexing challenges of privacy.
Oct 06, 2014•27 min
Using a powerful examination of the challenge of online and mobile checkout, Glenbrook's Russ Jones takes us for a deep dive into Visa Checkout, comparing it to PayPal and other methods of making the ecommerce experience slippery. At Checkout's announcement in mid-July, Visa promised to support the initiative with significant advertising. One ad has been viewed by 9 million times on YouTube and anyone with a passing interest in Sunday football has seen spots educating viewers on Checkout's speed...
Sep 29, 2014•28 min
Come back for Bryan Derman's wrap-up on FinovateFall 2014. From banking technology vendors to SMB lending and some very interesting security and biometric apps. Take a listen to his report here and via iTunes. Just search for Payments on Fire.
Sep 24, 2014•18 min
Finovate has become the leading opportunity for new companies and long term players in financial technology to strut their stuff. But not all of us can attend the conference and not all of us have the long term view that Glenbrook's Bryan Derman brings to the show. Take a listen to his take on Day 1 of the event. And come back tomorrow for his take on Day 2.
Sep 24, 2014•19 min
Want to know more about SEPA and the new SEPA for cards initiative? Thinking about opportunities in the EU? Need to understand how payments work in Europe and how they vary country to country? Well, to get started, take a listen to this podcast conversation between Elizabeth McQuerry, Glenbrook's international payments maven, and Manfred Schuck of Schuck Consulting from Frankfurt. Then, if you need more understanding, join them October 9 in Mountain View, CA for their Payments in Europe Insight ...
Sep 18, 2014•28 min
In this Payments on Fire podcast, Russ Jones and I discuss last week's Apple Pay announcement and how it fits with and compares to other checkout approaches. We begin looking at Apple Pay and Visa Checkout from the perspective of the checkout process because that's what they are, ways to optimize checkout. We talk about how both will evolve over time. We then dive into what we know about Apple Pay and discuss and what's most exciting about Apple Pay (it's not NFC). In our next Payments on Fire p...
Sep 15, 2014•32 min
Welcome to Glenbrook's first Payments on Fire podcast. This conversation between Glenbrook's founding partner Scott Loftesness, Terence Spies, CTO of Voltage Security, and Glenbrook's George Peabody is about virtual currencies. It's a discussion about Bitcoin, other math-based currencies and approaches like Ethereum, Nxt, and more. We're calling Glenbrook's podcast series Payments on Fire because, well, payments are hot and the payments industry finds itself in some hot water. Between investor, ...
Sep 07, 2014•25 min
