Payments On Fire

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.  

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-branded card the day after we spoke - and it wasn't special treatment.  

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 data is provided to the merchant, the challenge of data sourcing in international markets, the care and control of PII, and what the US EMV roll-out could mean for CNP fraud.

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! 

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 looking at how these new math-based "rails" can move money faster at lower cost across borders. In this Payments on Fire episode, Marwan Forzley, CEO of Align Commerce, talks with Glenbrook's George Peabody about how his firm moves value for its SMB customers from the sender's currency to the receiver's over bitcoin rails.

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 deployment is a certainty, Randy and Glenbrook’s George Peabody discuss what got us here, where the challenges are, and how EMV will evolve in the US. 

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 Brian Merritt. While very early in the company’s development, Brian’s description of the company’s “API first” approach banking makes clear what’s possible when legacy technology and processes are in the rearview mirror.

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 payments programmability.

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.

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.

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. 

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.   

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 could be the time for issuers and independents to offer the "worried" consumer more control and a strong role in fraud management. Companies mentioned in this episode include: TSYS Spend Controls for consuemrs and corporate card administrators MasterCard InControl Vantiv MobiMoney Red Giant Mobile          

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.

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. 

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 and availability.    

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.

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. 

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 workshop. Visit www.glenbrook.com for more.

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 podcast, Russ takes a deeper dive into Visa Checkout.  So, come back for that next week. This week's Glenbrook links of note: Carol Coye Benson's personal appreciation of Apple and Apple Pay Glenbrook's business assessment of Apple Pay Take our Bitcoin 2014 survey. Please! Glenbrook's Insight Workshop on Payments in Europe