Payments On Fire

The term identity gets used a lot whenever internet payments and security are discussed. Knowing who we transact with is still the knotty problem. Strong authentication is required. Identity verification is required, too. A means of sharing the fruits of that work among the parties involved, especially those taking on risk, could save everyone a lot of cost and effort. That’s the notion behind federated identity and other means of securely sharing identity attributes without undermining privacy. That tall order is the subject of this podcast with Andre Boysen, Chief Identity Officer of SecureKey. Join George and Andre as they talk about trust on the internet, SecureKey’s approach, and the company’s use of blockchain technology via a partnership with IBM.

Want to know what it takes to to stay smart in payments? Take a listen to Russ Jones, the Partner in Charge of Glenbrook’s Payments Boot Camp program. Russ gives a look behind the scenes, talks over the boot camp’s evolution, and how it stays forward looking in what’s become a fast changing industry. Over 13,000 payments professionals have experienced the Payments Boot Camp Russ talks about in this Payments on Fire podcast. 

Sometimes a change in direction is the way forward. Network aspirant Dwolla has recently pivoted its work toward the product and development teams inside financial institutions. Instead of being a system operator, Dwolla now offers a broad set of APIs designed for those FIs to take advantage of the ACH’s overnight and Same Day ACH services. Dwolla’s shift also comes as the company and the US anticipates the impact of new immediate funds transfer systems Zelle, The Clearing House, and likely others. Take a listen to this conversation with Jordan Lampe, Dwolla’s Director of Communications and Policy Affairs, and Glenbrook's George Peabody as they discuss the Federal Reserve Faster Payments Payments Task Force Steering Committee, use cases for Same Day ACH, and more.

Turning money movement into a core capability of the internet is the guiding principle of Circle Internet Financial. Not an easy task. While technical issues abound, regulatory and business hurdles pose larger challenges. Join Payments on Fire host George Peabody and Circle’s co-founders Jeremy Allaire and Sean Neville for this discussion on Circle’s geographic expansion, its recent shift in bitcoin support, and its development of Spark, a blockchain-based open source smart contract platform optimized to share and store payments meta-data including exchange rates, KYC details, identity, etc.

One of last year's most anticipated advances in fraud management was the final release of EMVCo’s 3D Secure 2.0 protocol specification. Designed to take a risk-based approach to authorization and lower the checkout friction of its predecessor, 3DS2 will be a new tool in the growing anti-fraud arsenal. One of its supporters and a service provider that’s been closely tied to 3D Secure is CardinalCommerce. Cardinal, now a new addition to Visa’s arsenal with its recent acquisition, has been working with the risk-based approach for quite awhile. Take a listen to Visa’s Mark Nelson and Mike Keresman and Tim Sherwin of CardinalCommerce in this discussion about 3DS2, card network mandates, Cardinal’s acquisition by Visa, and when the market will see 3DS2 solutions.

In e-commerce and mobile commerce the problem of false declines is significant, especially during the holidays. Issuers decline transactions that online merchants approve. And vice versa. In other words, the necessary process of sorting out fraud from good transactions catches good transactions with the bad. This poor decision making means merchants lose the sale and the issuer its transaction fees. In this Payments on Fire podcast, Glenbrook's George Peabody discusses the false decline issue with Ethoca’s CMO Keith Briscoe as well as the company’s program to encourage more merchants and issuers to take advantage of its shared data service. 

Multiple organizations have emerged to address different aspects of security, privacy, and identity. In this Payments on Fire Podcast, Glenbrook’s George Peabody speaks with Craig Spiezle, Executive Director of the Online Trust Alliance, an organization bringing together privacy and security best practices for a range of industries, including payments. Take a listen to this conversation about the security challenges ahead, especially around the Internet of Things.

Faster payments, B2B payments, international remittances, cross-currency, and cross-border payments. These are hot topics and major challenges the payments industry must address. Central to all is the ability to represent, in an interoperable fashion, the information that surrounds the payment itself. What’s this payment for? Who is it for? Where’s it going? These are information gaps that bedevil B2B payments and all of the above. Extensible standards in general and ISO 20022 in particular are the answer. The International Payments Framework Association (IPFA) is dedicated to expanding the utility of ISO 20022 through rule building around the usage of this data representation method. Standardized business messages are huge and that’s what the standard and the IPFA are all about. In this podcast, the IPFA’s CEO, Glenbrook’s own Elizabeth McQuerry, addresses ISO 20022 itself, the IPFA’s role, and updates to accommodate international faster payments. Cross-border money may finally fly.   

As the breadth of transaction data expands, even the definition of payment data is getting stretched. Payment data, when combined with other sources, is becoming a valuable tool for both commerce and security. If we know your first name, we can figure out if you’re male or female 92%+ of the time. If your email address is at AOL, you’re probably over 50. What you might buy can be inferred from the websites you visit. And that’s just the start of data’s role in payments. Take a dip into the payment data pool in this podcast with Glenbrook’s Russ Jones. Russ discusses artificial intelligence, privacy, and the spread of Bluetooth beacons. For a deeper dive into the topic, join Russ at the Payments Data Insight Workshop on October 13 in Palo Alto because data’s influence in payments continues to expand.  

Bitcoin’s reliability and transaction-level security has inspired today’s explosion of blockchain pilots, companies, and consortia. But the bitcoin rails already have solid commercial applications. Circle Internet Finance has focused on person to person payments. Align Commerce has focused on international B2B payments for smaller businesses. With growth, both have blended bitcoin rails with more traditional methods to accomplish fast, cost effective transfers. Join Marwan Forzley, CEO of Align Commerce, and Glenbrook’s George Peabody for a conversation about how Align moves money and the state of bitcoin and blockchain development. There may be no such thing as an international wire but this approach gets pretty close.  

Stretching the retail financial institution’s (FI) mission beyond checking account and debit card management is on that industry’s agenda. It’s what fires the imagination of fintech entrepreneurs too because retail financial services is an industry in need of creative, expansive approaches to accountholder services. Not every idea catches fire but fortunately there are those willing to light a match. This Payments on Fire podcast looks at Sensibill, a digital receipting and data repository service for FIs. Join Glenbrook's George Peabody and Sensibill’s CEO and co-founder Corey Gross in this discussion of how an FI can help its accountholders turn digital receipts into data far more useful than what’s on a statement or that piece of paper stuffed into a purse or wallet.    

Machine learning and the broader category of artificial intelligence are rightly attracting attention and discussion. These are powerful technologies. But, like many new technology conversations, there’s the suggestion that they can address all use cases.   Maybe focusing on a single use case is the better approach right now. Join Glenbrook’s George Peabody and Nuno Sebastiao, Chairman and CEO of fraud management firm Feedzai, in this refreshing discussion about the role of machine learning in fraud management, some of its limitations, and how services like these fit into an enterprise’s fraud and risk management operations.

Digital identity is the black hole of the internet. Our online lives simply aren’t protected by a system without strong authentication. Killing the password is Mission One for security professionals because they’re so readily stolen through phishing attacks and malware. Users, warned to make passwords complex and unique, have no hope of remembering them. And a password is simply one factor of secure authentication. Biometrics and data, when used in combination, can relieve password fatigue and, for the relying party, increase security substantially, bringing some light to that dark place on the internet. We talk with MasterCard’s biometrics and authentication leader, Bob Reany, about where biometrics work and the intersection of device-based tools with what the cloud provides through Big Data, particularly device profiling and behavioral analytics. Your fingerprint’s not just for unlocking the phone anymore.

Chargebacks are one of the card system’s great consumer benefits. If fraud happens, the merchant doesn’t deliver on what was promised, or you’re charged six times for something you bought just once, the chargeback mechanism returns your money or restores your credit. What’s not to like? Well, if you’re a merchant, a lot. While there are plenty of legitimate chargebacks, there are also consumers who take advantage of the system through “friendly fraud,” the “I didn’t do it” chargeback category abused by all too many. Chargebacks are expensive for merchants. There’s a chargeback handling fee from the acquirer. There’s the cost of disputing the chargeback. There’s the cost if, at the network’s discretion, the merchant loses the chargeback. And then there’s the small matter of the cost of the goods or services. Take a listen to this audio primer on chargebacks with Glenbrook’s George Peabody and Chargeback’s CEO Dave Wilkes. Hear how they work, what the trends are, and how Chargeback assists merchants in the char

This episode of Glenbrook’s Payments on Fire podcast comes from the Shoptalk conference, mid-May 2016. Focused on the entire customer engagement cycle, the attendees are all about influencing consumer behavior, the processes of moving customers through that cycle, about making some portion of enterprise IT work more smoothly, or, yes, even about payments. Take a listen to my conversations with start-ups Tuku (in-store digital content delivery), Belly (in-store loyalty), Bold Financial Technologies (payout management for Treasury) and established fintech provider ACI Worldwide.

Payments industry professionals naturally have a hard focus on the industry’s own dynamics. So, it’s not uncommon to lose sight of who the customer is and who pays the freight. In retailing, yes, the consumer pays, but payments is a direct cost to the merchant. With all of the changes underway in the U.S. payments landscape, merchants now view payments as a complex, strategic element of their business, both as a way to drive new sales as well as a cost component to be tightly managed. To learn what’s top of mind for a large scale retailer, take a listen to Dean Sheaffer, SVP of Financial Services at Boscov’s Inc., the U.S.'s largest family-owned department store. In this Payments on Fire podcast, Dean addresses payments as a sales tool (Dean and his team have upped usage of the Boscov private label card to 40% of tender!), payments and data security, and the potential of Faster Money.

Extension of credit to people in developing markets has been a long time challenge. Banks, of course, look to repayment history to make such determinations but in much of the world, banking relationships and repayment track records are few. But history has demonstrated that extension of credit in developing markets can be effective and profitable. Just look at the Grameen Bank’s high micro-loan repayment rates. To address this repayment data dearth, Lenddo.com developed a lending data set in multiple developing countries, having gone into the lending business just to generate the data it needed to tune its machine learning capability. Lenddo then built its algorithms that examine some 1,000 characteristics in the data drawn from social, mobile, and other sources. This Payments on Fire podcast with Lenddo.com’s founder Jeff Stewart takes a look at lending in developing countries, social and mobile data sources, and examines the algorithmic "black box" that is at the heart of the company’s approach to making cr

The world of moving money is changing. And faster is the theme. Domestic real time payment systems are showing up across the planet. Today's discussion is full of bitcoin, open and permissioned blockchain approaches to speed asset exchange. But the competitive balance between proprietary and open systems is in flux. The view that moving money is or should be an internet-wide capability is a guiding principle for Jeremy Allaire, founder and CEO of Circle. Take a listen to Jeremy on how Circle is connecting US dollars to British pound sterling, his plans for the euro, and how multiple technologies - blockchain and machine learning among them - enable money movement for Circle's customers.  

The Smart Card Alliance has been educating payments, government, and security professionals since 2008 on the fundamentals of smart card technology and how smart cards are put work across a range of use cases. In this Payments on Fire podcast, Randy Vanderhoof, Executive Director of the SCA and the EMV Migration Forum, talks about the organization’s training programs, their evolution and the establishment of the new National Center for Advanced Payments and Identity Security, an expansion supported by a grant from Heartland Payment Syhttps://www.heartlandpaymentsystems.com/stems. Talking with Randy is always refreshing. He lays out the important elements of payment security and speaks directly about how they interrelate. Hardware-based security is always at the core of his mission but he’s well up on the expanded use of data and mobile devices in authentication and payments security.  

Blockchain. Is it the most revolutionary technology in value exchange ever or just the latest fintech buzzword enjoying its peak on the hype cycle? Or both? These young techniques are undergoing swift evolution, going from bitcoin and money transfer into new use cases such as identity management. There’s still truth in the cartoon’s joke that, online, no one knows you’re a dog. The challenge goes beyond discerning hacker activity from the permitted. It’s also about the release of just the data necessary to satisfy the needs of both parties in a transaction - and no more. How much better that would be than sharing a full suite of personally identifiable information when simply asking the question “are you over 21?” Take a listen to my discussion with Matthew Commons, CEO, of Cambridge Blockchain on how his company’s blockchain-based approach can be used to address one of the internet’s remaining fundamental concerns. You’ll also learn about the state of play in this new stage of permissioned blockchains.