Payments On Fire

The next destination on our journey around the world is Singapore! Glenbrook’s Chris Uriarte and Bethany May come on the show to share their stories using local and regional payment methods. Listen in to hear their experiences using GrabPay, QR codes, and even digital currency to pay a friend back for dinner.  While at the Singapore FinTech Festival, Bethany also had the opportunity to participate in a Central Bank Digital Currency pilot put on by the Monetary Authority of Singapore. She provides her insights on the “purpose bound money” trial and overall observations on the research and experimentation being done on CBDCs in Singapore. 

Next up in Glenbrook’s travelogue series, Nikhat Choudhury joins Yvette Bohanan to share her experience making payments on a recent trip to Turkey.  In this double feature episode, Elizabeth McQuerry and Bethany May also provide observations on the local payments scene in Ethiopia, including their use of the e-money wallet Telebirr. 

In 2022, travel started to get back to “normal” and the Glenbrook team had many opportunities to get out and about. No trip would be complete without running a few payments experiments. Over the next 5 Fanning the Flames episodes, we’ll take you with us on our journeys to hear first hand experiences and observations with local payment networks across the globe.  To kick the series off, Elizabeth McQuerry joins Yvette Bohanan to discuss a recent trip to Brazil. 

We’ve talked a lot recently about how important it is to stay up to speed on regulations. In this episode of Payments on Fire®, George Peabody and Chris Uriarte are joined by Michael Borgia, Partner at Davis Wright Tremaine, to discuss data security and privacy and the steps regulators are taking in this space.

Glenbrook has been providing payments education for over 15 years. In that time, over 35,000 payments professionals have attended Glenbrook workshops, including the popular Payments Boot Camp. The Payments Boot Camp provides a thorough overview of the global payments industry - an industry that is constantly changing. As you can imagine, the material for our workshops changes with it.  Glenbrook’s Russ Jones joins Yvette Bohanan to discuss the refreshed Payments Boot Camp agenda as well as the newly designed Advanced Payments workshop. Listen in for a behind-the-scenes look at how Glenbrook’s education content is curated and why certain topics may not be included at all.  If you are interested in attending a Glenbrook workshop, click here for upcoming opportunities to learn and network with your peers. 

We talk about ACH a lot at Glenbrook (even coining the phrase “ACH is Hot”) and there’s a reason for that. More than 29 billion ACH Network payments were made in 2021, valued at close to $73 trillion. While ACH technology has been around for decades, modernization has made this system virtually unrecognizable from what existed in the 1970’s, and it continues to evolve.  In this episode of Payments on Fire®, George Peabody and Yvette Bohanan are joined by Michael Herd, Senior Vice President of ACH Network Administration at Nacha. In the conversation, Mike walks us through the state of ACH, insights on volume and growth, and new Nacha operating rules. https://pof.glenbrook.com/

Glenbrook’s Bryan Derman, Chris Uriarte, Cici Northup, and Joanna Wisniecka are back from Money20/20 and return to Payments on Fire to debrief with Yvette Bohanan in this Fanning the Flames episode. If you listened to Episode 180, you know what hot topics the team was anticipating at the conference. Was it everything they expected? Tune in to hear the highlights and observations.  https://pof.glenbrook.com/

Becoming a fintech is no easy task. There’s the foundational idea, there’s the team, the market opportunity, macroeconomic conditions, and the necessary skills of running a business. Never easy and today it’s even tougher for new fintechs given rising interest rates, consumer hesitation, and the uncertain global economy.  There’s also the make-or-break concern of regulatory compliance.  In this Payments on Fire® episode, Cameron Peake, partner at VC firm Restive Ventures (recently renamed from Financial Venture Studio) joins Glenbrook’s Yvette Bohanan and George Peabody in a discussion on the regulatory and contractual issues fintechs face.  Cameron’s firm takes a hands-on approach in helping their fintech investments navigate those complexities. And in these conditions, a guiding hand has to be a welcome value-add for a fintech looking for a VC partner. Smart money is always better than the clueless variety. https://pof.glenbrook.com/

Join Wordline's Michael Steinbach and Glenbrook’s Elizabeth McQuerry and George Peabody to hear the story of SEPA’s creation, the Single Euro Payments Area. You’ll also learn about Worldline, Europe’s largest processor. It's an amazing story. If you are concerned with how networks work, or thinking of building network-based processes, there are lessons here - and cautions.  https://pof.glenbrook.com/

Yvette Bohanan hosts Glenbrook’s Bryan Derman, Chris Uriarte, Cici Northup, and Joanna Wisniecka to discuss their attendance at the upcoming Money20/20 conference. Listen in to hear what noteworthy payments trends the team is paying attention to and what related themes they expect to surface at Money20/20. We’ll catch up with them after the conference to see what takeaways were most surprising or interesting.  If you are attending Money20/20, we’d love to connect! Please reach out to Bryan, Chris, Cici, or Joanna on Our Team page or connect directly on LinkedIn.  https://pof.glenbrook.com/

Most of us see payments innovation as the force that moves markets. That’s true when it comes to user experience and the tech that moves money. But it is government regulation and business contract rules that guide and control what financial services players can, and can’t, do with their shiny new tools. Or crusty old ones. Regulation in the US is a complex, multi-layered reality for incumbents and fintechs alike. In this Payments on Fire® episode, Jennifer Aguilar, Sr. Associate at law firm Alston & Bird, provides a crisp review of payment system rules, federal and state regulations, Regs E and Z, and more. https://pof.glenbrook.com/

Glenbrook’s Russ Jones returns with George Peabody and Yvette Bohanan on this episode of Payments on Fire® to discuss tokenization - a substitution of a high value primary account number with a digit that, in many cases, looks just like the original PAN, but isn't. Tune in as they break down how tokenization works and the security it provides, amidst numerous cooking metaphors.  https://pof.glenbrook.com/

Merchants rejoice? Credit card interchange regulation is on the table with the Credit Card Competition Act of 2022. But the new rule proposed by Senators Dick Durbin and Roger Marshall is pretty unusual, and the researchers at Glenbrook have been hard at work trying to figure out what it means for the industry. How is it different from existing debit interchange regulation and credit interchange regulation in other jurisdictions? And how will players across the value chain react if the rule takes effect? Will anything really change? Glenbrook’s Justin Pituch joins Yvette Bohanan to discuss potential implications. https://pof.glenbrook.com/

Glenbrook’s Drew Edmond joins Yvette Bohanan on the show to recap his experience at the PaymentsEd Forum in Washington DC earlier this month. In addition to attending the conference, Drew also spoke on a panel about “How collaboration at scale can improve outcomes” with Jordan Kaplan from Groupon and Jonathan Lee from Netflix, moderated by Tyler Heun from checkout.com.  Tune in to hear more about Drew’s panel discussion as well as the major topics of conversation around the conference “water cooler”.  https://pof.glenbrook.com/

If you’ve attended a Glenbrook Payments Boot Camp®, chances are good that you remember reviewing push and pull payments during the key concepts. The determination for whether a transaction is push or pull comes down to who is sharing their payment address. If the receiver is sharing, it is a push payment. If the sender is sharing, it is a pull payment. But what if the sender and receiver are not personally involved in initiating the transaction?  Russ Jones joins George Peabody and Yvette Bohanan on this episode of Payments on Fire® to talk about delegated push payments, where another party has permission to initiate a push transaction on the sender’s behalf. Listen in as they discuss the nuances around delegated push payments and the use cases for these transactions.  https://pof.glenbrook.com/

Glenbrook’s Neel Saunshi and Yvette Bohanan return to explain the Proof of Work consensus algorithm. Listen in as they discuss what it is, how it works, and the environmental impact from the associated energy consumption. https://pof.glenbrook.com/

In this Fanning the Flames episode, Neel Saunshi joins Yvette Bohanan to discuss a very hot topic in the industry - NFTs. Tune in as they break down smart contracts, what’s happening behind the scenes, and examples and applications for how this technology is being used to disrupt various industries.  https://pof.glenbrook.com/

Glenbrook’s own Elizabeth McQuerry and Joanna Wisniecka just returned from spending a couple of weeks in Kenya leading training on inclusive payments systems.  While in the country, they got to play end-users of digital payments and experimented with M-PESA’s mobile money e-wallet. You may have been following their payments adventure on Glenbrook’s LinkedIn page.  Listen in to hear more about their experiences, some quick insights into other learnings from Kenya, and what fast payments developments they are seeing on the continent.  https://pof.glenbrook.com/ 

Chuck Huang, Founder and CEO of Citcon, joins George Pebody and Yvette Bohanan on this episode of Payments on Fire® to chat about digital wallets across the globe. Listen in to hear their thoughts on where the industry is headed as the consumer payment choice continues to diversify.

In this episode of Payments on Fire®, George and Yvette Bohanan welcome Ahon Sarkar, GM of Helix by Q2. Listen in as they discuss embedded finance, multi-tenancy, participating in the FedNow pilot, and bringing online, physical and financial worlds together into a consistent experience that is meaningful to customers.