Payments On Fire

We've seen a big push in recent years to improve cross-border payments. And yet, cross-border payments remain problematic for consumers and businesses, particularly in emerging markets or parts of the world with volatile currencies or limited availability of correspondent banks. At the center of this challenge is a concept called liquidity. In this episode, Yvette Bohanan and Ashley Lannquist welcome Mouloukou Sanoh, CEO and Co-Founder of MANSA, to explore liquidity challenges in cross-border payments, the transformative potential of stablecoins in emerging markets, and the strategic role of fintechs and banks in evolving global payment infrastructures. Listen in as they discuss practical solutions to these complex issues, aiming to unlock liquidity and scale payments efficiently across borders.

We joke that all conversations should be recorded at Glenbrook because they often lead to some interesting podcast episodes. If you have 15 mins, tune in for a fly-on-the-wall perspective in this bonus Fanning the Flames on recent developments in agent protocols.  Russ Jones and Yvette Bohanan reflect on the history of the Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) protocol and how it compares to modern protocols being developed for agentic commerce by companies like Google, Stripe, and Basis Theory.  They explore why protocols and standards are important, what makes them take hold or "get off the ground like a lead balloon", and how recent announcements in this space are shaping our current view on agentic payments.   

The three major takeaways from stablecoins are that they are fast, global, and low cost. But why are they low cost? Thus began our quest to dive into the economic ecosystem of stablecoins. When creating material for our workshops or roundtable meetings, we’re always thinking about how to give slides the “Glenbrook treatment” - how do we get past the headlines and down to fundamentals? In this Fanning the Flames episode, Russ Jones and Yvette Bohanan take you behind the scenes to show the "making of" our new stablecoin economics slide. Listen in as they discuss the points of monetization and key revenue streams in the stablecoin value chain, and address questions around practical usage and the evolving landscape. Take a deeper look at stablecoins (and other industry trends) at our upcoming 1-day Advanced Payments workshop on December 4th in San Francisco. Space is limited - enroll today! 

In this episode of Payments on Fire, Chris Uriarte welcomes Anne Hay, Chief Marketing Officer, and Mike Kaplan, Chief Revenue Officer, from PayNearMe to discuss the evolution and optimization of the payments experience. They explore the broader concept of payments optimization and how improvements and customization in all aspects of the payments journey can lead to organizations getting paid faster and with a lower total cost of acceptance. Listen in as they highlight the challenges faced by billers in sectors like healthcare and utilities, and provide insights on the growing importance of alternative payment methods and meeting customers where they are.

In this episode, Bryan Derman welcomes two highly respected members of the investment community who represent the two sides of that business: Tim Chiodo, Managing Director and Lead Analyst for Payments, Processors and Fintech at the global investment bank UBS, and Chris Kim, a public and private market investor who leads payments and fintech activities for Capital International, one of Capital Group’s three equity units. Tune in as we discuss what’s happening in the market with publicly traded companies, digital wallets, the merchant acquiring space, and private equity. We’ll consider what investors look for in a payments company, explore new flows, and debate the impacts of regulation, stablecoins, and M&A deals before closing out the episode with an investment perspective lightning round.

“97.0% for those whose full personal information was freely available on the darknet” experienced identity theft attempts, according to a key finding in SentiLink’s recent report on the probability of loss.  In part three of our series on payments fraud trends and tactics, we welcome back David Maimon, Head of Fraud Insights at SentiLink, to dive into how David and his team use a “data-driven” approach in their investigations and how they have applied their research to predict the fraudulent use of identity information.  Tune in to hear how an evidence-based approach can help your team engage in effective fraud prevention.  

In our 2024 Wrap Up episode, we looked into our crystal ball to predict how different payments  themes may evolve in the coming year; however, this industry delivers headlines at a rapid-fire pace (by the way, are you subscribed to Payments News?) and it can be hard to keep up.  To help you read the tea leaves in the mountains of publications, Yvette Bohanan rounded up Chris Uriarte and Drew Edmond for this mid-year update on payments industry trends. Tune in to hear updates and perspectives on the following topics: Regulation, including the Durbin Amendment, CCCA, and Click-to-Cancel Stablecoins Agentic Commerce Tokenization Fraud and Risk, including Visa's VAMP and passkeys

In this episode, Drew Edmond is joined by Chanan Lavi, CEO and Co-founder of Kipp, to discuss solutions to one of the most common card decline reasons - non-sufficient funds. Listen in as they talk about how to optimize these transactions and explore the implications for merchants, issuers, and consumers. 

How fast is fast enough?  When we look at fast payments data across countries, the US comes in pretty far behind in transactions per capita. And on the surface, this makes sense. FedNow is still new, and RTP volumes are relatively low.  Join Russ Jones and Will Eisler at the Glenbrook water cooler as they debate a looser definition of fast payments, explore challenges for adoption of traditional fast payments systems in the US, and ponder if the US actually has a more advanced and widely adopted “fast” payments ecosystem when we consider how Americans are experiencing faster money movement.

In our third episode in a series to spotlight the latest in global developments in payment systems from a financial inclusion lens, Sonja Kelly, Global Head of Women’s World Banking Institute, joins Joanna Wisniecka to dive into design principles for inclusive digital financial systems and how all end users benefit when design considers the specific needs of women. Listen in as they discuss barriers to women’s financial inclusion, the critical importance of addressing safety and trust issues, and potential benefits and risks associated with emerging technologies like AI and CBDCs.

In this episode, Rehman Baig, Chief Product Officer at FlexFactor joins Drew Edmond to talk about how FlexFactor is rethinking payments optimization through a Merchant of Record model. For most people in the industry, “Merchant of Record” is usually associated with global tax compliance and marketplaces, not optimization. But FlexFactor is using it to directly address failed payments and auth rate challenges in a way that merchants simply can’t do on their own. This is a fascinating conversation for anyone working to solve performance issues at scale, especially if your team has ever looked at your decline rate and said, “We’ve tried everything. What now?”

Would you let a software agent, powered by AI, search, select, and complete a purchase on your behalf? Will a merchant be able to tell if there’s a human or robot behind the transaction? What about risk and regulation concerns?  Russ Jones and Drew Edmond spent some time at the Glenbrook water cooler this week to consider the rapidly emerging topic of agentic commerce and agentic payments. Tune in as they explore different industry perspectives in order to understand the implications of this new technology in the payments ecosystem. 

In a series of episodes, Glenbrook's Joanna Wisniecka will to bring you up to speed on what’s happening globally as countries modernize payment networks and reach individuals and businesses through faster payment systems. In this episode, Joanna welcomes Sabine Mensah, Deputy CEO of AfricaNenda, a leader in financial inclusion, to explore Africa's dynamic path towards inclusive instant payment systems and the need for continued innovation and collaboration to enable access to financial services for all Africans on the continent by 2030.

Here’s a payments conundrum for you: We now have more ways to authenticate access to an online account or app than ever before. And yet, account takeover (ATO) - basically unauthorized access to an account - is at record levels. In this episode, Glenbrook’s Yvette Bohanan and Chris Uriarte are joined by Rocky Scales, CEO of IDgo, to explore this multifaceted problem.  Tune in as they discuss the vulnerabilities in authentication techniques, the need for better consumer education, and how financial institutions and businesses can implement more secure and user-friendly authentication systems to counteract evolving threats from sophisticated fraud methods. 

In this episode, Brant Peterson, Head of Enterprise Product, North America at Worldpay, joins Drew Edmond to talk about payment optimization through the perspective of a payment service provider. Worldpay is one of the world’s largest global PSPs - it processed over 2.5 Trillion Dollars in 2024, which was made up of 50 Billion transactions. Tune in to hear their perspectives on payment optimization and solutions that PSPs can offer merchant customers to help them improve their approval rates.

With this episode, we are launching a series to explore the current state of global financial inclusion efforts from a payments perspective. Joanna Wisniecka joins Yvette Bohanan to chat with Michael Wiegand, Director of Inclusive Financial Systems at the Gates Foundation, about the work the Foundation is doing globally and the transformative impact of digital financial inclusion on economies and societies.

Spec co-founder and CEO Nate Kharrl joins Yvette Bohanan on Payments on Fire to dig into some of the tactics and tech that is enabling today's fraud schemes, and how GenAI is redefining the payments risk landscape.

Glenbrook partners Bryan Derman, Chris Uriarte, and Simon Skinner jump on a special Fanning the Flames episode of Payments on Fire to give a first take on the  Global Payments acquisition of Worldpay. Tune in to hear their strategic perspective on the deal.

David Maimon, head of Fraud Insights at SentiLink, joins Yvette Bohanan for another episode to raise awareness about different fraud tactics and their impacts.  In this conversation, Yvette and David explore the intricacies and implications of Credit Profile Numbers (CPNs) and synthetic identity fraud, as well as  “zombie debt” and assumed identity fraud.  Listen in to hear the implications of these fraud schemes and how industry professionals can get ahead of them.  

“Payments Performance Optimization” is a pretty broad term, and it might mean different things to different people.  In a series of Payments on Fire episodes this year, Glenbrook’s Drew Edmond will be talking to guests who are approaching payments optimization from a variety of different angles, with a focus on primarily online, card not present merchants.  At the end of the day, a merchant wants the maximum number of good transactions to be authorized successfully. It sounds so simple. But is anything in payments really simple? In this episode, Oban MacTavish, CEO and Co-founder of Spade, joins Drew to explore this issue by focusing on merchant data, and how issuers make decisions about card transactions.