Payments on Fire™

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