Payments On Fire

While “paying into” a company comes with nuance and complexity, it’s really nothing compared to what is involved when a business attempts to make an outgoing payment.  Most of us don’t think very much about these “payouts”. It’s been the domain of ERP software for decades, often an asterisk mentioning “supported payments”. Whether you are talking about B2B payments, expense reimbursements, or mass disbursements to gig workers, payouts started having a moment a few years ago.  Manish Vrishaketu, Chief Customer and Operations Officer at Tipalti, joins us for this episode to  dive into why payouts have been overlooked for so long, what makes them challenging to master, and what is happening that may make things better and easier for a “niche” specialization in our industry that happens to be incredibly important for every company on the planet.  

It’s September 2024, and this month, we’re focusing on business-to-business payments. B2B payments are difficult because so much information must be exchanged for them to process efficiently. But there’s more to it than that. B2B payments are many things to many people - for finance teams, they are “payables”; for gig economy companies, they are “payouts”; for providers, like insurance companies, they are “claims payments.” The list goes on - and within each of these sub-categories, there are niggling nuances that are requirements for making these payments streamlined and affordable. For today’s episode, we pulled a favorite from our vault - number 146, a discussion between George Peabody and Robin Gandhi. Since this aired in March of 2021, Robin has moved to a post as Chief Product Officer at Nium, and TripActions has rebranded to Navan. But the underlying ideas discussed regarding B2B are still important - and this idea of multi-player fintech and what it means for B2B payments is quite relevant.

The introduction of real-time payments in the U.S. market has been unfolding for several years now, but it seemed to pick up momentum in the last year as FedNow came to market. We now have over 1,000 banks live with real-time payments (at least for receiving) and a solid majority of transaction accounts are now reachable via FedNow, The Clearing House’s RTP system, or both. We wanted to understand whether we might be reaching the elusive “tipping point” for real-time payments in the U.S. and which players and what kind of use cases might be driving the growth. So, we turned to an old and respected friend of Glenbrook to share a perspective. In this episode, we go deep on the state of real-time with Dimitri Dadiomov. Dimitri is CEO at Modern Treasury, which gives him a birds-eye view of transaction trends as his company connects major corporations and leading-edge fintech platforms to a growing set of major banks in order to enable and streamline the origination of many money movement use cases.

Sometimes an episode sticks with me. It just keeps coming back in different ways. Reading an article, having a conversation, even watching TV can make me stop and reflect on a recording. This is exactly what has been happening since we sat down with Dr. David Maimon, Head of Fraud Insights at SentiLink, to talk about fraud. As always, we covered a lot of ground in this episode. As you might expect, we talked fraud trends. What you might not expect is a conversation, most enlightening, on the psychology of fraud and those who perpetrate it. Many thanks to David for sharing his insights on the dark web, on this podcast and regularly on LinkedIn. If you are not following him there, you should be. Last but not least, a shout out to Georgia State University and the work they are doing in their Evidence-based Cybersecurity Research Group. Good stuff.

In this Fanning the Flames episode of Payments on Fire, Glenbrook’s Bryan Derman, Chris Uriarte, and Russ Jones discuss Mastercard's bold June announcement to eliminate manual card number entry for eCommerce transactions in Europe by 2030, and explore the challenges and necessary steps to achieve this goal. The conversation centers around three core components from the announcement: tokenization, streamlined guest checkouts, and authentication via passkeys. Tune in to hear more about the mechanics of these technologies, their industry adoption, and implications for merchants, issuers, and cardholders.

Authentication and identification are top of mind for payments professionals battling fraud these days. We’ve made progress over the past two decades in managing payments risk in the digital era, but fraud continues to evolve and often seems to be one or several steps ahead. The classic cat-and-mouse game has moved to a point where “Are you really you?” and “Should you have access to this account?” are the questions that are both increasingly critical and elusive to answer. In this episode, we take the long view, talking with Ori Eisen, CEO and Founder of Trusona. We reflect on what the payments industry has gotten right, the current challenges, and the future of authentication and identity. And, to pay attention to the here and now, we asked Ori to share his best practice tips for implementing passkeys.  

As scams, ransomware, account takeovers, and old-fashioned data breaches persist in our personal and business lives, we are all pondering how to get ahead in the cat-and-mouse game that global fraud rings seemingly have mastered. With this episode, we’re setting the stage for a series of discussions on authentication and identity, the critical components of tackling this pervasive issue. We’re embarking on a journey of perspective gathering from some of the industry’s leaders in risk management, authentication, and digital identity with this 2015 “from the vault” episode of Payments on Fire. Listen as Philip Andreae converses with George Peabody about the FIDO Alliance and its mission to bolster and streamline authentication. As you listen to this episode, consider the progress made since 2015 — have we come far enough, fast enough?

For decades, technology, regulations, and dissatisfaction with the status quo have formed a powerful triad, driving payments innovation. This triad is fueled by investors and innovators seeking to disrupt and legislators and agencies seeking to enforce compliance, increase transparency, and enhance fairness. In this episode, John Pitts, Head of Policy at Plaid, sat down with Yvette Bohanan to discuss open banking and its potential to change the finance industry’s playing field: How consumers manage their personal financial lives, how financial service providers compete, and what this means for businesses. Listen to hear how, once again, the triad is at work reshaping the payments industry.

In this episode, we fan the flames to get Glenbrook’s hot takes on the proposed Capital One acquisition of Discover. Now that the dust has settled a bit on the February announcement, and while we wait with bated breath to see if the regulators will sign off on this deal, we wanted to debate the potential winners and losers - and possible outcomes -  of an acquisition. We spend some time discussing how this combination would impact some key stakeholder groups - networks, banks, processors, payment service providers, businesses, and merchants. Now that our thoughts are on the record, we're eagerly anticipating what we got right and what we missed if this intriguing acquisition comes to fruition.

In this episode, Yvette Bohanan is joined by Glenbrook Managing Partner Bryan Derman and guests Michele Alt and Adam Shapiro, Partners at the Klaros Group. The result is a lively discussion about regulators and the impact of the current regulatory environment on banks and fintechs, a topic of utmost relevance in today's rapidly evolving industry landscape. The economy and all that is at play during a major election year create a fascinating backdrop for this conversation.

The process of accepting payments is a labyrinth of complexity, and payment service providers are the guiding lights that help merchants navigate this maze. They assist in deciding which payments to accept, how to connect to networks, and, most crucially, how to optimize revenues and reduce risk. But what about the providers themselves? Is their work getting more or less complicated? We sat down with Trevor Nies (SVP, Global Head of Digital) who leads Adyen’s digital payments organization, to explore this question as it relates to pay by bank. We discussed the pay by bank landscape in the US compared to other countries and why the US seems to be facing some headwinds. And, more importantly, what merchants should be thinking about when it comes to implementing pay by bank.

In Episode 231, Samantha Gordon and Simon Skinner discussed the orchestration framework they developed to help our clients decipher a somewhat overused term in the industry. It was a great discussion, and if you missed it, I recommend you give it a listen. We covered a lot of ground in that episode that sets up this conversation with John Lunn, CEO and Founder of Gr4vy. While preparing for this podcast, John observed that “every merchant has an orchestration platform; they just don’t call it that.” That struck a chord as incredibly insightful. Merchants, at least those with the engineering resources to do so, have been adding software infrastructure to their operations to improve authorization rates, handle tokenization, route to different networks, and a host of other capabilities that simply do not come with the basic developer API toolkit. Those without engineering teams to help automate these capabilities are left to manual or ad hoc means to manage their operations. Either way, operational gaps often le

Glenbrook's Russ Jones often chats with professionals working for companies inside the payments industry who are providing payments and services to end users such as businesses, enterprises, governments, and individuals. Or they may be working at an enterprise, a merchant, or a biller. And they’re all trying to figure out how to save money in payments. In this episode, Russ joins Yvette to talk through 8 simple ideas about how you make money in payments.

Acquired by Mastercard in 2017, the UK’s Vocalink manages the UK’s Bacs payment system, ATM LINK switching platform, and the Faster Payments System, FPS. To make this more tangible, consider these statistics: Vocalink processes over 90% of UK salaries, more than 70% of household bills, 98% of state benefits, and powers 60,000 ATMs.  Vocalink’s influence goes beyond the UK, with technology that powers fast payments infrastructure in countries such as the US, Thailand, Sweden, the Philippines, Peru, and Saudi Arabia - just to name a few. Vocalink’s origin story, which began in 1998, spurred payments modernization efforts worldwide. For this episode, we sat down with Gregor Dobbie, former CEO of Vocalink, to discuss what we can learn from Vocalink’s journey and what the future holds for core payment systems.

Have you ever wished for a “payments sherpa”? Someone who would share their experiences, opinions, and advice about this industry - the uncut, “real real” of what can happen and what to remember as you move along your payments journey. In this episode, we sit down with one of our favorite payments industry sherpas - Steve Klebe.  No stranger to our podcasts, this time Steve talks about payments partnerships. This is a topic Steve is passionate about - and for good reasons. Partnerships - the successful ones - make this industry go around. The right partnerships can make the industry better, bring novel and differentiated offerings to the market, and make the payment transaction easier, more secure, and more valuable to consumers and businesses.  Steve has invested about half his career creating successful strategic partnerships for Verifone, CyberSource, Google, and more (frequently going out on a limb to do it), and he survives to tell his tale. We hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as we enjoy

As humans, our brains like to organize things - classify them, put them in silos. This thinking often works to our advantage - enabling deep analysis and understanding. Sometimes, though, it can work against us. We can be bound to a siloed thought process - a “this or that” false choice that causes us to miss the greater value inherent in doing both. In searching for guests who will inspire us to eschew false choices in favor of unexpected combinations, we met Glendy Kam, Chief Product Officer at Tassat. In this episode, Yvette enjoyed geeking out on payments innovation with Glendy and digging into how Tassat is creating an infrastructure enabling $1.4Tr in payments for commercial bank customers.  For all the participants who have been through a Glenbrook workshop and have asked about real-world use cases for distributed ledgers and blockchain technologies in payments, or are trying to figure out how to combine new and existing technologies to solve a problem, this episode is for you. Enjoy!  

In this episode, Glenbrook Partners Yvette Bohanan, Russ Jones, and Chris Uriarte sat down with Julie Fergerson - a long-time payments professional who co-founded the Merchant Risk Council in 2000 and returned a few years ago to take on the role of CEO for what is now an industry-leading, global non-profit.  We talk with Julie about how the payments industry has changed over the last two decades, with both the professionalization of payments and of fraud, and why she is now spearheading a certification program for the industry.  True to form, we also had to share our hot takes on topics such as “pay by bank”, and the looming US Credit Card Competition Act. We hope this inspires you to think about your personal career path in payments and your role as a leader in this industry. Be sure to check out Glenbrook’s preparation course to help you demonstrate your command of payment and fraud knowledge and get ready to take the CPFPP exam.

In this episode, we are exploring one of the “buzziest” buzz words in payments today - orchestration. If you have been in the payments space for a long time, your reaction to hearing about orchestration might be “What’s all the fuss about? We’ve been evolving these capabilities for decades.” If you are new to the industry, you may think this is some kind of high-performance jet fuel that is painfully needed to improve a rather opaque transaction processing environment. Joining Yvette Bohanan are two Glenbrook colleagues, Simon Skinner and Samantha Gordon, who have been digging into orchestration solutions. They will be helping us define orchestration, offer a perspective on who should consider orchestration, and for those of you who do, a framework for thinking about orchestration.  

Launching a payment product requires big moonshot thinking alongside a lot of agonizing over the details. Understanding the market, the customer journey, and the technology - from every angle requires patience, persistence, and a beginner’s mindset to learn from every success and failure. Thinking about launching a new form of currency, however, is on another level altogether. There’s an entire population of a country to consider - what does each segment of the population require to be able to use the currency? Then, there is the currency’s role in supporting the economy. How will a new currency be protected from counterfeiting, and what controls will be required to prevent its misuse? How will it work with legacy payment systems and commercial banks? And how will it adhere to laws in place today and be prepared for tomorrow? Last but certainly not least, which technologies will enable all of these things and more? These were just some of the thoughts bubbling through my mind when I sat down with Jim Cunha, f

It is a rare occurrence when we get to have ALL the Glenbrook partners in one episode of Payments on Fire!  Glenbrook is kicking off the new year with a (lengthy) conversation on what payments industry trends and developments we think are the most interesting, compelling, and controversial at the moment, and what to watch as we move into 2024.