2008 ETA Annual Meeting & Expo - A Field Report

by Allen Weinberg

This year’s annual ETA seemed bigger than in previous years, and from almost everyone that I spoke to, much more exhausting. In my humble opinion, this was the first year that had a really compelling set of sessions to choose from. Unfortunately, I and quite a few others were never able to make it to many or even any of the sessions. Chalk it up to many more exhibitors to talk to, and the presence of many more old friends and colleagues to catch up with! » More

Apple Rocks the Mobile World

Apple announced their much anticipated software roadmap for the iPhone today, with a surprising (to me anyway) two-pronged push. I was waiting for the iPhone SDK announcement, but this turned out to be a bit more than I was expecting! » More

ACH @ POS

by Carol Coye Benson

I spoke last week with Elliott McEntee, President and CEO of NACHA about two current issues - NACHA's reaction to "de-coupled debits" and the progress of the Secure Vault Payments program. » More

Taxis and Payment Cards in New York City

by Carol Coye Benson

On a New York visit over the last several days, I used four taxis - and paid with my debit card each time. (New York City has recently implemented a regulation requiring all cabs to accept card payments - without minimums or added fees.)

As I paid, I asked each driver whether or not card payments were good for drivers. I got two vehement "no's", with bitter remarks about the 5% fee they pay. I got one equally emphatic "yes", with the added comment that tips were much better on airport runs. And I got one perfect New York "whatever.." with matching shrug. » More

Some Thoughts on Payments Charity Before the Holidays

by Jacqueline Chilton

As you seek to find that special gift for that special someone this year, why not take a different approach? Recently, we've been working with several non-profit payments providers and discovered new payment services -- and new ways to pay -- that can help you find a unique gift and make a positive impact.

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The Evolution from Mobile Banking to Mobile Payments

by Jacqueline Chilton

mFoundry recently announced a new round of financing with a line-up of strategic investors including Motorola Ventures, PayPal, NCR, and a "leading wireless operator" - along with their existing investors. In their announcement, the company described its business as "a comprehensive and equitable solution for financial institutions, wireless operators and other mobile banking and payment providers". This begs a question: Will balance across the players bring the most compelling solution to market, or will one of the constituents beat the others? » More

eB2B at the Tipping Point?

by Carol Coye Benson

One of the reasons I went to the AFP (Association for Finance Professionals) conference in Boston in October 2007 was to get updated on the progress of the migration of business to business (B2B) payments from checks to electronics.

As a general statement, progress on this has been very slow. But recent acquisitions (Xign by JPMorgan Chase, Harbor by Amex) and product announcements (most recently, the MasterCard Payment Gateway) seemed to signal a change in pace.

So off to Boston I went, asking myself the question: Are there developments that will change the pace of conversion to electronics? My answer is “yes” – read on! » More

NACHA Topics Update from AFP Boston

by Carol Coye Benson

Here's an update on NACHA topics from this morning's sessions at the Association for Financial Processionals conference being held this week in Boston. » More

Monday Morning Report from the AFP Conference

by Carol Coye Benson

There are 6,000 people at this year's AFP (Association of Finance Professionals) conference in Boston, and it feels like half of them must be smashed into this morning's session on "The Retail Merchant's Customers' Payment Options: Deciding Between C21, BOC, ARC & POP". » More

A Field Report from London

by Russ Jones

I'm in London this week for meetings with clients. Here's an "up close and personal" field report on my first real London shopping experience - payment card in hand - at Harrods. » More

Glenbrook's Take on Finovate 1.0

Glenbrook's Bryan Derman attended today's Finovate 1.0 Conference in New York City. He filed his report on the conference on Payments News.

In Search of the Killer App

by Linda Elliott

Linda provides another update from this week's Digital ID World.

Phil Becker asked the question at a Digital ID World breakout session:

“What will make Amazon or eBay start really using the identity infrastructure?”

Those who watch the web, authentication initiatives following on the FFIEC push for strong authentication dating back two years now, and identity have wondered about this for a long time. There is a notion that a third party authentication provider could emerge and provide identity authentication for many sorts of applications. But it hasn’t happened yet. Why not? » More

Doc Searls Provides a new ‘Clue’ for the Identity World

by Linda Elliott The exhibition floor at a conference can tell you a lot about the state of development of the topic. Exhibitors front and center on the exhibit floor at Digital ID World this week are MSFT, Novell, Oracle, AOL, while the smaller players, who were the only ones a few years ago: Ping, Radiant, Securent are there, but not as prominent. Many of the original companies in this space have been acquired by the powerhouses of IT infrastructure. » More

The 10-Step Cookbook for Glenbrook's Thumbnail Mobile Banking Strategy

by Russ Jones

I completely agree with this thumbnail mobile banking strategy. But let's refine it a little into the 10-step cookbook version. » More

Glenbrook's Thumbnail Mobile Banking Strategy

by Scott Loftesness

We get asked a lot about our views about mobile banking and payments. Mobile payment is a whole separate kettle of fish - and not something I'll address here. But mobile banking is here and now as most major banks are making their decisions about how to offer mobile banking this year. » More

Identity: Innovation or Infrastructure

by Linda Elliott

There has been a lot of attention paid to identity authentication in the payments world over the last several years. Five years ago, systematizing the use and sharing of identity beyond the proprietary structures of vendor products was a new idea and there was great energy in the marketplace. The Liberty Alliance attracted large financial associations as well as movers and shakers in the financial world. Inevitably, open source and open standards groups weighed in with innovative approaches. » More

A Look at PayPal's Q2 Results

by Russ Jones

I recently took a look at the eBay Q2 2007 10-Q SEC filing to get some more details on the PayPal growth story. Read on for the details. » More

IKEA - Encouraging the Move to Debit Cards

by Jacqueline Chilton

In the US market, the furniture group IKEA is putting payment choices into action at its stores. Encouraging debit usage is the latest step in steamlining checkout practices and reducing payment acceptance costs.

Ikea's new Debit Card Advantage 1% coupon encourages consumers to pull out their debit card at the point of sale.

“Use your debit card at IKEA and you will automatically receive a coupon worth 1% of your total purchase. This coupon is valid at your next visit to IKEA and does not expire”

Furniture store tickets are not generally thought of as small ticket / cash replacement merchants - the more traditional role for debit. Ikea's strategy reflects an overall consumer trend to increased debit card usage.

Demonstrating their active management of consumer payment choices, IKEA was an early mover in stopping the acceptance of personal checks (see “Retailer’s role in the demise of check”). Ikea continues to offer favorable payment terms for purchases over $1000 with 12 months free interest.

Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson Reports on Chicago Fed's Payments 2007 Conference

Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson is back from this week's Payments 2007 conference sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. The theme of this year's conference was "Competitive Forces Shaping the Payments Environment: What's Next?." Click here to read Carol's full conference report on Payments News.

Commentary on Transactions Systems - Our 21st Century Dependence

Glenbrook's Linda Elliott has years of experience in designing, building and operating some of the largest payment processing platforms in the industry. She filed the following commentary - after reflecting upon some the cluster of news stories over the last week about difficulties with several significant transaction systems. Click here to read Linda's commentary on Payments News.

Glenbrook at NACHA Payments 2007

Glenbrook's Jim Salters was at NACHA's Payments 2007 conference earlier this week. Jim filed the following report from the conference.

Glenbrook's Allen Weinberg from the 2007 ETA Annual Meeting and Expo

Glenbrook's Allen Weinberg was at the 2007 annual Electronic Transactions Association's Annual Meeting & Expo in April in Las Vegas. Allen filed a report from the Expo over on Payments News.

Watching the Anti-Money Laundering Risk in Prepaid Cards

Glenbrook's Bryan Derman filed the following report after his participation in March 2007 on a panel titled "Hype or Reality – Anti-Money Laundering Risks from Prepaid Payment Products and What Can Be Done About Them" at the Spring Meeting of the American Bar Association’s Business Law Section in Washington, DC. » More

A Deeper Look at Amex’s S2S eInvoice & Pay Service

Glenbrook's Bryan Derman attended a briefing in New York by American Express on its new B2B commerce solution and had an opportunity to speak directly with a few of the executives involved. Here's his report on this new service as posted to Payments News.

To Watch Payments Convergence, Watch Metavante

Glenbrook's Jim Salters files a Payments News report on Metavante - suggesting that to watch what's happening with payments convergence in the US, watch what Metavante's doing.

A Perspective On Intuit's Acquisition Of Digital Insight

Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson had been initially skeptical about Intuit's recent announcement to acquire Digital Insight - as she says "after all, banks have had a long and somewhat rocky road with Intuit over the years and some seem to still have very mixed feelings about their basic value proposition." But Carol has recently become convinced that the new Intuit/Digital Insight business combination could provide some very real value to a bank's small business customers. Here's the report Carol filed on Payments News.

FFIEC Internet Banking Authentication Guidance: Bank Updates - V7

Glenbrook's Linda Elliott has been following the banking industry's efforts to comply with the FFIEC Internet Banking Guidance issued almost a year ago. We first posted her initial summary of bank strategies last September. Here's a link to her most recent update (version 7) with the latest on what the industry has been doing since then. Linda points out there are only about 30 business days left in the year for financial institution's to finalize their plans to comply.

Large US Retail Bank To Bet On PKI With Arcot

Glenbrook's Jim Salters files this report for Payments News: Even if you've been following the authentication space and the industry dash to comply with the FFIEC Authentication Guidance, it's likely that you've never heard of Arcot. Details here.

Large US Retail Bank To Bet On PKI With Arcot

Glenbrook's Jim Salters files this report: Even if you've been following the authentication space and the industry dash to comply with the FFIEC Authentication Guidance, it's likely that you've never heard of Arcot. But that may soon change. According to the company, a major bank in the US will soon announce their plans to deploy ArcotID technology to its millions of retail banking customers. And while this might sound like just another customer win for an authentication solution provider, this appears to represent a dramatically different authentication strategy than we've seen so far from a large US bank, with interesting implications. The full report is available on Payments News.

FFIEC Authentication Guidance: The Countdown Continues

By Jim Salters

With roughly 4 1/2 months remaining before year-end, we thought we'd share our take on some of the recent industry developments and our lessons learned as we've helped our clients prepare for the deadline.

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Peppercoin in the Payments Industry

Glenbrook has been following Peppercoin since 2002 and has closely monitored the company’s strategy and progress. We were pleased by Peppercoin’s shift in direction two years ago—and we continue to be impressed by its ability to listen to the market, adjust its strategy, and move forward with a payment service that we believe to be unique in the industry.

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Payment Card Chargebacks - It Pays for Merchants to Put Up a Fight!

By Allen Weinberg

With online payment fraud now entering its second decade, recent fraud studies are somewhat encouraging and show that the percentage of revenue lost by eCommerce merchants to online fraud is declining. But these same studies also underscore that with the steady growth of online commerce and digital goods and services, the actual sales revenue lost to payment fraud continues to increase year over year. The eCommerce paradox is that while online payment fraud is dropping in relative terms, it is growing in absolute terms. And with eCommerce merchants expected to lose as much as $2.8 billion to payment fraud in 2005, according to the 2006 CyberSource Annual Fraud Report, the problem is demanding greater management attention, the development of industry best practices, and the pursuit of new solutions.

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Glenbrook's QuickTake: TextPayMe

Glenbrook's Russ Jones has taken a quick look at this new payment service offering and provides some initial comments on what he sees. Full story on Payments News.

Chase's blink Card: Blinking Along in Denver Update

Glenbrook's Linda Elliott provides part 2 of her report on the rollout of contactless payments in the Denver area.

Chase's blink Card: A Denver Field Test Report

Glenbrook's Linda Elliott, lives in the Denver area and just got her very own Chase blink card in the mail. She's just finished writing up part one of a report on her first day's experiences with that blink card in her hands. Great stuff - enjoy!

Wither the Empire?

By Bryan Derman

Some thoughts from Bryan on reading leading indicators in Consumer Financial Services.

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Payments 2004: The Merchant Perspective

By Allen Weinberg

In his recent keynote address at the Direct Response Forum (DRF) conference in San Francisco, Glenbrook’s Allen Weinberg explored the payments acceptance landscape, how it relates to card-not-present merchants, and offered his assessment on what it may mean.

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Peppercoin V2.0

By Russ Jones

Peppercoin 2.0 extends the notion of transaction aggregation into both the physical world of small point-of-sale payments as well as across multiple merchants. Through this new “universal aggregation” capability, Peppercoin plans to aggregate individual consumer purchases at multiple merchants into a single card transaction. By doing this aggregation, the per-transaction fees that would otherwise be paid on each purchase are reduced—with the resulting savings shared between Peppercoin and merchants participating in the Peppercoin network. This research note analyzes how Peppercoin 2.0 actually works, explores its new value proposition, and offers an initial assessment of its potential strengths and weaknesses.

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Beware the Doves?

by Scott Loftesness

Reflections on the PayPal/GE Consumer Finance Alliance

On June 8th, 2004, PayPal quietly announced it was partnering with GE Capital Consumer Card Company to begin offering credit lines to customers that want extended payment terms for any PayPal purchase. PayPal’s business members started receiving direct mail pieces the following day offering new credit lines up to $50,000.

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Preventing Identity Theft: Banker, Heal Thyself

By Carol Coye Benson

When President Bush signed the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 (FACTA) into law late last year, bankers throughout the U.S. breathed a sigh of relief. Even with some fairly stringent new provisions, the permanent renewal of the FCRA’s preemption provisions -- which curtail the ability of consumer-friendly state law to override provisions of the federal legislation -- was good news for banking.

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Responding to "Phishing" Attacks

By Scott Loftesness

Phishing has emerged as the latest threat to the theft of personal information over the Internet. This Glenbrook ActionMap(SM) briefing for financial institutions examines the phishing threat, provides brief technology background on how fraudsters are successfully perpetrating phishing frauds, and recommends an ActionMap for institutions to consider for responding effectively to these threats.

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RFID in Financial Services

By Russ Jones

Pundits believe that RFID tags—positioned as a next-generation replacement for the familiar bar code—are going to drive vast improvements in the efficiency of supply chains as products wind their way from the manufacturers out to the retail shelves. Critics believe that RFID tags pose a significant threat to personal privacy, in that tags worn or carried by individuals permit unwanted surveillance by anyone with an RFID reader. They contend that RFID technology and its use in business should be heavily regulated, if not outright banned for specific applications. The court of public opinion is still listening to both sides of the debate.

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Liability and Federated Identity: Much Ado About Nothing?

By Carol Coye Benson

As enterprises implement new identity management systems, interest grows in federated identity. For small "circles of trust," existing business relationships—and existing contractual frameworks—are sufficient to build federated networks. But with eyes everywhere cast on the opportunity to create larger circles of trust, what business frameworks will be needed to support these large-scale federated networks?

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Getting Out in Front of Financial Privacy

By Russ Jones

Momentum towards stronger financial privacy for consumers in the United States has picked up a lot of steam over the last 30 days. While most welcome the change, some financial institutions are still tentative about the new direction, others are actively resisting it, and a few are not sure how to respond. But to strategic thinking institutions wanting to secure competitive advantage, we believe that now is the time to act—getting out in front of the financial privacy issue, leveraging their reputations for trust, and better serving their customers in the process.

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Meet the Open Service Platforms

By Russ Jones

I recently attended the O'Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference hoping to learn about up and coming technologies that might hold promise for Glenbrook's clients. While I didn't find exactly what I was looking for (the opportunities in financial services for smart dust, robofly, and nanotechnologies continue to elude me) I did have one of those "Eureka!" moments when I understood how effectively the big three Internet applications—Amazon, Google, and eBay—have morphed into open service platforms. What is happening here on a broad scale should be instructive for many financial services providers and eCommerce providers.

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Micropayments Redux at the iTunes Music Store

By Scott Loftesness

I've been playing with the new Apple iTunes Music Store with my Mac OS X iBook—including buying some new (actually, old) music! In addition to rediscovering some favorite songs, I'm also exploring how Apple has tackled the micropayments problem using old-fashioned credit cards.

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I Can Prove Who I Am: The Case for the Positive Identity Affidavit

By Carol Coye Benson

How the Liberty Alliance and related digital identity protocols may solve the identity theft crisis.

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Identity Theft: I Should Be The First To Know

By Russ Jones

Identity theft—the fraudulent use of private personal data and financial credentials—is getting a lot of attention these days. Consumers are concerned and legislators are on the march proposing various regulatory solutions. Since most of the damage is done prior to detection, we argue that it is critical to get consumers involved as early as possible. Consumers are more eager to help than the financial services industry might think.

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The False Promise of Frictionless Commerce

By Russ Jones

Micropayments—those pay-per-click, penny-level transactions—are back in the news. Red Herring magazine recently published an article (1) entitled "Micropayment's Big Potential" that paints a pretty rosy picture about several up and coming micropayment systems.

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Digital Identity Is Not Just About Security Anymore

By Carol Coye Benson

There's a sea change happening in the world of digital identity. Suddenly, crypto-geeks and impassioned aficionados of biometrics, software tokens, and smart cards are being pushed to the side. The suits have arrived! Digital identity is no longer about security; it's now a marketing conversation.

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Critiquing a Liberty Alliance Critique

By Russ Jones and Scott Loftesness

In a recent critique of the Liberty Alliance entitled "On Liberty and the Case for Anonymous Federation of Identity," (1) Doug Kaye raises several critical points about the Liberty 1.0 specifications:

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Fixing the Liberty Spec Before It's Too Late

By Carol Coye Benson

Like everyone else in the digital identity world, I have spent the last few days reading through the version 1.0 specifications from the Liberty Alliance. Overall, hats off! Alliance members have done an outstanding job of creating a framework for shared authentication and identity. We can (and will) argue with elements of the design—with its over-complication of simple processes and the over-simplification of complex issues. But the Alliance has commendably tackled most of the issues, and importantly not shied away from the hard problems or vulnerabilities. This has neatly set the stage for early adopters to get to work.

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