Glenbrook's Jim Salters will be attending the Payments 2008 conference being held this coming week - May 18-21 in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand.

When I was in London a few weeks ago for the Digital Money Forum, I got introduced to Twitter, an addictive social networking service that allows you and your friends to follow each others latest thoughts. At the recent Finovate Startup conference in San Francisco, several of us in the audience (and around the globe!) were twittering back and forth about the presenters in real-time.

Anyway, the new Business Week has an article titled Why Twitter Matters. You can follow Payments News on Twitter (and get real-time updates about posts and my random thoughts). You can also use TweetScan to search for recent "tweets" about specific subjects - for example, here's a Tweetscan of every tweet mentioning PayPal. TweetScan even lets you setup an RSS feed of your favorite scans so you can monitor them in Google Reader, etc. Some big companies regularly monitor Twitter for mentions of their brands.

What's this got to do with payments, you ask? Nothing - but it's Friday and a pretty slow news day so far!

Two important new books about security - and payments security in particular - arrived on my desk this week.

The first book - the second edition of Ross Anderson's Security Engineering - provides fascinating insights into all of those things that are often overlooked when designing secure systems. Anderson provides a comprehensive survey of the issues, the nature of successful attacks, with serious recommendations on how to simply do better across a range of security applications. This is a big book - not exactly suited for reading on the beach - but important nonetheless! Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars by Amazon.com reviewers.

The second book - Zero Day Threat by Byron Acohido and Jon Swartz - provides real insights into the threats that attackers are exploiting to gain the necessary information to take over online banking, PayPal, brokerage, and other accounts. If "know your enemy" makes sense to you, then you'll find Zero Day Threat of great interest. Zero Day Threat is 5-star rated by Amazon.com reviewers.

Both of these books have just been added to the first page of the Payments News Bookstore on Amazon.com.

Glenbrook's next roundtable on the Structure of the Merchant Marketplace will be held June 10th in Santa Clara, California. Registration is now open. Allen Weinberg and Carol Coye Benson will be taking a special look "under the covers" – focusing on the key industry verticals within the U.S. merchant marketplace.   » Continue Reading

Reminder: eBillme has announced a webinar this Wednesday, May 14, where Russ Jones of Glenbrook Partners will provide an in-depth look at the retailer integration process for several alternative payment options including: Bill Me Later, eBillme, Google Checkout, and PayPal. Registration for the webinar is available online.

eBillme has announced it will host a webinar on Wednesday, May 14, where Russ Jones of Glenbrook Partners will provide an in-depth look at the retailer integration process for several alternative payment options including: Bill Me Later, eBillme, Google Checkout, and PayPal.   » Continue Reading

We're live at the wonderful UCSF Conference Center in the Mission Bay of San Francisco - about a minute until the first demo session begins at FinovateStartup. We'll be updating this post with our notes from the demos through the day.   » Continue Reading

Glenbrook's Scott Loftesness will be attending tomorrow's FinovateStartup in San Francisco. Jim Bruene has pulled together an excellent program where forty financial services startups will "strut their stuff." Christophe Langlois from Visible Banking will be live blogging the event on Jim's NetBanker site. If you're also going to be there, let's get acquainted! We'll be blogging to Payments News as time permits and also commenting from @paymentsnews on Twitter.

At mid-day today at the Digital Money Forum in London, five of us bank/payments bloggers took the stage for a lively discussion about blogs in financial services. The participants were Dave Birch from the Digital Money Forum blog (and the superb producer/director of this whole Forum!), Chris Skinner of TheFinanser.com, Colin Henderson of The BankWatch, Aneace Haddad of Aneace's Blog, and me, Scott Loftesness, of Payments News. The panel was introduced and deftly moderated by Steve Bowbrick.   » Continue Reading

Just listened to a fascinating talk at today's Digital Money Forum in London by Ronnie O'Toole, Chief Economist of the National Irish Bank. Last November, the bank provided a pre-budget submission to the Irish Department of Finance that contained four recommendations about how to reduce inefficiencies in the Irish payment system (Dave Birch blogged about it here). One of the four recommendations was to require that taxis in the country be equipped to for card-based payments as a compulsory measure. We've seen other examples of where transit payments have been the focal point for shifting from cash to electronic payments. Glenbrook's Carol Benson blogged about her experience with card-based taxi payments in New York City late last year.

[Glenbrook's Scott Loftesness writes...] I'm in London this morning at the Eleventh Annual Digital Money Forum hosted by Consult Hyperion. This year's Forum is sponsored by Visa Europe and WebMoney with support from ACI.

At this morning's session, about 100 attendees will be discussing a range of payments related topics including innovation in general as well as the future of retail banking, the future of money and, indeed, the future of cash. I'll be participating on a panel discussion at tomorrow's session titled "Meet the Bloggers".

[Update: Colin's blogging from the Forum too - with pictures! So is Aneace!]

Glenbrook's Allen Weinberg was at this week's 2008 annual Electronic Transactions Association's Annual Meeting & Expo in Las Vegas. Allen has filed a field report from the Expo.

[Glenbrook's Scott Loftesness writes...] At Dave Birch's invitation, I'll be heading to London on Monday for next week's 11th annual Digital Money Forum on Wed-Thu April 23-24 in London. I'll be participating on the "Meet the Bloggers" panel on Thursday along with fellow payments bloggers Chris Skinner, Aneace Haddad, Colin Henderson, and Dave Birch himself - moderated by Steve Bowbrick.

Should be fun! If you'll be attending the Forum, I look forward to seeing you there. If you'd like to meet up separately while I'm in London (Friday April 25 is open), just let me know.

Last Thursday, in a post titled 'Innovation in Payments - A Survey of Experts', I mentioned a survey of global payments 'experts' conducted by our good friend John Chaplin on questions about the innovation in payments. If you'd like a copy of John's survey findings, please email me and I'll get a copy out to you.

During March, a good friend of mine, John Chaplin, conducted a survey of global payments 'experts' (myself included) on the question of innovation in payments. Chris Skinner, another of the participating experts, does a great job outlining the findings from John's survey in this blog post. If you'd like a copy of the survey findings, email me or Chris and we'll be happy to send along a copy.

Sometimes, we hear from readers and subscribers who tell us that they don't know who takes the time to edit and publish Payments News! If you're in that camp, we'd like to introduce you to Glenbrook Partners.

We're also known among payments professionals for our Payments Boot Camps (next up in New York - April 16-17) and our customized payments education programs. And, of course, among the "payments cognoscenti" we're known for Payments News.

Got a project that could benefit from our expertise? Perhaps a private payments workshop? Get in touch - we'd love to hear from you and promise a prompt reply!

Jim Bruene has announced the final starting lineup of 40 financial technology startups for the upcoming FinovateStartup conference to be held on April 29 in San Francisco. If you register by Monday, March 31, you can save $100. We'll be attending FinovateStartup ourselves and look forward to seeing you there!

The time has come for a last call for registrations for Glenbrook's Payments Boot Camp next week (Tuesday-Wednesday, March 18-19) in Atlanta, Georgia. If you're interested in attending, please register right away!

Glenbrook's Payments Boot Camps provide a "deep dive" on U.S. payments systems - covering soup-to-nuts, basics through emerging payments. After the Atlanta Payments Boot Camp next week, our next Payments Book Camp will be held in New York City on April 16-17.

Glenbrook, in cooperation with Forte Financial just finished our first Payments Workshop on B2B payments, called "eB2B Payments at the Tipping Point".   » Continue Reading

One of my partners at Glenbrook yesterday suggested that we should include links on each individual story page to the previous story and the next story. We've had those links for a long time - but they're down at the bottom of the page and not at all obvious. So, we've added next story and previous story links right up top on the individual story pages. You can also use keyboard shortcuts: CTRL-p for previous story or CTRL-n for next story.

If you've got suggestions on how we can make Payments News more useful and usable, please email them to feedback@paymentsnews.com.

Registration is about to close for a special two-day focus workshop titled "eB2B Payments at the Tipping Point" being held in the San Francisco Bay Area next week on Tuesday and Wednesday, March 4-5. This special workshop is being taught by Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson in partnership with Erin McCune of Forte Financial. The workshop is approved for up to 17 CTP/CCM recertification credits by the Association for Financial Professionals. Please register ASAP if you'd like to attend this new workshop.

One of our favorite industry publications is Jim Bruene's Online Banking Report. For over 10 years, Jim's done a great job with OBR - and on his NetBanker blog.

Last fall, Jim held his first conference - Finovate 2007 in New York City - and it sold out quickly. Videos from Finovate 2007 are available online.

Jim's just announced the first of two events he's got planned for 2008 - FinovateStartup scheduled for April 29th in San Francisco. This one-day conference will showcase the hottest financial technology startups – including Andera, Boulevard R., Buxfer, CAPS, Clairmail, Credit Karma, First ROI, Jwaala, Lending Club, Mint, Prosper, SmartHippo, Unified Money, and Wesabe.

Early-bird registration is open now - the first 25 Payments News readers can use coupon code "paymentsnews7" to get an additional $100 discount off of the registration fee. Online Banking Report subscribers can get a $250 discount off of the registration fee. We'll be attending FinovateStartup ourselves and look forward to seeing you there.

Payments News has covered TrialPay several times. Recently, Glenbrook's Russ Jones and Scott Loftesness completed a fourteen-page Research Brief entitled "Converting Customers With TrialPay - A New Payment Alternative for Online Merchants." To request a complimentary PDF copy of this Glenbrook Research Brief, click here.

Glenbrook has a number of Payments Boot Camps, special focus workshops and roundtables currently open for registration. They include:

• Our two-day Payments Boot Camp "Spring Tour" begins with classes being held starting next month in the San Francisco Bay Area (February 19-20), followed by Atlanta (March 18-19) and New York (April 16-17).
• A new, first-time special focus one-day workshop on Card Payment Processing - The Value Chain being held in the San Francisco Bay Area on February 21.
• A new, first-time special focus two-day workshop on eB2B Payments at the Tipping Point being held in the San Francisco Bay Area on March 4-5. This workshop is being taught in partnership with Eric McCune of Forte Financial and is approved for up to 17 CTP/CCM recertification credit(s) by the Association for Financial Professionals.
• A new half-day Roundtable on Emerging Payments where for the initial session we'll be focusing on mobile payments and Amazon's Flexible Payment Service. This roundtable is being held in the San Francisco Bay Area on February 22 (morning).

There is much more information about all of these courses available on the Glenbrook website - including who the instructors are for each course, course fees, agendas, online registration, etc. Questions or need more information? Contact Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson.

As Glenbrook's strategy consulting practice continues to grow, we are looking to add to our talent base on the east coast. We're current seeking a payments professional with 5+ years of relevant experience to join our consulting staff as a Senior Associate in the New York metropolitan area. Please see our posting on www.PaymentsJobs.com for the specifics. In particular, we would love to hear from qualified applicants who are already regular readers of Payments News.

The March 4-5 Glenbrook Special Focus Workshop on B2B Payments being taught by Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson and Erin McCune of Forte Financial has been approved for up to 17 CTP/CCM recertification credits by the Association of Financial Professionals .

Glenbrook's Linda Elliott and Carol Coye Benson will be hosting a new Glenbrook Special Focus Payments Workshop on "Card Payment Processing: The Value Chain" on February 21st, in Santa Clara, California. This workshop will provide a "dive deep" into exactly who does what in the payment card processing value chain.   » Continue Reading

Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson spent a few days over the New Year's holiday in New York City - and files this report on using her debit card along the way.

After years of slow progress, business-to-business (B2B) payment conversion from check to electronics is accelerating. Significant new product developments and announcements from MasterCard, American Express, JPMorgan Chase and others, as well as developments in the use of ACH and wire payments, are contributing to a new sense of urgency in this enormous marketplace.

Glenbrook is taking its popular Payments Boot Camp format and applying it to the subject of B2B payments. The new workshop, called "eB2B Payments At The Tipping Point" will be an intense, two day workshop covering both the "basics" (how A/P and A/R interface with payments, how paper and core electronic B2B payments work) and the wide array of new products and services that are addressing this opportunity.   » Continue Reading

Glenbrook's Jacqueline Chilton shares her thoughts about some alternative ways to gift this holiday season.

Gosh, it's that time of year again - what many (including me) think of as just the best holiday in the US - Thanksgiving. At Glenbrook, we've got a lot to be thankful for this year. Our colleagues of payments professionals across the payments industry have all worked hard to make sure everything's ready for the upcoming annual "Black Friday" onslaught of volume. Chase Paymentech's index will be tracking things over the weekend - so you can see how the consumer economy is doing vs. the last two years. Meanwhile, enjoy the holiday with friends and family! Remember, it's just the best!

Do you have your own web site where you'd like to include the latest headlines from Payments News? We've created a widget that you can install in a sidebar on your own page - you can find it here. The widget uses our RSS feed to provide the titles of the latest stories here on Payments News. You can see the widget in action on the Glenbrook home page.

Glenbrook's 2008 Payments Education Series begins in February - and registration is now open for the following sessions (all to be held in the San Francisco Bay Area):

• Glenbrook Payments Boot Camp - Feb. 18-19
• Special Focus Workshop on the Card Payment Processing Value Chain - Feb. 21
• Glenbrook Roundtable on Emerging Payments - Feb. 22

These events have been selling out early - so if you're thinking you want to attend, make sure you register as early as possible. For 2008, we're providing an early registration discount for registrations completed two months in advance.

For more information on Glenbrook's 2008 payments-focused courses, visit the Glenbrook Payments Education Program page or this detailed schedule.

Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson recently returned from the Association of Financial Professionals Conference in Boston - where she explored the relative progress being made in the migration of business to business (B2B) payments from paper checks to electronic payments. She shares her insights in "eB2B at the Tipping Point?" - now available over on the Glenbrook web site.

Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson filed an update on NACHA-related topics this morning from this week's Association for Financial Professionals conference in Boston.

Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson is attending this weeks Association of Financial Professionals (AFP) conference in Boston. She filed her first report from the conference earlier this morning.

Glenbrook's Russ Jones is in London this week - and files this field report on his first encounter with dynamic currency conversion in action - at Harrods.

Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson writes: At Glenbrook, we often conclude one of our Payments Boot Camps with an informal poll of participants on their favored cash replacement form factor (mobile phone, fingerprint, etc.) At a private payments workshop in San Francisco last week, we were surprised by the strength of that group's response in favor of fingerprint. We decided to test it out (still pretty informally!) with a quick Facebook poll.   » Continue Reading

Over on the NetBanker blog, William Azaroff is live blogging today's Finovate conference in New York City. Glenbrook's Bryan Derman is attending today's session - if you're there, be sure to look up Bryan and say hello!

Glenbrook's Linda Elliott is attending this week's Digital Identity World conference in San Francisco. She's filed her first report from this morning's discussions and observations in her post titled "Doc Searls Provides a new ‘Clue’ for the Identity World"

At Glenbrook, we get asked a lot about our views about mobile banking and payments. In our opinion, mobile payment is a whole separate kettle of fish - and not something addressed here. But mobile banking is here and now as most major banks are making their decisions about how to offer mobile banking this year. We've just posted our thoughts re a "thumbnail mobile banking strategy" - we welcome your comments.

Update: Glenbrook's Russ Jones turns the thumbnail mobile strategy into a 10-step cookbook.

If you're going to Jim Bruene's Finovate 2007 conference being held on Tuesday, October 2, in New York City, please introduce yourself to Glenbrook's Bryan Derman who will also be attending the conference. Bryan is based in the New York City area and supports a number of Glenbrook clients up and down the east coast.

Finovate 2007 will be showcasing twenty innovative financial services companies including: Andera, Billeo Inc., CheckFree/Corillian, ClairMail, Firethorn, Digital Insight, Geezeo, Identity Theft 911, iPay Technologies, Jwaala, Lending Club, Metavante, mFoundry, Mint, Monitise, Mortgagebot, MShift, Online Resources, Prosper Marketplace, and Yodlee.

One of our partners asked me today about the search box in the upper right corner of every Payments News page. We recently changed how that box works - and probably didn't explain that change very effectively. So, let me try again.

The upper right search box is a Google custom search engine that's been specifically optimized by me and a group of volunteer helpers to focus search results on web sites that are somehow payments related. As a result, it's actually the best possible Google search you can do - for payments-related content. If you bookmark Payments News - or use it as your home page - you'll always have this payments-customized search handy.

If you're wanting to only search Payments News pages for something specific, you can use the search box that's "below the fold" in the right sidebar. That search by default only searches Payments News content pages. Hope that helps explain things!

More information about search is available on the Payments News Search page.

Jacqueline Chilton has recently joined the team of payments strategy consultants at Glenbrook Partners. Jacqueline brings over fourteen years of consulting experience and extensive knowledge in market assessment, business case development, and product strategy across multiple disciplines including payment cards, cash management, transaction clearing, procurement and technology infrastructure.   » Continue Reading

We've recently enhanced the Google search engine here on Payments News to include other payments-related sites in the search results - in addition to Payments News pages. If you're searching for something payments related, be sure to search from Payments News - you'll have much higher odds of finding relevant links as compared to a general Google search! You'll find the Payments News search box in the upper right corner of every page.

FYI, over the weekend we made a few tweaks to Payments News so that both Apple iPhone and Blackberry users can now easily read the stories posted here every day. To do so, just go to the main Payments News url: http://www.paymentsnews.com using either device. Enjoy!

We periodically take a look at who's subscribing to the email distribution of Payments News. It's always interesting to see which companies are "tuning in" to our service.

So, if you're curious, here's our current top 10 list of subscribing companies: American Express, PayPal, MasterCard, Capital One, Chase Paymentech, First Data Corp., Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Discover, and Intuit.

This is hardly scientific - as many of our readers use the Payments News RSS feed to view our headlines in their RSS reader (rather than requesting a daily email subscription) and many more opt to just bookmark PaymentsNews.com (or make PN their home page!) and visit us first thing in the morning and throughout the day using their web browser.

Blackberry and Treo users can also view a mobile edition of Payments News whenever they want by bookmarking our Payments News "River of News" newsfeed.

Hope you have a great weekend!

The presentations from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago's 2007 Payments Conference are now available online. The conference, held in mid-May, had the theme "Competitive Forces Shaping the Payments Environment: What's Next?". Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson attended and filed this earlier conference report for Payments News.

In an article titled 'Retailers Look to Put a Halt To Rising Chargeback Losses", Cards&Payments takes a look at the issue of "friendly fraud". Glenbrook's Allen Weinberg comments: "It's a big unspoken problem," says Allen Weinberg, managing partner of Glenbrook Partners, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based payments-consulting firm. "No one wants to talk about it because it shows the system is being abused, and the merchants get left holding the bag."

Last week, we "soft launched" the new Glenbrook Partners web site. The new "minimalist" design of glenbrook.com is the first major update to the site since we launched it about five years ago. Learn more about who we are - we'd really welcome your visit!

Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson attended The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago's sold-out 2007 Payments Conference this week. The theme of this year's conference was "Competitive Forces Shaping the Payments Environment: What's Next?." Click here to read Carol's full report.   » Continue Reading

Reminder: Glenbrook's Allen Weinberg will be conducting an afternoon workshop on May 15 titled "Point Of Sale Impact: Preparing for the Merchant and Online Payments Revolution" at the CardTech/SecureTech conference next week in San Francisco. More details here.

Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson provides the following update on our Payments Boot Camp program: "Glenbrook just wrapped up our Payments Boot Camps for the 2006-2007 "school year". We had lively sessions in New York City last week and in the California this week." Click here to continue reading.   » Continue Reading

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. Read on for Linda's commentary.   » Continue Reading

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

Glenbrook's Allen Weinberg is at the annual Electronic Transactions Association's Annual Meeting & Expo being held this week in Las Vegas. Allen filed the following report from the Expo.   » Continue Reading

Glenbrook's Jay DeWitt will be speaking at two conferences over the next couple of months. First is a workshop titled "Mastering E-Payments and Web Security" being held on June 4th prior to the Internet Retailer 2007 Conference in San Jose, California. Jay's on of three instructors for the session "Beyond Credit Cards: E-Checks, PayPal, Google Checkout & Much More".

Next up, Jay will be presenting on "RFP Best Practices" at the Direct Response Forum on Monday afternoon, August 6, 2007, in Seattle, Washington. At this session, you'll learn how merchants can produce an effective RFP and learn from industry experts on the do's and don'ts in order to maximize the best results.

Here's an update on Glenbrook's upcoming Payments Boot Camps from partner Carol Coye Benson:

"Our phone is ringing off the hook with people trying to figure out what the payments system impact of FDC's going private might be - just when we're starting to get our head around the role of the card associations as public (or almost public!) institutions. These are the kinds of questions that always get fascinating interactions going at our Payments Boot Camps. We have a few seats left for our New York City payments boot camp on April 24th and 25th and recently opened for registration our next San Francisco Bay Area payments boot camp on May 2nd and 3rd."

Questions? Email Carol directly.

Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson provides this update on two recent Glenbrook Payments Boot Camps.

Glenbrook just wrapped up two challenging and lively Payments Boot Camps. Last week we held our core session in Atlanta for the first time, and this week we had the first of our new Merchant Payments Boot Camps. Both events were sold out and had great and diverse groups attending.   » Continue Reading

Glenbrook's Bryan Derman files the following report he prepared following his participation last week 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.   » Continue Reading

Glenbrook's Bryan Derman attended yesterday’s 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.   » Continue Reading

Please pardon a bit of horn tooting! We passed a milestone in the evolution of Payments News last night when we crossed the 2,000 subscriber mark to the Payments News daily email distribution. Payments News is also read regularly by an estimated 1,500 or so payments professionals who subscribe to our RSS feed. If you're not yet a subscriber to Payments News, you can sign up for our daily email here or point your RSS reader (Google Reader is a great one) at our RSS feed here. Of course, you can also just bookmark PN and read it whenever you feel like it in your web browser!

Glenbrook's Allen Weinberg will be holding an afternoon workshop titled "Point Of Sale Impact: Preparing for the Merchant and Online Payments Revolution" at the upcoming CardTech/SecureTech conference in San Francisco.   » Continue Reading

Glenbrook's next Payments Boot Camp, scheduled for Atlanta, Georgia on March 13 and 14, has only a few open seats remaining. Carol Coye Benson and Scott Loftesness will be teaching this session. If you're interested in attending this boot camp in Atlanta, please be sure to register now as we're just about sold out.

Glenbrook's Merchants Payments Boot Camp, specifically tailored for retailers, ecommerce merchants, etc. is being held March 21 and 22 in the San Francisco Bay Area. Allen Weinberg, Russ Jones and Jay DeWitt will be teaching this session. Registration is available online.

For answers to any questions about Glenbrook's Payments Boot Camps, you can contact us at bootcamp@glenbrook.com.

Glenbrook just wrapped up our latest public Payments Boot Camp, held in Santa Clara, California. Forty-five payments professionals, from banks, payments processors, technology companies, service providers, and analytic firms spent a lively and intense two days picking apart the U.S. payments systems and looking at their many moving parts.

As always, the section on "emerging payments" was very popular (with particular interest on the evolving pre-paid card infrastructure and on the long term significance of Google Checkout), but the group was also very interested in new uses of the ACH, and the "horse race" underway between check image clearing and check-to-ACH conversion.

We finished with a short poll on preferred form factors for face-to-face purchases such as groceries or gas. The winner? Mobile phones (43%), followed by "cards as they exist today" (31%), fingerprint (14%) and keychain fob (11%) .

Our next Glenbrook Payments Boot Camps are in Atlanta (March 13th and 14th) and New York City (April 24th and 25th). We're also offering our first ever Merchants Payments Boot Camp - tailored specifically for merchant payments professionals - on March 21-22 in Santa Clara, CA.

Glenbrook's first Payments Boot Camp of 2007 scheduled for next week in Santa Clara, California is sold out. The next Payments Boot Camp is scheduled for Atlanta, Georgia on March 13 and 14. Carol Coye Benson and Scott Loftesness will be teaching that session. Registration for the Atlanta session is available online.

A new Merchants Payments Boot Camp, specifically tailored for retailers, ecommerce merchants, etc. is being held March 21 and 22 in the San Francisco Bay Area. Allen Weinberg, Russ Jones and Jay DeWitt will be teaching the Merchants Payments Boot Camp - see the complete agenda here (PDF). Registration is available online.

For questions about Glenbrook's Boot Camps, please contact us at bootcamp@glenbrook.com.

For Glenbrook and Payments News, it's been one of those weeks - one of those very good weeks. We always love to hear feedback on how Payments News is helping payments professionals (our "target audience"!) - and we've heard a bunch of great stories this week. If you've got one to share with us, please let us know! Or, if we're not quite cutting it, we need to know that too! Add your comments on the end of this post - or drop us a note. Hope you have a great weekend!

Glenbrook will be offering an expanded series of Payments Boot Camps for 2007 - beginning in February in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Atlanta in March. For 2007, we're also introducing a new merchant-focused Merchant Payments Boot Camp with the first session scheduled March 21-22 in the San Francisco Bay Area. Nearly a thousand payments professionals have attended a Glenbrook Payments Boot Camp since they were introduced two years ago.   » Continue Reading

Dave Birch picks up the discussion about the question we asked a few weeks ago in our Creating Wealth from Payments Innovation post: why isn't there a Wal-Mart for payments? Dave blames regulation - and that's certainly a factor. Reminds me of the days when airline fares in this country were heavily regulated, preventing a Southwest from emerging. On the other hand, the most successful new entrant in payments in recent history - PayPal - navigated the regulatory waters (state money transmitter laws primarily) relatively easily. One could argue regulation wasn't much of a barrier for their entry. Google Checkout - acting not like PayPal as a money transmitter but, rather, as a master merchant - seems to have avoided any financial regulatory issues. On the other hand, mobile payment provider Obopay's job description for a VP Treasury Operations includes being responsible for "compliance with Federal banking regulations such as Anti Money Laundering, Patriot Act, Regulation D and E, and the FFIEC guidelines" and for "state money transmitter regulations".

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.   » Continue Reading

If you're reading Payments News on a handheld device (like my new Blackberry 8703e!), you might enjoy browsing the Payments News headlines using our much simplified "news river view". This view displays the headlines for each story posted over the last week or so - and the latest stories are always at the top. You'll find the new Payments News "news river view" at: http://www.paymentsnews.com/river - comments welcome! There are several other of these "news rivers" available - including BBCriver, NYTimesRiver from Dave Winer - as well as several from Gabe Riveria for tech geeks.

One of our research initiatives at Glenbrook this fall has been exploring innovation in electronic payments - how payments innovations happen, the characteristics of the most important drivers of them (including the impacts of key people, industry structure, and any important technologies) that enable innovations, and how to best measure and define their success.   » Continue Reading

Tomorrow is our favorite holiday of the year - Thanksgiving Day - here in the US. We've got a lot to be thankful for this year. Our best wishes to you for a wonderful holiday with your family and loved ones.

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 poste