Over on PaymentsViews.com, Glenbrook's Elizabeth McQuerry writes about her recent visit to Brazil in her post "The Bill from Ipanema: A Foundation for Brazilian Mobile Payments".

I’m just back from a trip to Brazil and while I was there, the government introduced long-awaited legislation on mobile payments. This is an important task as Brazil now has 265 million mobile subscribers – more than 1 per inhabitant. Needless to say, the machinations of politics kicked off immediately and there will undoubtedly be many amendments before the bills passes through Congress. Nevertheless, the core legislation presented by the government is worth noting.

In a new article on PaymentsViews.com, Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson takes a step outside the box and shares some of her thoughts about "big actions that industry incumbents could take to strengthen their positions and the U.S. payments industry." Be sure to check out some of her thoughts - and share your comments!

Glenbrook's Erin McCune is attending the Finovate Spring 2013 conference being held today and tomorrow in San Francisco. She's live blogging from the conference on PaymentsViews.com and also actively tweeting her comments on Twitter.

Over on PaymentsViews.com, Glenbrook's George Peabody examines the recent attacks on two prepaid card processors which led to $45 million of cash being withdrawn from ATMs around the world over a very short period of time.

In a new post on PaymentsViews.com titled "The Geeks Weigh In: Immediate Funds Transfers Are Happening!", Glenbrook's Elizabeth McQuerry writes about what's happening in the world of immediate funds transfer (IFT) systems in countries around the world - including results of a recent survey of payments professionals on their views toward IFT.

Over on Payments Views, Glenbrook's Allen Weinberg has a post about "Green Dot's New Mobile-Optimized Bank Account". Allen went to the product launch event and came away thinking that GoBank is not only a new brand almost a new product category. "What I found most interesting was Green Dot’s focus on the 'unhappily banked' and those new to the banking system, like my two teenage sons."

Over on Payments Views, Glenbrook's Elizabeth McQuerry is just back from Venture Atlanta 2012, where she was looking for payments-related innovation.

Pindrop deploys location analytics, acoustic “finger printing” and other analytics to provide a holistic solution that uses your phone call to authenticate you. This technique, if successful, would turn the call center or help desk into a reasonably secure proposition over the weakest link that it can be today. The banking industry sorely needs solutions like these.

Her full post is here.

Over on Payments Views, Glenbrook's Elizabeth McQuerry has posted an article entitled, "From Sweden with Love: Mobile Payments and QR Codes". Elizabeth explores the SEQR mobile payment solution from Swedish startup Seamless and compares and contrasts it with some similar systems in the U.S. market.

Over on Payments Views, Glenbrook's Elizabeth McQuerry has posted a new article, entitled "Local Knowledge, Global Payments" that explores the challenges and options available to U.S. companies that find themselves sending large volumes of payouts to app developers, affiliates, ad network participants such as bloggers and other content providers. She profiles Tipalti, a new player in this segment, and positions it against a number of better known alternatives.

Glenbrook's Elizabeth McQuerry recently posted an article over on Payments Views entitled, "Milk and a Fridge: Cross-border Bill Payments – A Developing Market".

Bill payment across borders has the same demands as paying domestic bills – you’ve got to link the funds to the correct account, make sure the money gets there and credited on time and provide the ability to pay for late charges when it doesn’t. On top of that, add foreign exchange conversion.

Have a look.

In a post titled "We Can See Mobile Payments From Here!", Glenbrook's Jacqueline Chilton writes on PaymentsViews.com about her panel at last week's Mobile Contactless Payment Innovation Conference in San Francisco.

In an article titled "Currency in a Digital Form", Glenbrook's Jacqueline Chilton writes on our PaymentsViews.com blog about recent announcements in Canada reducing currency in circulation.

Over on Payments Views, Glenbrook's Scott Loftesness takes a look back at payments in 2011.

At Glenbrook, we thrive on thinking about how payments are evolving and how these changes will affect us in the years ahead. In this look back at the important payments themes of 2011, we share a summary of some of our best thinking over the course of 2011 from our PaymentsViews.com web site.

Glenbrook's Bryan Derman is attending the second day of the Finovate Fall 2010 conference today in New York City, and is live blogging throughout the day over on PaymentsViews.com.

Over on our sister blog, PaymentsViews.com, Glenbrook's Erin McCune takes a look at the new PayNearMe payment method in a post entitled, "PayNearMe Refreshes Kombini Payments For The US". In explaining the real-time nature of the cash payment, she notes that online merchants are notified of customer payment before the buyer even leaves the 7-Eleven store.

Over on our sister PaymentsViews.com blog, Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson is asking for community input regarding the perception of deployment of contactless POS readers at merchants in the US market. If you can spare a minute, please take Carol's quick survey - and optionally sign up to receive a copy of the results!

Over on our sister PaymentsViews.com blog, Glenbrook's Scott Loftesness takes a look at mobile boarding passes and wonders if we've reached a tipping point with potential implications for payments.

Clearly, we’re on the cusp of a serious migration to mobile boarding passes in the US. Travelers will soon be very comfortable displaying their boarding pass to a scanner at the gate – and avoiding the hassles of printing and carrying paper. When will this new way of communicating data simply from the mobile handset jump the rails into new verticals? Are you betting, along with Starbucks and mFoundry – and others, that it’s coming? Seems that the airlines have placed they’re bets!

Over on our sister PaymentsViews.com blog, Glenbrook's Russ Jones takes a look at "Pay with a Tweet" - the name of a new payment concept developed by an interactive advertising agency called Innovative Thunder.

A seller registers a URL with Pay with a Tweet that points to some digital content they want to sell, and attaches a tweet to the URL. When a potential buyer comes along, they just click on the “Pay with a Tweet” button which tweets the seller’s message from the buyer and then provides the buyer with access to the underlying digital goods.

I think there's a "sleeper" in this interchange legislation - see my post "The End of Interchange?" over on our PaymentsViews.com blog.

What do you think?

In a post on PaymentsViews.com titled "Getting Real About Durbin", Glenbrook's Bryan Derman writes about the Durbin amendment that could affect debit card interchange fees if it remains in the final consumer financial reform legislation currently being negotiated in conference committee in Washington.

In a post on PaymentsViews.com titled "Tidbits and Sound Bites from the 2010 Chicago Fed Payments Conference", Glenbrook's Bryan Derman reviews last week's conference. Bryan moderated a panel on Transformative Technology.

Be sure to read Bryan's summary notes from this important annual payments conference!

Want to learn more? - share your thoughts with Bryan directly!

In a post titled "Memo to Bankers: A Customer is Someone Who Pays You" over on PaymentsViews.com, Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson comments on the passage late this week of the Durbin amendment - and its implications (if the amendment survives) for retail bankers.

Carol writes:

I think the underlying problem that banks are dealing with is that too much of their retail customer revenue is hidden – that is, their customers don’t know they are paying it. It seems to me that you really don’t have a customer unless the customer is making a conscious decision to pay you. ... (click to continue reading)

Over on PaymentsViews.com, Glenbrook's Scott Loftesness takes a look at Klarna - an ecommerce payments provider based in Sweden that's attracted a major investment from Sequoia Capital and partner Michael Moritz.

• iPhone mag-stripe readers and related services
• A myriad of PCI-centric vendors and offerings
• Small eCommerce gateways

Click to read his just filed Field Report for more details!

Yes, you! I'm asking you a question! Who are you?

See my PaymentsViews.com post: "Are You an Incumbent – or an Innovator?"

In a post titled "Glenbrook’s Model for Social Payments (A Work in Progress)", Glenbrook's Russ Jones writes on PaymentsViews.com about social payments - what they are and what they aren't!

I’ve concluded that for something to be a social payment, it’s got to be social. It’s got to involve multiple parties paying at once. Or multiple parties being paid at once. Or one party buying and another party paying. On and on."

Plan to join Russ and Glenbrook's Erin McCune for a session titled “Web 2.0 and the Emergence of Social Payments” at the upcoming NACHA Payments 2010 conference in Seattle. Glenbrook will also be exploring this topic in an upcoming webinar - Social Payments – Scenario Analysis - that will be held May 5th, 2010. Registration is now open.

Allen's looking to learn more about this trend - if you are aware of companies offering these capabilities to ecommerce merchants, please drop Allen an email.

In an article titled "Mobile Payment Themes from CTIA" on PaymentsViews.com, Glenbrook's Jacqueline Chilton writes about last week's CTIA conference in Las Vegas and the discussions about Money over Mobile that took place. Stay tuned to PaymentsViews.com this week for more articles about mobile payments from Jacqueline. Need help understanding mobile payments? - contact Jacqueline directly.

In a post on PaymentsViews.com titled "ACH and the Future of Electronic Payments: BAI Convenes the Ultimate ACH Panel", Glenbrook's Erin McCune describes the "dream panel" that discussed ACH at the BAI Payments Connect conference in Orlando this week. The panelists were: Jan Estep (CEO NACHA), Rich Oliver (EVP Retail Product Manager, Federal Reserve), Rossana Salaris (SVP Payments Products, The Clearing House), and Stephanie Sturgis-Griffin (CEO Pariter Solutions); the moderator was Fred Brothers of eCom Advisors.

Glenbrook's Erin McCune is attending BAI's Payments Connect Conference in Orlando this week. You can follow Erin's tweets in real-time on Twitter - and read her coverage on PaymentsViews.com of yesterday's panel discussion exploring the most pressing issues in e-payments. She'll be posting more articles from the conference soon!