Glenbrook is pleased to announce availability of a new private payments workshop on Global Payments.

Focused particularly on cross-border payments, the course is designed to help payments professionals understand this rapidly changing, and highly lucrative, sector of the industry. The Global Payments course is an addition to Glenbrook's extensive list of available private workshops.

Glenbrook's Global Payments course is available as a one-day or two-day session, and can be conducted in person at your premises and/or via a private webinar to reach your global staff groups. The agenda includes:

• Overview: Key Concepts, Regulation, Foreign Exchange
• Country Payments Systems - Commonalities and Differences, Key Country Focus
• Cross-Border Payments: Wires, ACH, Cards, Money Transfer Systems
• Cross-Border Use Cases - Supplier Payments (B2B), Cross-Border eCommerce, Global Payouts (B2C and G2C), International Remittances

Private workshop clients can choose particular countries they are interested in for the "Key Country Focus" section, as well the particular use cases they want to concentrate on.

Interested? Please take our global payments survey to give us your general feedback. And contact Glenbrook's Elizabeth McQuerry to discuss scheduling a Global Payments workshop for your company.

On the web:

• Starbucks Launches ‘pay by app’ for iPhone Users in UK - Telegraph
• Spindle Plans Mobile Payment Product for Small Banks - American Banker
• Square Expands Retail Partnerships to Include OfficeMax And UPS Store Locations - TechCrunch
• PayAnywhere Lets You Build Payments Acceptance Into An App Of Your Own - Business Insider
• Is what you see what you get? Proposed Pricing Disclosures for Electronic Remittances - Portals and Rails
• State Bank of India Drops Plan for Merchant Acquiring JV with Visa, Elavon - The Times of India
• Top 7 Card Readers For Smartphones: Apple, Android, and Blackberry - Mobile POS News
• The Future of Self-Service Checkout - STORES.org
• The State of ACH Fraud - Bank Info Security

On the wires:

• New Mercator Report on India's Prepaid Card Market
• SunGard Closes Syntesys Acquisition to Offer Expanded SWIFT Connectivity and Services
• Chase Partners with Southwest Airlines to Enhance Ultimate Rewards Travel Options for Cardmembers
• U.S. Bank Implements Secure Vault Payments for Nebraska Online Child Support Payments

On the web:

• Consumers to Switch Banks Over Debit Fees - Bloomberg
• Google Wallet Picks Up Steam With NJ Transit Partnership - TechCrunch
• South Korean Credit Card Firms to Cut Domestic Transaction Fees - Korean Herald
• iZettle (the Square of Europe) Secures €8.2 million Funding - Wall Street Journal
• NetSecure Kudos Takes on Square in Mobile Payments - SlashGear
• Tagattitude Launches Audio-based Mobile Payments System in France - NFCNews

On the wires:

• Earthport to Extend Cross Border Payment Reach
• Moneris Brings Mobile Payment Acceptance to Smartphones in Canada
• Online Resources Signs American Heritage FCU For Advanced Banking Software
• Commidea’s Vanguard Payment Gateway Secures High Volume CNP Payments in UK
• BNP Paribas and Bottomline Technologies Announce SWIFT Service Bureau Partnership
• LINC New York Meeting - NFC: Next frontier for Commerce?

S1 and Fundtech have announced a definitive agreement to combine businesses through a stock-for-stock merger, creating an industry leader in transaction banking solutions. Fundtech operates the world's largest SWIFT service bureau. The combined company will be headquartered at S1's headquarters in Atlanta and will be called Fundtech.

On the wires:

• Avangate Teams Up with PayNearMe to Help Software Vendors Reach Millions of US Shoppers
• InComm Helps K-VA-T Food Stores Expand Prepaid Offerings with New Line of Products
• VeriFone Enables Turkey’s First Pay-at-Pump Systems
• Woolworths Selects FIS for Prepaid Card Processing
• Bottomline Announces New E-Invoicing Service over SWIFT Network
• SK C&C USA Rebrands as CorFire

On the web:

• Wall Street Journal: Check Out the Future of Shopping
• RIS News: Nordstrom Deploys 6,000 Mobile POS Devices
• NetBanker: Zong - A Payments Company Name to Remember
• ETA: Sen. Durbin May Take On eCommerce Sites on Sales Tax
• FierceMobileContent: Isis calls on Apple, Google and Sprint to join mobile payments network

On the wires:

• Credit Card Clarity: CARD Act Makes Pricing Clearer, More Competitive
• Western Union and Etisalat to Introduce International Mobile Money Transfer Service in 18 Countries
• BillingTree Supplies Pulaski Electric System with Text Billing and Payment Solution
• Intuit Extends GoPayment No Monthly Fee and Free Credit Card Reader Offer

On the web:

• Bank Info Security: SWIFT Audio Interview on Globalization and Regulation
• MasterCard Blog: Addressing the “D” Word
• Dow Jones: PayPal Launches Payment Services with China UnionPay

J.P. Morgan’s Treasury Services business has announced it is offering ISO 20022 payment initiation and reporting capabilities. ISO 20022 is the core message standard for SEPA and represents the next generation of SWIFT message formatting. J.P. Morgan says it is one of the first to adopt this new messaging standard format that allows clients to integrate core treasury, payable and receivable applications with banking and other financial partners. READ MORE »

SWIFT's 2007 Annual Report is available for download .

"SWIFT is a community-inspired co-operative, founded by and for the financial services industry. We work globally with more than 8,300 organisations including banks, market infrastructures, securities institutions, corporations, network providers, business partners and technology companies to ensure the financial world can carry out its business operations with certainty."

[Hat tip: Chris Skinner]