Payments on Fire™

Glenbrook's Chris Uriarte and Samantha Gordon continue their global payments regulation series with Scott McInnes, Partner at Bird & Bird, focusing on the European Union. 
Tune in as they explore the EU's highly regulated landscape, the challenges of inconsistent national enforcement across 27 member states, and developments on current regulatory topics:
Payment Services Directive - PSD2 to PSD3 evolution
Payment Services Regulation (PSR) objectives and adoption timeline
Digital euro goals and requirements
European Digital Identity Wallet framework and ambitions
SEPA Instant obligations
Upcoming BNPL regulation
Apple NFC access and wallet competition
Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) implications for agentic commerce

Kicking off a series of regulation-related episodes, Duncan Douglass, payments attorney and Partner at Alston & Bird LLP, joins Chris Uriarte and Samantha Gordon to turn the confusing and sometimes tedious topic of US payments regulation into an entertaining and enlightening update.
The conversation begins with who actually regulates payments in the US and how US payments oversight differs from the UK and EU, then flows into developments on current regulatory topics:
Ongoing Reg II/Durbin litigation relating to interchange
The Fed's 2023 proposed debit cap reduction
Latest preliminary approval of the Visa/Mastercard merchant settlement
Credit Card Competition Act's status
Illinois's IFPA delay, and practical challenges of state-by-state rules
Surcharging, and operational complexities across network rules and state laws
GENIUS Act stablecoin issues
Early rule questions around agentic commerce

Drew Edmond and Chris Uriarte chat with Nikhil Konduru, Chief Commercial Officer at Lithic, to discuss modern card issuing infrastructure and where the market is headed.
They break down the issuing stack and discuss issuer-side tools to improve authorization outcomes, reduce fraud and servicing costs, and increase transparency. The conversation also covers cross-border approval and economics, and explores agentic commerce via Nikhil's "Intent Toll Booth" thesis: liability drives control, issuers may demand intent data, and regulatory and network rules may need to evolve.

Going global with your payments strategy requires far more than choosing a single payment provider: companies must weigh local acquiring versus cross-border acquiring, country-by-country payment preferences, entity structure, tax implications, compliance requirements, authorization performance, currency handling, and provider coverage.
In this episode, Chris Uriarte joins Glenbrook colleagues Samantha Gordon, Simon Skinner, and Drew Edmond to explore the complexities and potential benefits for merchants and platforms to consider when expanding payments globally.

The Glenbrook team is taking stock in June 2026 to see how the predictions from our January episode are holding up. Tune in for updates on trending topics in payments, including agentic commerce, stablecoins, cross-border and instant payments, risk and fraud, and the regulatory landscape. We also share insights on the "hot off the presses" news on tokenized deposits and the Visa/Mastercard interchange settlement.