The global spread of digital payments gets a huge boost from giants like Google. Google’s Google Pay is far more than just a wallet, and the subject of this Payments on Fire® episode with Steve Klebe.

Steve heads Google’s Processor and Partnerships business and has terrific experience in our industry, working with payment gateway CyberSource, payment security firm RSA, and carrier billing firm BilltoMobile. He’s also served multiple times on the board of the Electronic Transaction Association.

In other words, a true payments geek.

Here’s what we talked about:

  • The evolution of Google Pay from its 2011 launch as Google Wallet and the various incarnations since then
  • Google’s business model for GPay and the degree to which the data generated by GPay transactions influence (or not) the advertisements we see on sites using Google’s advertising services
  • Transit payments, Google’s role in the W3C’s Payment Request API, and how Google pulls it into its own tools
  • The Google Pay value proposition and how it combines the value of hundreds of millions of cards on file, their organic growth through Chrome’s auto-fill, Google’s own sales, and making those credentials available to third parties via Google Pay
  • The new Google Pay APIs that focus more on convenience than payments: event ticketing, airline boarding passes, and more
  • Google Pay India, renamed from Tez, and its role in the UPI framework that enables secure bank-to-bank transactions.

We conclude with thoughts on the Open Banking phenomenon and Google’s intentions in that area.

 

 

Direct download: EP98_GPay.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:12pm EDT

Here on Payments on Fire® we've spoken a lot with risk and fraud management firms that generally offer some combination of services and technologies that promises to lower customer exposure to payments fraud, data theft, and operational risk.

There’s another dimension to cyber security that’s based on expertise - before and after a data breach. That's the subject of this episode.

First, a company needs to understand its overall exposure. What do we have and what can we afford to lose? That takes a technical assessment of the firm’s internal and external defenses. It also takes an understanding of what the company has to lose, from reputation-based good will to loss of R&D investment through the theft of intellectual property. Such concerns are now top of mind for corporate directors tasked with shepherding their companies in the complex cyber domain.

Yes, there’s a role for insurance.

Post breach, there is the work of uncovering what happened, the maintenance of evidence so that proper forensic procedures can be taken, and the painful resolution process that may include fines (PCI) and litigation.

All of this is well understood territory for Chris Uriarte, Chief Information Officer at Aon Cyber Solutions who joins George in this episode.

Topics discussed include:

  • The kind of activities and efforts needed to address today’s cyber risk
  • How IoT threats are no longer confined to cheap surveillance cameras
  • The sophistication of the cyber criminal industry
  • The interlocking roles of threat analysis, risks assessment, and insurance
  • The rise of ransomware and the particular exposure larger organizations face from this threat
Direct download: EP97_AON.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:17pm EDT

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