Merchant Payment Round Table

The Merchant Payment Roundtable (MPR) has been running in the US for the past 18+ years, and in Europe since 2019, in partnership with Glenbrook. It is designed around the operational and strategic payment interested of very large eCommerce merchants with multi-country payment operations.

Our face to face sessions are run twice a year, for 1.5 days, and are designed as a payments geek session for merchants only. Unlike other events, this group is specifically designed for the merchant community, so there are no suppliers in the room which allows for a much more open debate amongst the members. Historically we have capped the session at c.30 attendees (there is now a wait list in the US!) with each firm sending one or two payments experts in order to:

• Share issues and experiences amongst the group (this happens continuously during the year)
• Hear about the latest market developments in payments from ourselves and Glenbrook
• Receive an update on the legal/regulatory payments landscape from Bird and Bird (they are also present to avoid any accusations of collusion)

Recent attendees to the event include the head of payment operations from companies such as:

As well as the bi-annual meetings, the MPR members also get the following:

• Weekly news updates using PSE’s insights on payment market developments
• Member only surveys on topics ranging from MID location optimisation through to APM supplier optimisation and flow of funds management
• Access to PSE and Glenbrook’s industry-leading payments research and insights
• Focussed topic break-out sessions through-out the year
• Ongoing queries to the group during the year

TOPIC EXAMPLE: One of the topics where there was a very healthy debate in recent years has been latest developments on SCA. This has since generated a useful exchange of information within the group on the latest announcements from the NCA across Europe. Insights from the payment leads at Google, Microsoft and eBay have all been very helpful to the group in knowledge sharing on this evolving issue. We have also had ongoing input from Scott McInnes from Bird & Bird who is one of Europe’s leading legal figures in payments and SCA. More recently the group has explored issues such as latest TRA exemptions and the emergence of DAP and alternative approaches to authentication.

We do raise a modest fee for the Roundtable, but new members are always welcome to attend the first one or two sessions for free in order to establish if they will find it of use.

If you are interested in attending, please feel free to contact us.