Listening before cautious moves

Why Neutral Positioning among BANKS?

Insures equal access to services by large and small banks, alike.

Registrar accreditation assigns liability so data accuracy is assured.

Banks routinely meet stringent "Know Your Customer" standards.

The woman behind PPI

Kathy Murphy O'Brien

is working overtime today for the second Saturday in a row...

This photo was taken Christmas day, 1991 at home in Illinois.

Our third son, Kyle was born at 9:35 PM that same day!

Here's Kyle, age 5 with our family's first pet, Bailey.

We moved to Virginia from Chicago in 1994 when he was 2.

It was hard for Kathy to leave her close-knit family ---

parents, six sisters, a brother and countless nieces and nephews

--- to follow her husband's dream.

Two years became seven years away from Chicago.

This picture from a DC holiday party in January, 2001

was taken right before we moved back to Illinois.

Colin's H.S. Graduation in 2005

Kathy re-entered the work force part-time in 2002, full-time in 2003

PPI was founded in 2003

Tim's High School Graduation in 2008

Kyle's confirmation in 2008. He graduates from H.S. in 2010.

The O'Brien brothers --- Summer of 2008 in Saugatuck, MI

with Riley, our second pet

In 2009-10 Colin & PPI will both graduate to self-sufficiency

None of this could ever have happened without Kathy

who, true to her guiding principles, is the foundation of our family's

loving home, despite the stresses and strains of living in Startupland!

Automatic Payroll Deposit Improvements

Many live paycheck to paycheck.

Many don't use banks to cash paychecks.

High payday loan interest is paid if cash to pay bills is needed.

Many employers provide automatic payroll deposits to bank accounts.

Employers must pre-fund the paycheck distribution account.

Emergency payments are needed should company cash flow weaken.

Greenlist offers:

• a way for small employers to send emergency payments to their payroll service.
• a way overcome fear by having a safe payment address for a checking account.
• instant 'good funds' in account so bills can be paid exactly on due date.

What about billing?

GreenlistID.com is a tool for making consumers and small business people more productive by providing the means to ask the simple question, "Can I be paid electronically?"

All a person has to know is his own GreenlistID (GLID) and the cell number of the party that owes him money. A feed is created in one central location, enabling:

1. Electronic billing information delivery right into the bank account of the person billed.

2. Notifying by text message that an e-bill has arrived.

3. A reputation directory in which every online merchant has a profile.

4. A customer satisfaction measurement of merchant performance.

5. A knowledge base of past lookups by payment address.

And if you are in a corporate or small business setting, you can start your company’s Greenlist network by reserving a company GreenlistID for thirty days. Your top financial officer or CEO will need to complete the Greenlist registration and make the company’s GLID permanent through an accredited bank-registrar. The privacy of each company bank account number is ensured. It is restricted for use only within the registrar bank. The basic GreenlistID bill presentment service is free for consumers. Companies can pay to claim and administer electronic bill delivery to their network of payees.

Bankers can and do innovate!

Several instant payment applications, enabled by Greenlist^®, can be added to banks’ consumer & SMB web-services. Bankers achieve accretive Non-Interest Income for their institutions with little or no CAPEX.

Sorry, Paypal. Sorry, Western Union. Sorry, PayDay Loan Providers.

Future NPR tag line:

“Morning Edition was brought to you by (your local bank),

leading consumers and businesses alike to Greenlist^®

– - - the safest, fastest, easiest and most economical way

to send and receive money.

Ask about Greenlist^® today or visit GreenlistID.com.

Banks that traditionally lead the pack

Dollar Bank F.S.B. (Pittsburgh, PA)

Wells Fargo Bank

JP Morgan Chase

What do these three banks have in common? All three are sponsoring pilots in NACHA's Electronic Billing Information Delivery System (EBIDS) which is a green way to save money and trees. Why is this important to Greenlist? It is one of the many practical uses of a safe, public directory of routable payment addresses. Never give a biller your true bank account number again! That's now a risk that consumers and small businesses no longer have to take.

Why Greenlist?

Getting instant money can solve a lot of different problems.

A bank's art department penned the illustration of this point.

Things I Learned about Bells

Bells are special in several ways. They are large, ranging in weight from a few hundred pounds to several tons. A ring of ten bronze bells were installed in 1910 at St. Pat's in Montreal but they had remained un'rung since the fifties. Unrung that is until Luties and I rang them to announce the opening ceremonies of the 1976 Olympics.

We followed rotting ropes beginning at the chimestand that was in back of the organ pipes in the choir loft.


We made our way up through several flights of stairs through three distinct chambers in the belfry. Having both read Dante, we felt we were rising through Pigeon Hell (Pigeon skeletons, rotting pigeon carcasses, etc, Pigeon Purgatory (dead, rotting and nearly dead, trapped pigeons) and finally, the open air top floor of the Belfry: pigeon heaven ---where the bells hung high enough to swing above the sills so when the clappers hit the bell, the sound waves could fly as free as a bird, right into the open air.

We perfected our technique to achieve the best possible chords and tonal quality by getting the balls of clappers to strike crisply inside bell lips at just the right moment when the angles would project the loudest possible sounds. The smaller bells rang frequently because they could be swung fast and momentum could be maintained, the big ones took most of our attention and strength to keep them swinging. But what a thrill when the first big Ring of the Tenor Bell rang out in a tone so deep and rich that we looked up amazed and grinned of pure glee. Before we got the hang of it we probably sounded like Funkadelic meets John Cage. But by free swinging and gonging a variety of peals we finally settled on the repetitious delivery of our favorite musical lines.

The largest, called a Tenor Bell, is pictured, here:


I was delighted to learn that they fixed these bells. This blog got me searching the web for old Y bldg. photos and I found the North American Guild of Change Ringers.

One of my most treasured Montreal memories was walking toward the front of the Church and having the sixty-five year old pastor, Msgr. Matthew Dubee ("the Duber") walking briskly toward us. We were filthy and slapping each other's backs and yelling, "We DID it!!!" to each other, exuberantly.


His lips were moving, his finger was wagging. He was gesturing profusely at the belfry, and then waving his arms as the veins were bulging out of his temples. We were STONE COLD DEAF. We couldn't hear a damn thing. All the Churches were supposed to ring for 10 minutes but we were having so much fun we decided to ring for 40 minutes... ...our reasoning was we were Yanks and that's the way we felt it should be done since no one had heard these bells for so long and downtown was full of interesting echoes and far away from the Olympic Village, anyway.

Well, the big tenor bell sound carries far and wide and 40 minutes was enough time for the local Gendarmes to call the rectory and complain to the Duber about his bells. He really didn't care, in fact I remember in times like this one, he often get that Irish twinkle in his eye that he'd inherited from his mother. Our hearing returned in about a half hour, as we ate vanilla ice cream and sipped our cokes which we poured over ice in chilled glass mugs from his stock of six and a half ounce bottles. We watched, with a now relaxed Fr. Dubee, the rest of the opening ceremonies on a TV in his office.

In 80's the parishioners rebuilt the belfry and the bells are now rung by electronic hammers. I doubt they ring as loudly as they did that warm summer day in August, 1976 when two McGill men cavorted in celebration and brought long forgotten bells back to life in long loud peals of heraldry.

A bell hung in its usual position:
a. Stock
b. Stay
c. Slider
d. Blocks
e. Wheel
f. Groove of Wheel
g. Fillet
h. Ball of Clapper
i. Flight of Clapper
k. Cannons
l. Timber of Cage
m. Gudgeons
n. Lip of Bell

What is Greenlist?

Welcome to Greenlist, Infrastructure for Banks

"We recognized that the consumers are reluctant if not downright unwilling to pay each other electronically because they can't do that without divulging their private bank account or card numbers.

It frustrates them to wait for checks to clear. But if I say I'm going to make it possible that you never have to divulge your card numbers or your checkbook account numbers, most people would be happy to transact electronically.

So we have an opportunity to make the bank portal a more powerful component of a person's financial identity consciousness to make fast, frugal and final transactions."

Rick O'Brien

Payment Pathways.com