Day 1 at Money 20/20

Delighted to be here at Money 20/20 for the first time. Sharing some thoughts and notes from the event for those who are interested. 

Firstly the event is huge – the largest Fintech event in the world. All the main streams are covered and it is a bastion of everything that is happening in Fintech and Financial Services. The RAI arena is an endless warren of exhibitors, stages and meeting areas. This is my first conference in 4 years and it reminds me of how efficient it is to do business in person and at conferences like this. 

The conference definitely has an emphasis on payments and embedded finance. Its clear that embedded finance is still the hot topic. There are lots of businesses here which are now trying to leverage their core technology that they have built by white-labelling or embedding it with other. Its clear that embedded finance is still seen a big growth area.

There was lots of discussion around open banking ‘5 years on’. The UK has lead the development of open banking. Open banking payments is the next big push (18% of payments now via open banking). 

The crypto world has had an unprecedently difficult 12 months so some discussion around how to rebuild confidence. It is clear that crypto (a very broad term) is out of favour for now. I attended a couple of sessions on CBDC’s (Central bank digital currencies) and its clear its happening (at least for now) but there is a long journey to travel around design and implementation of a digital euro. Interestingly at moment a digital euro won’t be able to earn interest. 

Interesting pitch from Narvi, a company I have been following closely.

There was a brilliant session with Ingmar Stupp from Tilta, Joan Swanson from Mondu and Stephan Haslebacher from Moss talking about the challenges of fraud prevention with open banking payments and how BNPL use cases in SME land are very different to consumer. 

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions on Money 2020 – I’m here for another couple of days.