Money20/20: My view from the main stage

by Louise Maynard-Atem, Head of Data Insight, GBG

Money20/20, fintech's biggest conversation, arrived in Amsterdam at the beginning of June. It brought together some big voices from across the financial services and fintech communities to discuss the key topics that are driving change, progress and innovation across big themes, including, digital money, digital payments and digital identity and KYC regulation.

I was there with our GBG team and as one of Money20/20’s team of moderators, pulling together three different panel sessions across the event’s main stages. This gave me a great view of some engaging speakers and insights. Here are some of my key takeaways from the three days, and a little insight into each of the panel sessions that I led.

 Day 1

No moderating duty for me on day one, so I got to enjoy the event as an attendee. The opening keynote session, a discussion between payments giant Visa, and their recent acquisition, Tink, set the agenda for the first day: collaborative innovation that leverages data to provide better services for consumers.

One of my personal favourite sessions was the discussion led by Lee Taylor and Keily Blair, CFO and CSOO of OnlyFans (yes, you read that correctly), who talked about the importance of strong KYC and how they are fuelling the creator economy. Like many others I’m sure, I arrived unsure about what OnlyFans would have to share with the fintech community, but I walked away with a whole new understanding of and appreciation for their business model.

Other day-one highlights included talks from the astronaut Tim Peake, racing driver Susie Wolff, and climber Alain Robert. They all spoke about balancing risk and reward, and ultimately that’s what defines all businesses, but especially FS and fintech.

Day 2

My first and second panel sessions took place on day two. The first brought together Paolo Zaccardi, CEO of Fabrick and Leonardo Rubattu, CEO of UniPolPay about embedded finance and how it is becoming a reality across Europe through a range of different use cases. I particularly enjoyed this session because it focused on what’s real, and what’s actually happening in the market. So often I find myself attending conferences that talk most about the theory of things liked embedded finance, it was refreshing to listen to both Paolo and Leonardo refer to real-world examples that are delivering benefits to customers today. 

Photo credit: Lars de Nijs, www.stillmoving.net

The second session was all about payment innovation, with a particular focus on account-to-account payments (enabled by open banking). A panel of great speakers included, Mark Nelsen, SVP Open Banking, Visa; Brad Goodall, Founder & CEO, Banked; Rania Lamprou, Co-Founder & CEO, Simpler and Pete Wickes, Enterprise EMEA General Manager, Worldpay.

We talked about how the aim of the game is to give the consumer choice in how they carry out transactions. My favourite line, from Rania: “helping people to buy rather than helping people to pay”. Ultimately, a payment is the means through we as consumers can reach our goal, so it should be as easy and as frictionless as possible, and we should have different options available to best facilitate whatever transaction we’re trying to make.

Photo credit: James Gilham, www.stillmoving.net

Day 3

My final moderating session was the opener on the main stage, talking about BNPL, and how impending BNPL regulation could (and likely will) change the value proposition for consumers. I was joined in this session by Alice Tapper, financial inclusion campaigner and author of Go Fund Yourself; Ruth Spratt, UK Country Manager, Zip and Clare Gambardella, Chief Customer Officer, Zopa.

The key takeaways from the discussion were that regulation will ultimately be good for both consumers and BNPL providers. Clare Gambardella drove home the importance of affordability checks for the new iteration of the BNPL proposition. Ruth Spratt was adamant that whatever the new iteration of the proposition looks like, it’s loved by consumers and it’s here to stay and Alice Tapper ended with a call to action for the regulators to be more proactive in their approach to new payment innovations, to ensure that consumers are adequately protected.

 Photo credit: Craig Gibson, www.stillmoving.net  

It was great to take part in some of fintech's biggest conversations throughout the event and see first-hand how vital GBG’s suite of trust-building identity verification solutions for the Financial Services industry is.

KYC, AML and fraud prevention will always be imperative, but the shift towards digital identity, verifiable credentials/self-sovereign identity and the ability to leverage data to give financial service providers greater insights early in the customer journey stood out as key capabilities that we at GBG can provide today, tomorrow and into the future. 

Head of Data Insight at GBG, Louise believes that technology and data have the potential to be a great leveller. She is research lead and executive committee member for Women in Identity, a non-profit that inspires, elevates and supports a more diverse workforce in the digital identity industry. She has used her position to showcase how data and digital identity solutions can improve social inclusion and help the most marginalised people in society get access to digital services.