In one of the final sessions of Day 1, we con- tinued the debate on embedded payments which had already come up in different dis- guises, especially in the context of invisible pay- ments, throughout the Day. In his opening re- marks Geoff Barraclough set the scene well by identifying the technological changes that led SaaS platforms or ISVs to recognise payments as a profit driver. In most cases, this would re- quire partnerships and Geoff explained the challenges by referring to “payments are from Mars, software from Venus”.

Despite any challenges there was broad con- sensus that any of those can be overcome and partnerships can indeed by beneficial for both SaaS platform and payment provider. We dis- cussed how both platforms (in this case Guest- ly) and providers (in this case Checkout.com) are approaching this space. What is important for the platform/software provider? How are payment providers working with their coun- terparts? How can they work together and achieve secure payment acceptance in an in- tegrated or embedded way? The debate then raised one final (controversial) question. Do we, as end customers, really want invisible payments? The conclusion at this point in time was that we want to a smooth and seamless user experience but with the additional need of val- idating or verifying the payment transaction. That additional step creates that additional lev- el of awareness about the transaction that is needed when people need to make decisions about affordability. But embedded payments is here to stay and will continue to evolve.

This year, the judges and I were so enthu- siastic about the semi-finals of the Innova- tion Corner Competition on Day 1, where we whittled down twelve competitors, pitching to our panel, Dragon’s Den-style. We were so impressed with the quality of entries and had a hard time deciding on a shortlist of only three to enter the finals in plenary on Day 2. We could easily have accommodated two more... But the rules are the rules! In my book, they were all winners, and we were glad MPE 2023 gave them the exposure they deserved. Before the public vote on Day 2, we listened to keynote presentations from Neil Caldwell (Visa) and Matthias Moll (Amazon Pay). Neil explored the merchant challenge of balanc- ing customer experience with security and how network tokenisation delivers a critical foundation for innovation. Matthias shared how Amazon bakes an innovative mindset into daily routines and how Amazon Pay can help merchants be innovative in meeting shoppers’ demands, ending with sharing his view on the future landscape for the shopper experience.

It was also my pleasure to moderate a panel on innovation with competition judges Ker- en Aviasaf Migdal (Worx Payments), Pavel Kaminsky (7Security), David Parker (Polymath Consulting) as well as Neil Caldwell (Visa) and Nabil De Marco (Amazon Pay). We explored the innovation potential in the payments ecosystem, what it takes to be a leader in the innovation game, and the technologies and experiences reshaping the payments ecosystem.

As we had representation from diverse eco- system players, we explored what “innovation” meant for each of them. As “user experience” proved to be a focus point, we discussed how customer experience is no longer focused on B2C and has now extended to all other facets of interaction (e.g., B2B, B2G, C2C, etc.). This led us to discuss the safety, security, and eco- nomic challenges the various payments eco- systems continue grappling with. We explored how innovations and new business models, such as interlinkages between rails, decen- tralised payment systems, new products, and technologies, need to evolve so as not to compromise the integrity of ecosystems, also covering how, during turbulent economies, merchants have changed strategies to react quickly to their customer’s changing needs. We ended the discussion with a crystal ball moment, where each panellist told us what they saw as the most exciting innovations for the next five years.

And this was a very good warm-up to the Innovation Hub Competition Final, with our three worthy finalists (Allink, Hands In and Pi-Xcels) pitching again to our Dragons, be- fore facing the live public vote. The winner of the public vote was Hands In. As the overall winner is determined by a combination of the public vote and the Judges’ scores, we had to wait for the glittering MPE 2023 Awards Cere- mony that evening, where the overall winner of the Best Start-up Innovation Award was announced. And the winner was... Hands In! Congratulations to them and all the competi- tors. Learn more about them HERE.

I look forward to seeing you at MPE 2024!

Session / Unlocking Global Markets

The Unlocking Global Markets panel session began with two insightful presentations:

1. Bank of America: Chris Jameson began by outlining how the global treasury land- scape is evolving and the importance of change drivers such as regulation, con- sumer preferences and technology. Chris discussed how the consumer payments landscape is becoming more complex, particularly with the arrival of decentral- ised payment products such as crypto, while banks are moving to real-time pay- ments in many markets. Chris wrapped up by providing several examples of product innovation from Paybybank to Zelle and real-time cross-border payments.
2. CMPSI: Maximilian Fuchs and Timo Pauget reflected in the increasing cost of accept- ance for merchants driven by scheme fees and interchange post-Brexit. They also highlighted the opportunities pre- sented by offering APMs to consumers at check-out to reduce costs and increase conversion. However, Max and Timo also discussed the importance of prioritisa- tion to avoid too much complexity at the check-out.

Following these presentations, the panel session had a very healthy discussion across a range of topics:

- The group talked through how offering consumer choice at the point of purchase can be very effective at driving up conver- sion, particularly in non-card-dominated markets, including Germany.
- There was a useful debate about how pro- viding consumers alternatives can lower transaction processing costs by offering bank transfer payments which are not linked to the value of the payment and do not have complex refund and consumer redress processes associated with them.
- The panel members discussed how to gather insights on local consumer pay- ment preferences and how to ensure that these remain up to date as consumer pay- ment preferences evolve.

Session / Local payment methods be- yond cards

The local payment method panel session be- gan with two insightful presentations:

1. Nuvei: Eelco Dettingmeijer provided some beneficial insights on why consumers want APMs. The presentation focussed on cultural preferences, security, convenience, access, and socio-economic factors but also highlighted some of the complexi- ties of managing multiple APMS, such as back-office reconciliation, monitoring con- sumer conversion and fraud management.
2. Stripe: Following Eelco’s presentation, Théo Blochet focused on enabling consumers to pay via APMs. He began by outlining that the complexities of managing multi- ple APMS are expanding exponentially. He then highlighted Stripe’s three tiers of sup- port for local payments, including dynamic payment product presentment, easy APM activation, and A&B testing to validate the use of new products.

Following these presentations, the panel session had a very healthy discussion across a range of APM-related topics:

- The group discussed a wide variety of case studies where APMs have delivered tangi- ble benefits to merchants. This included an insightful discussion on the successes of BLIK in Poland.
- There was a debate on the challenges of localisation and getting the required data to understand which products are suit- able in which markets. In particular, the challenges of the variety and pace or local regulation were discussed.

- Finally, the discussion focused on expand- ing APMs into the in-store use case; this began with the substantial role already played in the APAC region by several local/ regional mobile wallets using QR codes and wrapped up with developments with the European P2P mobile wallets in-store.

Despite the Metaverse being a work in pro- gress, the “Payments of Tomorrow: The Metaverse” discussion panel agreed unan- imously about its economic potential. The space is in rapid development, with fashion and events expected to reach a degree of maturity over the next couple of years. In this context, Faheem Bakshi, VP of Payments at Kinguin, and Roman Pavlov, Co-Founder at Mint Ventures XYZ, shared insights about how their companies are developing applications and providing services within the gaming and providing loyalty programmes and asset tokenization for fashion brands, respectively.

David Birch, Global Ambassador at Consult Hyperion, highlighted how the most probable enablers of the wider Metaverse are unlikely to be the big incumbent media players, that while being fast in making initial bold invest- ments a couple of years ago, they are now cutting back their Metaverse teams as part of cost rationalizations. Complementing this per- spective, Stephen Winyard, Chief Sales Officer at Salt Edge, advanced the view that retail and payments tech providers and new entrants are likely to be better positioned to drive the developments of the Metaverse.

Roman explained that wallets could take the multi-chain format and that in this transac- tion environment, albeit being perceived as fully digital, it is far from being so. Rather it is a hybrid digital/physical space in which virtual and physical features complement each other to enable and secure access and interactions. This is not only for the need to ramp on and ramp off of monetary value from fiat to digital and virtual currencies but also for the value of physical features, such as biometrics, for user and transaction authentication. While some key building blocks still need to develop fully - namely digital identity, something that David Birch explained is currently being worked on - payment-wise, the panel unanimously agreed on the central role of wallets to hold and ena- ble the transfer of value.

The panel was moderated by Francesco Burel- li, Partner at Arkwright Consulting AG.

Aligning talent with strategy; organisations benefit when strategic input at the executive level includes the Talent agenda. Frequently, investment in training, career development, and mentoring takes second place. This was reflected in a poll question we posed to the audience, asking whether they received the right level of training, development and coaching to help them exceed in their role – only 67% replied ‘yes’. Two potential outcomes from this statistic would be a decline in em- ployee motivation and overall customer experience.

We see the boundaries of the payments sector expanding rapidly, so our opportunity is to be more intentional and creative in the way we look to attract future ‘next generation’ Talent, train and develop our incumbents, and ‘signpost’ the sector to others as an exciting place to develop their careers. A recent report from Deloitte stated that the ability to attract and retain Talent within Payments and Fin- Tech had become a competitive advantage.

We were delighted that the audience want- ed to continue the Q&A beyond our allocated time, and we intend to continue these conver- sations actively. The exciting outcome of MPE 2023 is that the ‘People for Payments’ track was firmly established as an important and strategic pillar for future MPE events.

The presentations and discussions centred around how the players in the industry can better utilise their primary internal data to increase revenues & monetise their data or to utilise partner data in this respect, how to manage better fraud and knowledge of their users resolving internal data to move from a data swamp to a valuable data lake.

Hubert O’Donoghue (CEO of AIB Merchant services) presented how the JV of Bank/Ac- quirer utilises primary internal payment data merging both bank and acquirer data to gen- erate much more valuable and useful insights for their merchant customers in a visual man- ner, e.g., anonymised data analyses of new vs repeat customers, demographics, transaction numbers and values visualised on dashboards and maps.

Steven Renwick (TILORES CEO/Co-Founder) showed how internal data on users and trans- actions could be better analysed historically to show links between multiple users and their associated data, enabling effective resolution of this data. This deep historical analysis helps ongoing real-time assessment of new users and transactions against this data to minimise fraud and maximise customers’ utility. The panel discussion was joined by Marco Conte (Congrify CEO/Co-founder) & Mateusz Jakitowicz (Blue Media – Payment Data Prod- uct Director); in summary, better use can and should be made of internal data which is in itself sufficient in most use cases, partner data should be utilised if legally possible such as schemes’ data which could be better shared, consumer preferences vary by market, but consumers can be incentivised by money/ offers to share more data; monetisation of customer data is certainly possible. The pan- el didn’t feel the EU digital ID would change fraud/ID certainty much when it became ubiquitous. Much more can and needs to be done by companies to maximise the utility of their data.

Despite the scheduling on day three, the customer experience panel discussion was lively and could draw on many of the themes dis- cussed earlier in the conference. Happily, we were supported by plenty of comments from the audience.

Davide Messina from Mastercard began by outlining the building blocks the schemes are putting in place from which the payment ser- vice providers (PSP) and software companies (ISVs) can construct seamless customer ex- periences. These components include tokeni- sation and Click to Pay. The former is already a critical element of European infrastructure, and it’s now hard to imagine life before to- kenisation. The latter may be five years too late. Click to Pay competes with established technologies, including Apple/Google Pay and PayPal.

The audience was particularly interested in the presentation from Paul Pike of Intelligent Venue Solutions. Paul provides technology for large music festivals or, as he described it, “a temporary city in a field.” The move to contactless has enabled festivals to go cash- free, reducing costs and increasing revenue, including from traders who can no longer de- clare their earnings to the organisers. Money is taken using a fleet of 3.500 payment termi- nals which need to work reliably and safely in some very challenging environments. Paul explained that the devices connected using Bluetooth to routers linked to local satellite WiFi Stations.

At festivals, contactless is increasingly sup- planting the close-loop payment systems using dedicated bracelets, which have been the fashion for many years. But wearables are back, according to Terrie Smith from Digiseq. She announced a new partnership with Curve which will allow individuals to provide their payment card credentials to any wearable device enabled for the new service. Until now, consumers needed to use the card credentials provided with the device, proving to be a bar- rier to adoption. This innovation is also hoped to support new form factors and use cases for wearables.