M2020 EU POST-EVENT REPORT

Leading a Q&A session on PIN entry on commercial off-the-shelf devices, zooming in on the benefits of soft-ware PIN entry, sharing best practices for building your own PIN on glass solutions, and how its application could be much broader than payments.

Moderating a panel discussion with leading banks and FinTechs on how regulation impacts banking business models and if it can spur bank innovation.

Chairing a session on POS disruption and discussing how the shift from payments to a commerce experience is affecting the way that payments are being done, both in-store and remotely.

Announcement slot where UL has introduced the UL 3DS Self-Test Plat-form – a complete, configurable and versatile SaaS platform that provides the ability to simulate the entire new EMV 3D-Secure ecosystem.

Money20/20 organizes the world’s largest events focused on payments and financial services innovation at the intersection of mobile, retail, marketing services, data and technology. From the 4th until 6th of June Money20/20 landed in its new home – the RAI in Amsterdam. The three-day event brought together thousands of leading experts from across the world of FinTech to share market insight and explore new opportunities that may change the world of finance.

DURING THE 2018 EDITION OF MONEY20/20 EUROPE, UL HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO BE ON STAGE FOUR TIMES:

During three days of the show, over 470 speakers shared their vision on how banks can renew their infrastructure, cooperate with FinTechs, and learn how to move at Silicon Valley speed, while meeting the strict requirements demanded by regulators. Find out about our Top Insights, gathered throughout all of the event.

DATA PRIVACY IS A CENTRIC TOPIC

You just could not avoid this topic. With GDPR and PSD2 in place, data privacy and ways of making con-sumers in control of their data were one of the most discussed themes at Money20/20. A strong statement of Carlos Torres Vila, CEO of BBVA, during a keynote speech aggregates a vision on privacy role in our so-ciety: “Privacy is a fundamental human right so that the price for any service should never be your privacy”. Many questions where addressed during the three days at Money20/20. What would an information bank look like? How to build an account aggregator that would allow customers to share their specific financial data in real-time with for example insurance providers, tax platforms, or other banks. Or how to allow a consumer to monetize the data they share?

COLLABORATION IS THE MAIN TREND

A traditional challenge for banks is how to stay rele-vant. ING CEO Ralph Hamers admits that they can’t differentiate through products, so the only way of going forward is by excelling in the service and the user experience they provide their customer. With PSD2 in place, banks realize that they need to innovate at a fast rate. They also realize that they cannot do it them-selves and need to collaborate with FinTechs to deliver better, faster and more comprehensive services. Many major financial institutions (like ING, MasterCard and others) announced opening funding programs to sup-port FinTechs and startups that focus on biometrics, identity management and new services.

PAYMENTS AND BEYOND

Payments are becoming only an additional part of a comprehensive set of services offered to consumers. During Money20/20 we saw many great examples of creative and to-the-point solutions that took user experience and convenience to a completely new level. Impressive presentations of AliPay, WeChat Pay and many others showcased strong initiatives of how added value services can be integrated and become a day-to-day usual experience for their clients.

PSD2 IS STILL HOT

There are still a lot of talks around PSD2 but the first shock is gone. Major banks and FinTechs have already developed a vision on the coming changes and a strate-gy on how to face them. However, many formalities are not clear yet. The regulation is too ambiguous, which may lead to different interpretations of the law. It is also not always clear how PSD2 should be read togeth-er with GDPR. Another concern that PSD2 triggers is interoperability of Open Banking APIs. There are no standards on Open Banking APIs, which may result in a massive fragmentation of the market. One of the parties who decides to participate in a race of building a single standard for Open Banking API is SWIFT, who announced their Transactional Finance API Version 1.0 to be available in the near future.

BIOMETRICS IS IN FOCUS

Biometrics certainly was a major theme during Mon-ey20/20. Payments are becoming embedded within core businesses and biometrics is seen as a solution to make payments even more seamless. Examples of biometrics use and implementation varied from well-known fingerprints to using vein patterns for user au-thentication. Biometric data handling and transmitting are improving, making this authentication method more secure and reliable.

BLOCKCHAIN IS EVOLVING

Same as last year, blockchain received a lot of coverage and interest during the three-day show. Different use cases of leveraging blockchain were discussed, includ-ing using blockchain for trade platforms or implement-ing cross border instant payments with a distributed ledger engine behind it. One of the biggest barriers of adoption of blockchain in the world is considered a lack of standards and regulation. The only country that has created a regulatory framework for blockchain tech-nology is Japan. This made Japan one of the biggest market for cryptocurrency trade and opened up a great potential for the country in terms of attracting many foreign companies and increasing adoption and market size.

PAYMENTS EVERYWHERE

User experience demands are increasing tremendously. In-store or online payment experience are not enough anymore. How can vendors enable sales wherever their customers are: in-store, on a sofa or on the go? How to optimize payment performance? Or how to secure payments done through mobile devices? A big deal of discussions was around PCI SPoC requirements that provide a software-based approach for protecting PIN entry on the wide variety of devices in the market today.

LAST BUT NOT LEAST

The last thing that is worth to mention is that while talking about innovations, new services, better and faster payments, Money 20/20 has also assigned an af-ternoon block to talk about people who are still having challenges to connect to the digital and banking world. There are billions of people around the globe that are digitally unplugged and shut out from basic services like healthcare, education or insurance just because they do not have a bank account. FinTechs, banks and startups came together to discuss how they can help those people, how to financially include them and how to make financial services really valuable for them. “We can succeed only in a successful economy”, MasterCard Executive Vice President Tara Nathan said, and let’s indeed seek for a greater and more successful world.

While we are musing over Money20/20 Europe and tak-ing in the lessons learned on the future of everything, we would like to thank all visitors for the great discussions, meetings and catch-ups during the show.

UL had a great time at the event and we look forward to welcoming you again in Las Vegas this October and Singa-pore and Amsterdam next year. If you would like to discuss how UL can empower trust with regards to all insights provided in the report, please get in touch here.