Takeaways from Europe’s Money20/20 in Amsterdam ‘21

After a whirlwind few days (and multiple stroopwafels) Europe’s Money20/20 finally took place last month.

Covid testing was strict so we were able to spend the event in a mask-free bubble to catch up on the latest developments and new tech in payments. Here’s a top thought from each of us following this year’s event :

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Anthony Yeung, VP of Growth

It was great to be back out and catching up with everyone in the payments world!

One theme I noted that featured heavily was Open Banking, with some great content and stands from the likes of Tink and Trustly.

My key learnings are that Open Banking is still very early in its infancy. Fintechs, like lenders, are benefiting greatly from the additional insights to help make better decisions on consumers, high street banks can add more value to their services by pulling in data from other banks. Merchants with high ATVs like travel are all keen to adopt Open Banking as clearly it has significant cost savings. However, it still feels like consumer payments through the Open Banking rails is  lagging - it'll be interesting to see how banks, businesses etc across the world incentivise consumers to change how they pay. Definitely a super exciting space!

Cryptocurrencies unsurprisingly was another HOT topic. 

I would be the first to admit that I'm not a Crypto expert by any stretch but I am very curious. There were a lot of new providers out there who were focused on providing merchants and PSPs with the ability to accept digital currencies. The debate that occurred a lot was around how many people would actually spend their e.g. bitcoin on merchant websites versus how many consumers are actually just riding the investment wave with no intention to spend their currency. What is clear though is that digital currencies are here to stay.

And finally from me - “cloud-based infrastructure” was another key phrase this year. As Judopay is a cloud-based payment platform it’s great to see we’re already ahead of the curve.

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Jumaane Hutchinson, Head of Product

I agree with Anthony, there was a great buzz around Open Banking, on a PISP front the benefits for merchants are clear however for the consumer I am keen to see how safeguarding of the customer develops and what benefit if any there is to the customer. I’m still keen to see where it’ll go and what the impact will be once the usage is bigger. 

I didn’t hear much content on KYB/KYC but there were a fair few stands offering digitised and speedier solutions. While there’s no silver bullet for onboarding it’s an interesting area to keep an eye on as the tech continues to improve and allow merchants & consumers a more seamless set up.

With the EU deadline for PSD SCA having already passed and the UK deadline not too far off (14 March ‘21) SCA was a topic that seemed to have slipped down the agenda this year. It’ll be interesting where we are in Autumn '22 when it comes to further optimising and improving 3DS2 flows.

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Jessica Carroll, Head of Marketing

One of the best panels I listened to during Money20/20 was on designing intrinsically inclusive products.

As one of the panelists highlighted right at the start “We’ve had incredible social upheaval over the past few years, which is not being reflected in our financial services.”

I’m far from an expert in this area (although very keen to continue learning) but some key takeaways I took from the session was : 

• Ease of access is a core component. Is your product easy to access and use?
• Walk through your sign up or onboarding flow. What are you doing? What are you being asked? Is it inclusive?
• Did you build an inclusive product from day 1? Or are you adding this as an afterthought? 
• Is your product conscious of any barriers your target group might be facing?
• Don’t just guess what inclusiveness might mean to your audience. Speak to them directly and learn.