Daily Money20/20 Europe Roundup Wednesday 7th June 2023

FinTech StartUps
08.06.2023 06:35 am

The Encore Stage kicked off with Hiroki Takeuchi, CEO of GoCardless, and Mark Brant, Chief Payments Officer at NatWest, talking about the evolution of their industry-first partnership. GoCardless and NatWest collaborated to revolutionise the open banking journey for both businesses and consumers to make Variable Recurring Payments (VRP) available.

“In the world of payments, someone told me that there’s no such thing as competition, just cooperation. That’s definitely been the case for us and the banks,” said Hiroki Takeuchi, CEO of GoCardless.
“It’s about always pushing the boundaries to create a better customer experience, which has been a big part of our journey.”
“There’s no secret sauce to a partnership. Over the years, banks have become a lot more open to partnering with fintechs.”

On the Money-Bot Stage, Google Maps, Visa Europe, and Snowdrop Solutions discussed transaction enrichment and their recent collaboration that enables Visa clients, such as banks and credit card issuers, to quickly and easily access enriched banking transaction data, as well as add geospatial information to their experiences for the benefit of their customers and internal teams.

Nicola Dalmazzo, Head of Southern Europe and EMEA Financial Sector at Google Maps: “We are trying to organise the world into a digital experience and with our Google Map platform we try to also bring all this data to companies to enrich customer experience.”

Mandy Lamb, Managing Director: UK & Ireland at Visa, noted that “Consumers not only want data enrichment but a better user experience.” while Kenneth Hart, CEO & Founder of Snowdrop Solutions, pointed out that “the intuitive experience consumers are witnessing in the UK, where it started, has now become the norm. What a few years ago was a cool way for banks to differentiate, has now become the norm.”

Over at the Fusion Stage, Money20/20 celebrated five years of RiseUp, Money20/20’s programme dedicated to the acceleration of women’s careers in financial services. We heard about the decision points and learning curves from the female-focused programme, which was created in 2018 by Money20/20's President, Tracey Davies.

“More than 70% of participants in our programme have moved into a more senior role. 85% feel more prepared for their careers, and 95% have expanded their network,” said Tracey Davies, President of Money20/20.

Addressing the funding problem, Annie Guo, Founder of Silkpay, said: “In general in the industry, people are aware that it is a problem, but we do not see the results. When I talk to VCs, they will send a female to talk to me, but that doesn’t mean they will give money to a female founder. A mix of female and men founders will do better than just a female founder. But we have to keep going until it gets better. The funding problem is real, and we feel it every day.”

Sharon Chen, Emerging Tech Ecosystem Lead at EY, also shared her top tip for women who want to make it: “Don’t be afraid to stand out!”

Later on the Elements Stage, Binance’s Director, MENA & Europe, Vishal Sacheendran, delved into the EU’s new crypto regulation, MiCA, and how this constitutes the first major step towards international legal clarity in cryptoasset regulation.
“MiCA is a regulation to rule them all. This is now a legislation in place, where you have little room for national divergence, you have more clarity on how you should be going down the road, we have more collaboration from the regulator and we have a sense of how they're going to regulate going forward.”
“There is clarity on what the current state of the crypto market is, the kind of trading that happens, the custody that happens, financial derivatives that are going on - there’s clarity to an extent but it will have to be more pronounced as we move along until MiCA comes out in January 2025.”
“Whatever activity you do in the crypto asset space, you’re going to be regulated to that extent.”
“It enables innovation, it forsters innovation - people are having conversations now, regulators are happy to come on board and have a talk. We see regulators in the EU now opening the doors and having a conversation.”

During lunch, Money20/20 hosted a Startups Lunch Session where it unveiled six of the most promising companies at the show this year. Attending media got the chance to meet:

KYP CEO, Alan Nagle https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-nagle-9524941/?originalSubdomain=uk

KYP looks at holistic business risk, smart data regression models and unique visuals to ensure investigator reviews are simplified.

Zing Cover CEO, Matt Nunney https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattnunney/?originalSubdomain=uk

Zing is a fast-scaling, advanced insurtech backed by leading global insurers. Zing

Truvity Founder, Denis Nagy https://www.linkedin.com/in/denis-nagy-85a97711/?originalSubdomain=uk

Truvity offers simple APIs that simplify the complexity of digital wallets, enabling seamless document exchange and fact verification.

Zumo’s Marketing Director, Amelie Arras https://www.linkedin.com/in/ameliearras/?originalSubdomain=uk

Zumo, a crypto as a service offering embedded Crypto Solutions.

Conduit’s VP Global Partnerships https://www.linkedin.com/in/adavaughan/

Conduit helps financial platforms connect their customers with crypto products using One API for DeFi

Klearly Co-Founder and CCO Geus Walder https://www.linkedin.com/in/geuswalder/

Klearly application that allows users to receive payments directly on their phones

The afternoon started with a session on carbon removal on the Ecore stage. Nan Ransohoff, Head of Climate at Stripe, leads Frontier, a $925M advanced market commitment to accelerate carbon removal, founded by Stripe, Alphabet, Shopify, Meta and McKinsey. During the session, Nan and Mayowa Kuyoro, Leader of Africa Fintech at McKinsey, discussed the challenges of carbon removal and opportunities for fintech startups to get involved.

Nan Ransohoff, Head of Climate at Stripe: “There’s a 7x increase in carbon removal among companies who are clients in three years. You can think about what your business is uniquely equipped with to facilitate decarbonisation.”

On the Summits stage, Chalapathy Neti, Head AI CoE at Swift, Mariana Gomez de la Villa, Innovation Lead at ING, Jon Ander Beracoechea Alava, Advanced Analytics Discipline Head at BBVA, joined Malcolm DeMayo, Global VP Financial Services at NVIDIA, to discuss how banks and fintechs evaluate generative AI, which applications they embed with AI first and why waiting to invest is not an option.

Chalapathy Neti, Head AI CoE at Swift: “Key point is - people forget these models are made with massive amounts of data. Without data you cannot build the model.”

Last year, Money20/20 Europe brought together an emotive panel of speakers who were able to speak about the very real and dangerous situation that was unfolding in Ukraine. Twelves months on, Don Ginsel, CEO of Holland Fintech, Jess Turner, EVP, Global Open Banking & API at Mastercard, Misha Rogalskiy, Co-founder at monobank and CEO and Co-Founder at Neofin, came together to share their experience of working amidst the unprecedented challenges and entering new markets.

We also had the opportunity to hear from the Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine in a virtual video, where he shared the progress Ukraine has made in terms of technological advancement in light of unprecedented challenges.

“No matter what, we stay resilient and keep going. Being a tech-advanced country gave us a unique opportunity to operate under conditions of a full-scale invasion,” said the Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine.
“We already have well-developed digital infrastructure, especially in terms of fintech. Mobile banking, virtual credit cards, and online payments, Ukrainians have mastered using them on a daily basis. And we as the government pushed this process even further. After the introduction of digital signatures, there was a boom in opening bank accounts online. For Ukrainian citizens, it takes only a few clicks to do so.”
“For Ukraine, innovation and technology must become the foundation of our recovery. We have a big vision for it, but we need support already. Invest in Ukraine now, try Ukraine now, we are the best ground for all kinds of products and solutions. Let’s build the future together.”

Announcements

See below a few announcements that grabbed everyone’s attention today:

Don’t forget to check out the announcements on the Horizon Stage tomorrow to hear their news before anyone else does!