Last week I had the pleasure of attending the PayExpo 2014 conferenceheld in London’s ExCel Center. One of Europe’s premier payment industry events,PayExpo promised to bring together a broad spectrum of payment industryparticipants including merchants, financial institutions, and hardware andsoftware providers among others.
That promise was fulfilled by a wide range of established,emerging, and new payment players either exhibiting or speaking in the fourconference tracks—the future of payments, mobile money, prepaid, and merchantpayments.
The several sessions I attended were thought provoking. Forexample: Experts detailed the most recent European Union payment regulationsand their potential impact on the industry. Others presented country-specificcase studies on how prepaid and mobile wallets can help shift unbanked andunderbanked consumers into the electronic payments mainstream.
The conference hall was packed with booths of almost 40exhibitors, and delegates moved seamlessly move between conversations with the exhibitors.From Fiserv and FIS to Jumio and Ukash, the range of exhibits allowed them todiscuss the challenges and opportunities confronting firms on the front line oftheir respective payment industry segments and gain insights into the latestdevelopments affecting their organizations and products.
Payment start-up investment was the topic of one interestingsegment of the event. Four firms (Quixter, Payfriendz, Veridu, and Lasu) wereinvited to present in front of five leading industry decision makers. With theindustry increasingly looking to new players to help develop a competitiveadvantage in the ever shifting industry landscape, this segment was useful toindustry players seeking to understand the new hardware or software that willmake a significant impact on the future of the industry.
All in all, PayExpo 2014 was an excellent event not only inproviding delegates with insightful information across mobile, prepaid, andmerchant payment types as well as trends and concepts to consider regarding thefuture of the payment industry but also as a forum for in-depth discussion andnetworking among a wide range of payment industry professionals.
For more information on the PayExpo 2014 event see http://www.payexpo.com/.