Europe Fintech

Pay360 Virtual Event Ends as EPA Award Nominations Announced

The virtual PAY360 event has now come to a close but the two-day event featured a highlight of discussion from the world of payments and fintech.

Usually, PAY360 is the flagship conference and exhibition of the Emerging Payments Association, bringing together attendees from across the entire payments value chain. It is a narrowcast event for the payments community, where senior decision-makers meet to do business.

This year due to COVID-19, decisions were made to hold the event virtually, allowing over 40 speakers and more than 800 attendees to join together online. This included virtual speaker sessions, panel discussions and even networking dedicated networking areas available over both Wednesday and Thursday earlier this week.

Top discussions included:

  • Bank of Tomorrow: Trends shaping the future of finance by Jill Docherty, Executive Director, Business Development, UK and Ireland, Visa
  • Mastering the post PSD2 landscape: Open Banking trends and opportunities around the globe? A panel discussion with speakers from Visa, UK Finance, Konsentus and more.
  • Global Payments 2.0: Instant, real-time and cross border innovation payments transformation with speakers from SkyParlour, SWIFT, and Modulr

One of the top sessions was on the Power of Partnerships featuring Scott Abrahams, SVP Business Development UK, and Ireland, Mastercard and Nathalie Oestmann, COO of UK fintech Curve.

The two talked about how important relationships can be for a fintech such as Curve, and why deciding on a significantly older financial partner was a great decision for the team.

During the session, Nathalie was keen to highlight what she was looking for in a partnership. She said, “In Curve, we have lots of partners but we have a special relationship, I’d say highly valued with Mastercard. We couldn’t have reached 1.3m customers without you.”

When pressed to break it down further, she gave a few pointers on shared values, such as they were both technology-orientated and wanted the same things. For Nathalie, it meant that “We have very open lines of communication – I can call you or anyone else and tell them anything I need to. Trust comes from a long-standing relationship. We are friends and enjoy working towards the same thing. Two final things are flexibility and agility – as a fintech it’s the most important thing for us. We need to move fast, although we sometimes change our minds flexibility is the way we work.”

Scott added, “Our approach is to bring those long-standing relationships we already have to our new partners but also look at how agile and innovative we can be, as well as trying to have some fun. Working with Curve is fun, and if you don’t have a foundation of a personal relationship it can often not be fun.”

Ahead of the event, The Fintech Times also spoke to Nathalie alongside other industry leaders such as Miles Stevenson, the CEO of Modulr, and Nigel Vernon from Railsbank. You can see these interviews in full alongside much more here.

PAY360 will be back as a physical event on March 23rd 2021, at the Business Design Centre in London.

Also launched at the event was EPA Award nominations finalists, ahead of the awards this autumn. The Emerging Payments Awards celebrate innovation, collaboration and emerging payments by recognising companies that have made significant advances in how we pay today. The winners will be announced at a glittering ceremony in London attended by 800 of the industry’s most senior opinion-formers and decision-makers. This year there was a 50% increase in the number of nominations received. The full list is below.

Best International Payments, Remittance or use of FX

  • Banking Circle
  • Crown Agents Bank – EMpowerFX
  • Ebury
  • Flywire
  • Ixaris
  • Post Office Ltd – Post Office Travel app

Best Financial Inclusion Payments Programme

  • Airtel Uganda and Comviva
  • Banking Circle
  • Prepaid Financial Services
  • Telenor Microfinance Bank

Best B2C Payments Programme

  • Curve – Go-Back-In-Time
  • Stocard
  • Swile, Treezor

Best B2B Payments Programme

  • Banking Circle – Banking Circle Virtual IBAN
  • Bottomline – Bottomline PTX
  • Ebury – Instant Payments Era
  • Modulr
  • Monzo Bank Ltd – Monzo Business
  • Payoneer
  • PPS – PPS and Countingup
  • WEX

Best Banking or Open Banking Initiative

  • Bankily by BPM & Comviva
  • Currensea and GPS
  • Konsentus – Konsentus Verify
  • Lloyds Banking Group – Payables API
  • Railsbank – Railsbank Open Banking Platform (Banking as a Platform)
  • Token
  • Trustly

Best Partnership Initiative

  • Banking Circle – Banking Circle and Cardstream
  • Lloyds Bank – I-safe
  • Osper
  • PPS – PPS and Monese
  • Vitesse PSP Ltd

Best Use of Payments Data or AI in Financial Services

  • ACI Worldwide
  • Chargebacks911
  • Ethoca – Alerts + Eliminator
  • Jumio – AI-Powered Identity Verification for Financial Services
  • Kani
  • Visa Europe – Visa Advanced Authorisation

Most Innovative Mobile or Financial Services Payments Solution

  • Airtel Uganda and Comviva
  • Judopay
  • Ordo
  • Stocard by Wirecard

Most Innovative Merchant Services Solution

Best Back Office Innovation

Best Customer Facing Experience

  • FIS – Premium Payback
  • ID-Pal
  • MuchBetter by Wirecard
  • Their Perfect Gift by Wirecard
  • Thyngs Ltd
  • Total Processing – Apple Pay For WooCommerce Payment Plugin

Marketing Campaign of the Year

  • Blue Train Marketing & Fintech Finance – Team Card at the Fintech Finance Payments Race 2019
  • CCgroup PR – Fame & Fortune in Fintech: Launching Tribe Payments

Leading Financial Services or Payments Start-Up

  • Currensea & GPS
  • Kani
  • Ordo
  • PayDock
  • SimplyPayMe
  • Tribe Payments
  • io

Leading Emerging Payments Organisation

  • GPS- The Super Processor™
  • PPRO
  • PPS
  • Trustly

Best Use of Blockchain in Financial Services

  • Eligma Ltd
  • Nuggets

Best Direct Account to Account Solution

  • Comviva – mobiquity® Money – COVID-19 Response
  • Nuapay by Sentenial
  • Ordo

Best Lending Initiative

  • Capital on Tap
  • DivideBuy
  • Starling Bank
  • Trezeo

Best CSR or Charity Initiative

  • allpay – Herefordshire Flooding – Prepaid Programme
  • allpay – National Lottery – Community Fund Prepaid Programme
  • EML
  • org
  • SumUp Payments Limited, Collecting, Claire House
  • Thyngs

Best Market Expansion

  • Ebury
  • GLINT PAY
  • Global Processing Services
  • Railsbank

Author

  • Gina is a fintech journalist (BA, MA) who works across broadcast and print. She has written for most national newspapers and started her career in BBC local radio.

Related posts

Phore: Bootsrapped, Decentralised, and Community-Governed

Manisha Patel

Vyne Collaboration Supports UK Automative Retailer With Account-To-Account Payments

The Fintech Times

Panintelligence Predicts a ‘No-Code Revolution’ Could Unlock UK Technology and Kickstart the Economy

Polly Jean Harrison