This October sees the return of the US edition of Money20/20. Hosted live in Las Vegas, Money20/20 eschews any notion of webinars, remote conferencing, or hybrid events, and aims to bring in-person innovation back to the world of fintech events.
2021 marks the 10th anniversary of Money20/20 Las Vegas, and the organisers have spoken a lot ahead of time about how there has been a conscious effort to make this year’s event unique, with larger stages, a greater number of speakers and a more diverse topic of discussions than ever before.
The Fintech Times will be bringing you regular updates throughout the event, with reports on the key highlights from each day, and analysis of the latest company announcements.
What’s Happening at Money20/20 Las Vegas
This year’s Money20/20 Las Vegas will be taking place from 24th-27th October, and features a variety of talks, discussions, and company presentations, spread out over a number of stages and areas. With that in mind, let’s delve right into some of the most interesting events from the first day of Money20/20.
Key Headline Events
First up, we have “Banks vs Fintechs: Who is Most Innovative?”. Forming part of the Product Innovation Edge theme, and taking place on the Immersion Stage, this event featured Ken Kruszka, CEO, SnapCheck; Zoya Lieberman, CEO & Founder, The Lieberman Group; Stacy Bjornstad, Chief Revenue Officer, DigiPli; and Greg Lloyd, Vice President of Strategy, Levvel as speakers.
This session was a bit different, as it took the form of a modified Oxford-style debate, where two teams faced off on the topic of whether banks are more innovative than fintechs, with deep arguments on this topic coming from both sides of the table.
Next up, we had “Remapping Payments for the Trucking Industry”, which tapped into the key theme of “Every Company is a Fintech Company”. This discussion was moderated by Zack Miller, Founder & Editor, Tearsheet, and included contributions from Renata Caine, SVP of International, Strategy & Planning Marqeta; Atif Siddiqi, Founder & CEO, Branch; and Lior Ron, Co-Founder & CEO, Uber Freight.
Hosted on the Serendipity Stage, the discussion of how embedded finance can ‘save’ potentially the trucking industry is particularly prevalent, with plenty of current media coverage as to the problems that the industry and its workers are currently facing. One of these challenges is payment roadblocks. By looking at the specifics of the trucking industry, and employing the lessons of embedded finance, panellists discussed how we can help to plan for the heavier traffic and greater demands, drive faster payments, augment fuel card functionality, solve for cash flow bottlenecks and more. fintech solutions can help get the trucking industry in prime condition.
Moving from a very practical issue to one that seeks to answer a more higher-order question, we have the question of “Can You Achieve a Digital Utopia?”. This discussion formed part of the “Striking Digital Gold” strand, and the speakers for this were Yvette Butler, President, SVB Private Banking & Wealth Management, Silicon Valley Bank; Mary Dent, Ex – CEO & Director, Green Dot Bank; and Sajjad Hussain Khazipura, Vice President, Engineering & R&D, Wipro. This session was moderated by Lane Martin, U.S. Head of Banking & Payments, Capco.
Fittingly held in the Utopia Lounge, this discussion was tackling the issue that, whilst over 70% of consumers rank online banking personalisation as highly important, the actual process, design and delivery of digital products and services that continually adapt and scale to your customer’s needs (without eliminating the personal relationship), is not so clear and obvious. To address this question, the panellists shared some exclusive banking research and gave real-life examples of how these concepts are a reality not far from reach.
Money20/20: The Latest Company Announcements
Many of the top financial services companies use large-scale events such as Money20/20 Las Vegas to tease, announce or discuss new product launches and developments that they have been working on over the year. Let’s take a look at some of the most interesting ones so far…
dLocal has announced the launch of its newest and most advanced suite of fraud management tools specialised in emerging markets for global enterprise merchants. These include Smart Defense, an advanced, custom-built solution that fights fraud based on data and machine learning models; Defense Manager, a user interface that offers merchants the flexibility to change predefined sets of rules; and Chargeback Guarantee, through which merchants delegate all fraud management responsibilities to dLocal.
All the products above will be available through the One dLocal concept – one API, one platform, one contract.
Grow Credit has announced that it will be launching an innovative ‘Credit Builder Plans’ product. These plans will start at $1/month, and the plans will focus on helping consumers to build credit and save money with over 100 popular subscriptions, including Netflix, Disney+, and Spotify.
Founder of WallStreetBets, Jaime Rogozinski, has announced WallStreetBets’ entrance into decentralized finance/outlining a new way for retail investors to take control of their financial futures (with crypto and traditional assets).
Finally, there is Bamboo Payment Systems, a digital payment processor serving millions of consumers across Latin America (LATAM), announced that they have entered into a partnership with fraud prevention specialist, Koin, to implement Koin’s advanced anti-fraud platform within its range of client offerings. The Koin system uses machine learning and other artificial intelligence technologies to generate an intelligent financial anti-fraud solution that ensures merchants have dedicated early warning detection and monitoring for a range of issues including account takeovers, payment fraud, and chargeback disputes.
“As Bamboo Payment continues to grow we are constantly assessing the robustness of our platform’s security, and as well, our ability to provide highly competitive conversion rates,” says Paola Terra, the COO of Bamboo Payment Systems. “The anti-fraud systems Koin has developed are best-in-class, so the decision to enter into this partnership made perfect sense both in terms of the enhanced security and, as a result, further increasing our already great conversion rates.”
What’s Up Next?
With Sunday acting as the aperitif for the main event, the contents of Monday’s agenda was a far more substantial meal. And with another two action-packed days to come, there will be plenty more Fintech news to summarise, analyse and discuss in tomorrow’s round-up of Money20/20 Las Vegas.
