Money 20/20 Amsterdam Announcements
Part III: Announcements and After-Party
Announcements
Payment giant Mastercard announced its latest payment feature, Pay by Link, during the event. The new feature is supposed to bridge the opportunity gap between open banking payments and a wide range of businesses.
“We’re in the process of transforming the way people pay bills. With a simple link, we make it easy and secure to pay a bill on the go with a bank account without having to enter or remember payment details. With Pay by link, we give businesses the opportunity to accept and receive payments anywhere and reduce friction in the entire payment flow,” says Rune Mai, Co-Founder and CEO of Aiia, a Mastercard company.
Railsbank, one of the world’s leading platforms for embedded finance experiences, announced a significant rebranding, changing its name to “Railsr.”
“We’ve now changed our name to Railsr to reflect the seamless financial experiences and positive disruption of traditional finance we deliver. Running on Railsr helps our customers drive relationships, revenue, rewards, and relevance with their customers. We’re here to inspire, enable, and support them through every step of their embedded financial experience journey from prototyping through launching and ultimately scaling globally.”
Railsr additionally declared the launch of its new Rewards-as-a-Service (RaaS) product “that enables brands to build their own branded rewards programs” during the event.
Parallel to Apple’s BNPL announcement, UK-based digital bank Zopa announced its entry into the BNPL vertical. Accordingly, Zopa will focus on merchant financing at the first stage, moving to consumer financing later.
During the headline session, Daniel Kjellén of Tink announced two new partnerships with the neobank Revolut and the Dutch payments provider Adyen.
Last but not least, Ripple publicized its partnership with Lunu to enable luxury retailers to accept cryptocurrency payments.
Money 20/20 Satellite Events: “Are You a Friend of the Groom or the Bride?”
Event booths are for pitching and merchandise hoarding. However, it’s the satellite events where deals get closed. Money 20/20 was no exception in that sense, and exceptional events took place, bringing people together.
The first official Money 20/20 after party took place at a forest close to the airport. After a long hike in the woods, the participants found themselves in a festival vibe rather than a (serious) banking conference, which enabled a get together in a cozy evening environment.
On the second day, the after-party took place in the local pub area.
In parallel, many smaller events took place. In the exclusive events, conversation starters were not about open banking, etc. since these events brought different stakeholders (as customary in a wedding), the guests were asking which of the host ventures invited the guests (“Are you a friend of the bride or the groom?”)
The German crew came together at the Payment and Banking dinner, which became customary for Money 20/20.
The BeNeLux crew had a fantastic party for locals and partners (and we can already guess how it went, considering the FinTech Paris event).
One of the most successful events was organized by the “embedded finance” crew, including Banxware, Hawk:AI, and Weavr.io at the Soho House. The event brought together many embedded finance players and enthusiasts, revealing the future of FinTech.
This article is an excerpt of the Money 20/20 2022 report initially published on the Fintech Istanbul blog.
