Insights from Merchant Payments Ecosystem Conference

Merchant Payment Ecosystem connects leaders, influencers & innovators from the entire payment ecosystem. It is a European discussion platform for merchants, acquirers, PSPs and Point of Sale vendors, established companies as well as start-ups, fintech, regtech and paytech and everyone in between. Payment related topics were covered during the conference from several perspectives: customer experience, innovation, security, compliance, regulation and more.

Merchant Payment Ecosystem with over 1.200 participants (300 merchants and 450 SPs/Banks) and 140 speakers is the Europe’s largest merchant payment conference, focusing on technology.

It brings topics which relate to merchants, consumers and vendors/service providers (Banks, integrators, HW/SW manufacturers) in terms of payment security, infrastructure, compliance, user experience and innovation.

The conference topics were focused more on the digital experience but still there were several topics that addressed the point of sale, especially to dedicated android devices and mobile phones/tablets.

Market is showing significant signs of consolidation and defragmentation of services, where big players are trying get significant market share and centralize their revenue with cross border acquiring services. Cash is showing growth but it’s still below the GDP growth (%) which indicates relative decline compared to the market in general.

Recent mergers and acquisitions are mainly technology driven in terms of biometrics, crypto currency inclusion and open banking adoption (although it’s still in definition phase). The entire payment business is driven by the economy of scale and volume which is also in line with the recent M&As.

Regulators demand an increase in security and compliance in order to protect consumers from fraud and identity theft, while consumers are actively searching for ease of use. Presentations related to security were mainly focused on the consolidation of technology in order to provide the required and designated level without affecting the customer journey.

New payment solutions were mainly focused on bridging the gaps between tech and real life and on bringing different markets closer together encompassing one single technology that could be localized based on culture and habits (SoftPOS, eWallets, StableCoin and cryptocurrency inclusion, Biometrics, Wearables).

Because new technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Facial Recognition, Blockchain, Virtual/Augmented Reality and Internet of Things are complex and mainly ahead of their time which makes their adoption uncertain, people form attitudes and intentions towards learning to use it prior to initiating actual efforts to use it.