Future of Payments - Ashfords LLP & FinTech West

On Thursday 29th February FinTech West’s latest event took place, focused on ‘The Future of Payments’, which was hosted in partnership with Ashfords in Bristol.

Julian Wells, Director of FinTech West and Whitecap Consulting, opened the event, thanking Ashfords for their support and highlighted that Whitecap’s research into FinTech ecosystems across the UK, including the South West, consistently finds payments to be the most prominent sector.

Suzie Miles and Oliver Woodhouse of Ashfords set the scene with a run through of key regulatory themes relating to Critical Third Parties, Consumer Duty, and Fraud. This session provided a great backdrop for the event, covering three key developments.

We then heard from two leading payment providers, NMI and Cardstream, both of which are based in the South West.

Rob Fox from NMI gave an overview of predictions for 2024, taking about embedded payments and how these will enhance consumer experience, and also spoke about Gen Z and the role of AI in enhancing processes and security in payments.

Adam Sharpe of Cardstream talked about the meeeging trends in retail payments and the move away from banks and towards ecommerce, including retailers, software providers, and payment gateways.

David Jarvis from Griffin posed the question “product led companies vs banks - where is the tipping point?” Increasingly payment companies are recognising that they need a better option than partnering with a traditional bank, and this is where Griffin steps in and offers enhanced financial terms (ie interest) and tech (via its platform and APIs).

Jeroen de Marteau of the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) spoke about the evolution of Open Banking and shared the potential benefits to consumers and businesses of Variable Recurring Payments (VRPs), and also discussed how the PSR is seeking to use VRPs to promote innovation in payments.

Mark Munson of Moneyhub delivered the closing talk, bringing Open Finance to life with a number of use case examples. Mark talked about the balance of consent and a seamless customer journey.

The consistent theme throughout the event related to the need to offer enhanced customer experience in payments, as cost efficiently and safely as possible. Clearly the innovation-minded FinTech community within the payments sector is well placed to help deliver against this challenge.