2026 AGENDA
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Account-to-account payments have long been framed as the next big shift in commerce, yet mass adoption still looks patchy. This session examines what it will actually take for A2A to scale and which players stand to control the customer relationship if it does.
MiCA gives Europe a clearer framework for digital asset activity, but clarity alone does not guarantee advantage. This session looks at whether firms can turn regulatory certainty into stronger products, better infrastructure, and a more durable competitive position.
AI is moving beyond back end functions and into the product itself, shaping decisions, journeys, and outcomes in real time. This session explores what happens when banks stop layering AI onto old models and start redesigning products around agent-led interaction, accountability, and trust.
Europe has built strong payments infrastructure, but businesses still face fragmentation across schemes, regulation, and local market behaviour. This session asks what has to change for Europe to operate more like a true single market in payments.
Banks are becoming more selective about buying from fintechs and more willing to build capabilities internally. This session explores what that shift means for fintech business models, partnership strategy, and long-term positioning in the market.
Fraud is becoming faster, more automated, and harder to detect using legacy tools and manual controls. This session explores how banks are rethinking detection, intervention, and customer protection when the threat now moves at machine speed.
(6 x 15 minute slots with 3 minute breaks)
Meeting 1: 10:45-11:00
Meeting 2: 11:03-11:18
Meeting 3: 11:21-11:36
Meeting 4: 11:39-11:54
Meeting 5: 11:57–12:12
Meeting 6: 12:15-12:30
The lending ecosystem is transforming. This session explores how organisations are adapting their business models and leveraging new technology to deliver credit across Europe’s evolving market
AI may lower the barriers to building products, but it may also strengthen incumbents with scale, data, and distribution. This session asks whether AI is opening the market for new entrants or making it even harder for them to survive.
Make Europe Great Again? We joke but since European banking operates under some of the deepest and most demanding regulatory conditions in the world, this session explores whether banks can turn that depth into trust, defensibility, and strategic strength rather than treating it purely as drag.
Payments firms face constant pressure on margins, while AI promises smarter routing, lower servicing costs, and better operational efficiency. This session examines where AI can genuinely improve the economics and where the value is still more story than substance.
Explore the evolution of labor in this fireside chat with Zopa Bank. We’ll discuss whether AI and automation will replace roles or reshape them to build a future-ready workforce.
For all the talk of European scale, banking still runs into national friction around licensing, operations, customer behaviour, and regulation. This session examines what it would take to build banks that scale across borders without losing clarity, control, or momentum.
Scams, impersonation, and social engineering are reshaping how trust breaks down between firms and customers. This session looks at what fintechs can do to protect users, respond faster, and rebuild trust when fraud is becoming more personal and more convincing.
Seed still attracts attention and breakout winners still command capital, but many startups in the middle are finding the funding path much harder than expected. This session explores whether venture has pulled back from the middle and what that means for promising firms caught between traction and scale.
New payments ideas are easy to launch into the market, but much harder to sustain once enterprise clients, compliance demands, and operational complexity arrive. This session explores what still holds up when innovation has to perform at serious scale.
Premium banking can no longer rely on status, packaging, or legacy service assumptions alone. This session explores how banks are redefining value for higher-end customers through better experiences, sharper propositions, and more relevant financial relationships.
Innovation meets its match in infrastructure. This session investigates if the search for resilient, reliable AI has created a paradox where governance and failure-point management now set the speed for global AI integration.
European fintechs face a stricter operating environment than many of their global peers, but speed still matters. This session explores how firms can keep building, shipping, and competing while meeting a higher regulatory bar.
This session explores the reality of the European "attention economy," looking at how founders break through the noise to reach enterprise customers and investors simultaneously. It asks: is your biggest hurdle the product, or the fact that the people who matter simply don't know you exist?
Years of outsourcing and external dependency have changed how much of the banking stack sits outside the institution itself. This session explores what banks may need to take back, what they should keep external, and how they regain strategic control without trying to rebuild everything.
As payment data becomes richer and more standardised, the value in enterprise payments may shift toward whoever can interpret and operationalise that information best. This session asks whether ISO 20022 changes who really owns the client relationship.
AI is attracting capital, attention, and strategic urgency across fintech, but hype cycles rarely end gently. This session explores whether the sector is building durable value or inflating another bubble, and whether regulators are moving fast enough to keep pace.
Europe’s regulatory structure can create trust and clear standards, but it can also slow entry and increase costs for younger firms. This session asks whether regulation ultimately protects startups from chaos or blocks them from real growth.
Banks face constant pressure to keep innovating, even as complexity, regulation, and operational risk continue to rise. This session will be a forum exploring how institutions decide what to pursue, what to ignore, and how to manage innovation without drifting into instability.
Stablecoins are no longer just a policy talking point or experimental product theme. This session explores how firms should think about timing, use cases, and strategic positioning as stablecoins move closer to mainstream European infrastructure relevance.
Licensing still determines who can expand, where they can operate, and how quickly they can move. This session looks at how fintechs navigate Europe’s licensing reality without getting trapped in endless complexity.
It is one thing to win early users and another to build a lasting relationship in a market crowded with incumbents, platforms, and better-funded rivals. This session asks what it takes for startups to hold onto the customer relationship over time.
As consolidation becomes an increasingly hot topic in European banking, where does that leave mid-sized European Banks? What are the challenges facing them, what are the opportunities presented and ultimately what's the play book to scale in this market?
As connectivity and interoperability become expected across the market, platform differentiation gets harder to defend. This session examines how payments platforms stay strategically valuable once basic connectivity is no longer enough.
When product features become easier to copy and customer expectations rise fast, real differentiation becomes harder to see and harder to sustain. This session explores what still makes a fintech product matter when novelty alone is no longer enough.
The champagne is finished and the capital is in the bank now the clock is officially ticking. This session moves past the pitch deck to the brutal reality of the first 100 days: managing board expectations, navigating fragmented licensing, and the "silent" costs of European compliance that eat into your seed round.
SMB banking is increasingly attractive because it sits at the intersection of deposits, lending, software, and embedded services. This session explores what it takes to build an SMB model that is commercially durable rather than superficially attractive.
Stablecoins may improve liquidity movement and settlement efficiency, but they can also introduce fresh funding, operational, and policy risks. This session asks how firms can use them without importing a new layer of fragility.
Beyond price and speed, what defines the new merchant royalty? Discover the blueprint for digital dominance by mastering the intersection of velocity and loyalty to build high-value, long-term partnerships that outlast the competition.
Acquisition is often framed as success, but it can also reflect a market where independent scale remains elusive. This session asks whether European startups are being built to thrive or simply groomed for sale.
KYC remains one of the most visible points of friction in banking, and one causing the most fines. Shaping customer experience, operational cost, and compliance exposure all at once. This session explores how banks can modernise KYC without weakening controls or inviting new risk.
This session explores how different networks use data, embedded rewards, and merchant integrations to secure their position, and asks whether Europe can build the network effects needed to secure strategic autonomy.
Europe has shown that it can produce ambitious, credible fintechs, but too often the next phase of scale happens elsewhere. This session explores what has to change if Europe wants to keep more of the value it creates.
Europe offers talent, customers, and technical capability, but fragmentation still makes scale harder than founders often expect. This session asks whether a startup can truly scale across Europe without becoming a different company market by market.
