The European payments industry – and increasingly, further afield as well – turned out in force for this years EBADay in Lisbon, Portugal – indeed, the biggest one yet. And as usual, a great event, with 2 full days of networking and conference sessions.
There are two things that I always like about the format that I think others could do with taking note of. First, the exhibit hall is small, as everyone is limited to the same small booth size. This is a great leveller, but also means that everyone is concentrated in a much smaller space, rather than spread out over vast areas. Second, the sessions are nearby. One conference I attended early this year saw my session in a room 15 minute walk from the exhibition a hall – and that wasn’t even the furthest flung. It does mean that people don’t have to choose between sessions or networking.
I was lucky to be asked to moderate a lively session on the consolidation of correspondent banking. After the prep calls, it was clear that we would struggle to fit everything in the time we had – and that proved to be the case! I’ll be publishing shortly a short note of the discussion, but to whet your appetite, we discussed why active correspondent banking relationships had collapsed by 1/3rd over the last decade, and almost by half in one region. It’d be easy to make sweeping assumptions as to the reasons – post 9/11 sanctions for example. But the answer is more nuanced, with regulation causing as many issues as it solves.
The discussions in the hall were lively. It was worth noting that AI was mentioned in almost conversation (while at EBADay I also did my 5th session that discussed AI in payments in 10 days!). The discussions were mixed – most saw the benefit of AI, not least because payments have been using forms of AI for decades; but most were less bullish about GenAI. This is a topic we’ll be exploring in more detail in the coming months.
