Money20/20 Europe keynote: the age of invisible payments (and apology from Visa)
Charlotte Hogg, Visa Europe: we are sorry
In what was somewhat awkward timing for a keynote on the future of payments, given the wide-scale outages experienced by customers late last week, Charlotte Hogg, CEO of Visa Europe, began her remarks at Money20/20 Europe with an apology.
Reassuring customers that there was no cyber breach and noting that a hardware fault (or as it’s known in my house, mom left something unplugged) was to blame, Hogg went on to note the changing role of payments.
Money and the power of money isn’t disappearing but the deliberate act of the way execute payments is evolving. Financial lives for businesses and consumers remain complex and control important.
Noting the interplay of the PSD2 and GDPR regulations, one a force for openness and the other about greater control over one’s data, the role for a global network whose backbone is partnerships remained crucial. Given the impact on customers last Friday and the handwritten “cash only” signs that were seen in stores across the country, Hogg’s point about the need for resilience certainly resonated.
Noting that Visa hasn’t always been the easiest organisation for fintechs to work with (cue guffaws from fintech companies in the room), Hogg announced two big initiatives:
- A fast-track programme for fintech companies to partner with Visa; reducing the onboarding time from months to weeks and a special fee structure.
- A new €100 million investment programme in fintech.
Hogg was clearly highlighting Visa’s commitment to partner with fintechs and keeping the network at the centre of a fast-evolving sector. Innovation, she noted, benefits the entire ecosystem. Easing the journey to collaboration would seem a step in the right direction.
By Lisa Moyle, director of strategy, fintech, & director of partnerships at FinTechTalents
