Live on the floor of Money20/20 Europe in Amsterdam, the Payment Expert Podcast takes stock of the show’s themes; from agentic AI and stablecoin regulation to fraud’s shifting targets and the rise of digital identity
With Money20/20 Europe underway in Amsterdam, News Editor Louis Thompsett is joined by Senior Journalist Kieran O’Connor for a live episode recorded on the show floor, covering the themes dominating the event’s opening sessions.
Four pillars are framing this year’s programme – agentic commerce, regulation, stablecoins and fraud – with agentic AI coming up almost immediately in the opening keynote featuring Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi: more on this in our Day 1 live blog.
The technology is developing fast, but a disharmony is opening between rails that are technically ready and the consent frameworks, protocol standards and regulatory clarity needed to deploy them responsibly.
Money20/20: The stablecoins regulatory environment
Stablecoins remain a defining theme at the show, with cross-border payments continuing to drive most of the practical use cases.
Conversations on the floor are turning to how regulatory environments are diverging – MiCA in Europe, the GENIUS and CLARITY Acts moving through the US, and the UK still playing catch-up.
On consolidation, the mood at Money20/20 reflects what has been a busy period for M&A.
Kraken’s parent company and its acquisition strategy is representative of a broader pattern – firms buying money transfer, securities and banking licences not just to enter markets, but to reduce costs and expand rail access for the wider ecosystem.
Fraud rounds out the week’s agenda, as recent Visa data shows institutional defences are holding, but fraudsters are increasingly targeting consumers directly – aided by deepfakes that are becoming harder to detect.
Progress on data sharing remains a persistent bottleneck, given that defensive AI models are constrained by privacy rules that criminal networks simply ignore.
eIDAS 2.0‘s European digital identity wallet, which digitises credentials and aims to eliminate document forgery at the onboarding stage, is one development worth tracking on the floor this week.
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