Payment Expert is reporting live from Money20/20 Europe 2026 (2–4 June), on the ground at the RAI in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
The team will be covering the most interesting panels across all three days, sharing exclusive insights from conversations with industry leaders, tracking the biggest announcements and offering a behind‑the‑scenes look at our multi‑media coverage.
17:05 – Europe has the foundations, but does it have the ambition to compete globally in payments?
That was the question running through one of Money20/20 Europe’s standout panels on Tuesday, as Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski and Fiserv COO Takis Georgakopoulos took stock of where European payments stands relative to the US and China.
While Europe has produced world-class payments infrastructure, regulatory innovation, and companies that compete on a global stage, what it has consistently failed to match is the capital and the commercial environment needed to scale those companies to the size the market demands.
As Georgakopoulos put it, “the question for Europe is how it is going to support the scale of investments required to create the next generation of global champions”.
Siemiatkowski spoke on the structural constraints, pointing to the interchange gap – 20-40 basis points in the EU against roughly 200 in the US – as a deliberate policy choice with real consequences for the size of the industry.
The same logic that produced that gap, though, also produced SEPA Instant, account-to-account innovation, and companies built to operate efficiently at thin margins.
The frugality of the European market, both argued, is now a competitive asset as European fintechs push into higher-margin markets abroad.
Stay tuned to Payment Expert this Tuesday 2 June for an in-depth look at this panel, coming your way a little later today…
15:00 – Europe’s first agentic payment goes live
Another announcement just dropped on the show floor, with Worldline, ING and Mastercard having completed Europe’s first end‑to‑end agentic payment transaction in production.
The transaction, carried out between an ING cardholder and a Dutch merchant, ran across the Mastercard network.
Hans Overeem, Head of Payments, ING Netherlands, described it as “a concrete move towards a more intelligent, seamless future for banking and online shopping.”
Payment Expert’s Kieran O’Connor will be speaking with Daniele Tonella, CTO at ING, later today to find out more.
14:10 – Acquired joins UKPI as founding shareholder to back commercial VRP push
Announced at Money20/20, Acquired has taken a founding shareholder role in the UK Payments Initiative (UKPI), a new industry-led scheme launched at Money20/20 Europe to create a shared framework for commercial Variable Recurring Payments c VRPs).
The initiative, aligned with the UK Government’s National Payments Vision, is designed to scale account-to-account payments beyond one-off transactions, giving consumers a way to authorise recurring open banking payments with defined parameters, while offering businesses a more reliable collection alternative to cards and Direct Debit.
Acquired is the only founding shareholder with a full multi-rail recurring payments stack spanning Cards, Direct Debit, Sweeping VRPs and commercial VRPs, a position it says gives it a distinct view across customer behaviour and commercial outcomes.
The company plans to apply commercial VRPs across its Convert, Retain and Recover framework – covering customer onboarding, pre-collection fund checks, and automatic migration of payers at points of friction such as card expiry or mandate cancellation.
14:00 – The identity stack ahead of eIDAS 2.0
In the ongoing fight against fraud, a battle that feels like an endless war, digital identity is becoming one of the key tools available to help the good actors. This set the stage for a timely session on the identity stack and that’s coming next with eIDAS 2.0.
eIDAS 2.0 is the EU’s overhaul of digital identity rules, aiming to give citizens a secure, interoperable European Digital Identity Wallet that can be used across borders for everything from payments to government services.
On stage, Lucyna Janas, Head of Wallet Partnerships at Google, offered a glimpse into how one of the world’s biggest tech companies is preparing for this new era.
Janas explained that Google is building its approach around three pillars designed to make digital identity secure, portable and effortless for users:
- Secure identity rails – using hardware‑based key storage and NFC‑enabled credential presentation so users can keep their personal data “in secure envelopes” on their device and share it instantly when needed.
- Browser‑based digital identity – enabling websites to request verified information directly from a user’s local wallet, allowing people to prove who they are online without repeatedly filling out forms or uploading documents.
- A unified user interface – creating a single, consistent experience for managing and presenting identity credentials across services.
13:45 – Banks moving from blockchain pilots to production
Speaking on the ‘How far will banks and fintechs go on public blockchains?’ panel at Money20/20 Europe, industry leaders said financial institutions are no longer experimenting with public blockchains.
Mehtaj Syed of JP Morgan said banks and fintechs are “really leaning into moving from pilots into production,” with interest accelerating markedly over the past two years across stablecoins, tokenised assets, and cross-border payments.
Cassie Craddock of Ripple pointed to Tempo – the Stripe – and Paradigm-incubated blockchain – as evidence that the infrastructure question is being answered. Standard Chartered, Visa, and Shopify have all become network validators, with Craddock noting more fintech names would be “announcing in the near future”.
The central theme is that the future of money needs to be instant, 24/7, and global – and public blockchains are increasingly the vehicle getting it there.
13:25 – Behind the scenes with Anthony Peculic, CPO at Marqeta
We sat down with Anthony Peculic, CPO at Marqeta as part of our video short series at Money20/20 Europe 2026 to ask “Where’s the real bottleneck in payments innovation – technology, regulation, or the will to deploy?”….
Stay tuned across Payment Expert‘s LinkedIn channel to hear his answer, and others, before the end of the conference…
12:20 – OpenPayd goes public on Nasdaq
OpenPayd announced it will become a publicly listed company in the US on Nasdaq after a merger with Titan Acquisition Corporation which values the combined company as $1.145bn.
Trading under the ticker symbol ‘OP’, OpenPayd will receive $276m in gross proceeds from Titan’s trust account, assuming no redemptions by Titan’s public shareholders.
Speaking exclusively to Payment Expert at Money 20/20 Europe today (2 June), OpenPayd Chief Commercial Officer, Lux Thiagarajah, says the public listing underscores years of growth and profitability not common with many European fintechs.
“OpenPayd has had a tremendous period of growth over the last four to five years, and the honest truth is we all realise that at some point, those can plateau without the ability to expand – whether that’s licenses, whether that’s jurisdictions – and that requires funding,” says Thiagarajah.
“Usually, at companies your first question is, how’s your burn rate? We’re in one of these envious positions where we’ve been cash flow positive and profitable.
“I think it’s a tremendous milestone for OpenPay. The hard work begins, but it’s the company’s ambition. We’ve got expansion plans, and going public is what our management felt was the best way forward. It’s tremendous, and we’re excited.”
11:05 – Equals Money and Railsr merge identities under Equals brand
Equals Money and Railsr have rebranded under a single identity – Equals – as the combined embedded payments platform surpasses £58bn in annual transaction volume.
The rebrand consolidates two businesses into one brand positioned as a technology partner for international companies navigating multi-market, multi-currency operations, offering accounts, cards, payments and FX through a single connection.
It comes after research with more than 300 industry stakeholders across both businesses, which found a gap in the market between providers that are too large to serve specific needs and those that are too small to scale. Equals is pitching itself into that space, with CEO Ian Strafford-Taylor framing the proposition around solving interconnected payments complexity rather than isolated pain points.
10:30 – AI still dominates despite stablecoin spotlight
AI is one of the four pillars of the event this year, and while stablecoins may have stolen some of its spotlight, AI is still one of the most closely watched themes on the agenda.
Payment Expert spent 20 minutes with Dr Janet Bastiman, Chief Data Scientist at Napier AI, who used the FCA’s Supercharged Sandbox to test large‑scale synthetic financial datasets and demonstrate how AI can detect money‑laundering threats more efficiently than traditional rules‑based systems.
Bastiman spoke about her experience working with the FCA inside a sandbox, a method that has become a defining feature of the UK’s regulatory environment as the country vyes for postion in the global race to regulate AI and crypto.
Her full insights will be available in a post‑event feature, where she discusses whether the UK can keep pace as other markets compete to become the most innovation‑friendly jurisdiction for AI regulation.
10:10 – TransferMate taps BVNK for first stablecoin push
Announced at Money20/20 Europe, TransferMate has partnered with BVNK to bring stablecoin capabilities to its global B2B payments network for the first time.
The integration will see TransferMate use BVNK’s embedded wallet infrastructure to offer stablecoin on- and off-ramps alongside its existing fiat services, giving business customers access to digital asset payment rails without disrupting their current workflows.
The partnership targets sectors where cross-border friction is most acute. Stablecoin rails will be available to customers in global payroll, e-commerce, and procurement, with a particular focus on the education vertical.
09:20 – Kraken’s Sethi on licensing‑led M&A vision
Kicking off the show, Arjun Sethi, Co‑CEO of Kraken, was asked about Payward’s M&A strategy and how the company plans to expand its global footprint.
Sethi said Payward’s recent activity has been about acquiring firms to secure money‑transfer licences, security licences and banking licences in key markets. He said the company wants the ability to “move money,” and that means obtaining the right regulatory permissions either by buying licensed entities or launching new ones.
According to Sethi, this approach strengthens Kraken’s infrastructure and also supports the wider fintech ecosystem, including competitors, by reducing friction, lowering costs and expanding access to compliant payment rails.
08:30 – Money20/20 Europe 2026 begins!
It’s the first day of Money20/20 Europe here at the RAI in Amsterdam, and the crowds are flooding in. Payment Expert has secured front‑row seats for the week’s opening session, featuring Arjun Sethi, Co‑CEO of Kraken; Anthony Soohoo, CEO of MoneyGram; and Scarlett Sieber, Chief Strategy and Growth Officer at Money20/20.
