Welcome to Settled Up, the Payment Expert podcast series. This week, Callum Williams spoke to Payment Expert News Editor Louis Thompsett, who is moderating on the Payment Expert Summit stage at SBC Summit 2026, about the payments, compliance and crypto sessions running across the show.
SBC Summit 2026 runs from 29 September to 1 October at the Feira Internacional de Lisboa and the MEO Arena in Lisbon. The Payment Expert Summit stage splits across the three days, with tracks on Fintech, Global Payment Compliance and Crypto & Blockchain.
SBC Summit: A look ahead
The Fintech track opens the stage on Tuesday, 29 September, examining how financial technology affects player payments, compliance and responsible gambling.
Payments performance has become an area operators compete on, through faster withdrawals and higher card-acceptance rates that influence whether players deposit again and stay. Compliance runs on the same payment rails, which is why payment operations now reach board level.
The Global Payment Compliance track follows on Wednesday, 30 September. The session “Preparing for AMLA’s Full Rollout” addresses the next phase of European regulation.
AMLA, the EU’s Anti-Money Laundering Authority, became operational in July 2025 and is based in Frankfurt. It coordinates national regulators and will directly supervise the highest-risk cross-border firms from 2028.
The accompanying Anti-Money Laundering Regulation applies a single rulebook across all 27 member states from 10 July 2027.
The change moves operators from one-off identity checks at sign-up to ongoing monitoring of transactions, screening payments against sanctions lists and reporting suspicious activity as it happens. The track also runs “AML Readiness for Emerging Game Formats” and “Prediction Markets, AI and the New Investment Arms Race.”
The Player Protection Symposium takes place the same day, Wednesday, 30 September. It focuses on three areas: balancing regulatory objectives against the black market, the operator’s role in safeguarding players, and the use of technology to identify and support at-risk players.
The panel “Whose Shoulders Does Responsible Gaming Fall On?” debates where responsibility sits between operators, regulators and players. Payments feed this through affordability, where financial data helps flag players raising deposits or chasing losses, letting operators apply deposit limits and cooling-off periods earlier.
The Crypto & Blockchain track closes the stage on Thursday, 1 October. It opens with “Blockchain Banking for Gambling Operators,” on integrating crypto and stablecoins into payment systems while meeting AML and transaction-monitoring requirements.
“Speed, Security & Conversion for Crypto Gambling” examines how blockchain settlement can support faster deposits and withdrawals alongside verification and AML safeguards.
“Web3 in Gambling: Risks & Rewards” weighs where Web3 creates opportunities against the complexity of adoption. Public blockchain ledgers make many crypto transactions traceable, even where funds move to jurisdictions with different rules, which is why blockchain records also feature in discussions of transparency, player trust and identity verification beyond payments.
A separate Web3 & Crypto Academy runs on Wednesday, 30 September at Sala Tejo, MEO Arena, as part of the Education+ programme.
Conference access is included with Conference, Business and VIP passes; the compliance-focused networking sessions require a Business or VIP pass.
