Dan Latimore, Chief Research Officer of The FR, offers his reflections on the Money 20/20 conference that wrapped up this past week in Las Vegas.

Recovery from the whirlwind of meetings at Money 20/20 USA this week has begun, and will be ongoing. 

Like many industry watchers, I attended the annual conference in Las Vegas to get a sense of where the puck is moving on key industry issues. While the subject of many discussions was quite predictable—did I mention AI is still a thing?— insight came from nuanced conversations around ROI considerations for AI, open finance use cases and compliance, and the ever-present issue of fraud. Given the overlap of these topics, many conversations touched on all three.

The table below summarizes my assessment of the issues garnering the most attention, and which ones fell off this year.

For a little more detail, the chart below offers more granular detail on the focus of sessions. While observing the zeitgeist is critical, it’s useful to back up one’s own idiosyncratic experience with data. The Money 20/20 app’s listing of events provided tags, so I used those tags as a filter; events could have multiple tags, appropriate since so many of the topics overlap, and some (e.g., data and banktech) support other more interesting themes. Note that the graph below doesn’t include all 18 tags*—only the ones I found most interesting.

*Note: I combined three tags—“Embedded Finance,” “Open Finance,” and “Partnerships (BaaS)”—into “Open Finance” above and in my count of 18 tags instead of 20 in the app. Additionally, events tagged both “Fraud” and “Identity” totaled 45, so there were only 9 that were tagged only one or the other.

Artificial Intelligence dominated sessions, the exhibition hall, and my conversations. The focus is moving toward established use cases where firms can be reasonably certain that they’ll achieve a reliable ROI quickly.

Open Finance was next, particularly in light of the recent release of Rule 1033 giving consumers the right to access and share their data. A conversation with Rohit Chopra, director of the CFPB, was very well attended. 

Payments and Banking Tech had many tags, but as rather generic subjects, they don’t tell us that much, frankly. International and instant payments are garnering a lot of attention, however. 

Discussions of Fraud and Identity were omnipresent at the Venetian, as they tend to be every year. AI is helping bankers sort through enormous volumes of data to identify suspicious activity they may have missed and to reduce false positives. 

Crypto for its own sake didn’t dominate to the extent it has in years past, but there was notable interest in stablecoins.

Surprisingly quiet

Only four events or sessions were tagged “wealthtech.” One was a demo and another focused on deposits. Clearly, that area is not getting a lot of love at Money 20/20. And of 11 sessions tagged “talent,” just three were focused on talent management; the rest touched on it only tangentially.

Content sessions are just one part of the value from Money 20/20; the chance for conversations —scheduled and serendipitous—is where the value for many of the attendees lies. 

In fact, there were a non-trivial number of folks who didn’t even purchase a badge, choosing instead to roam the borders of the conference. It’s clear that we’ve entered a new era of post-Covid normalcy; we may not be going to as many events as we used to, and we’re meeting virtually a lot more often, but there’s no substitute for a face-to-face gathering of thousands focused on shaping the future of money. 

If you’d like to learn more, discuss your experiences, or chat about the future of conferences, please let us know!