The 2019 US edition of Money 20/20 is a wrap. All of us who attended are recovering – and digesting.
Money 20/20 is now an established event – even though the first one was just seven years ago, in 2012! You might think it would be getting stodgy and repetitive by now, with bosses sending their underlings. Not so! Among the over 7,000 people attending were an amazing number of top, big-company executives – along with hundreds of startups, investors, and companies ranging from emerging to established. All the tech firms you’d expect also attended.
So what happened? Anything new? Big themes? Here are a couple:
Entrepreneurs
The startup energy was amazing, partly because there were literally hundreds of startups in attendance, many in little booths, many participating in the events and meetups that were organized for them and the larger groups – investors, partners and buyers – who want to know what’s going on. There’s no way I’m going to pick a couple as examples of the hundreds, but as a test, I’d suggest you come up with a couple ideas you think are novel, walk next year’s show, and see how novel your ideas really are. Unless you’re incredibly better than most, you’ll find a startup with your idea – and if not, maybe it’s your time to start a company!
The Feedzai Financial Crime Summit
We’re glad to be investors in Feedzai, and amazed at the sub-conference they’ve run the last couple of years. It’s too bad Agatha Christie couldn’t attend this year to help solve financial crimes, though the stellar crowd recruited by Feedzai did a fine job of it. The top person from Microsoft described how he spends nearly $1 Billion a year on cyber-security, with competing teams of hackers and defenders, and much else.
With so much of money being electronic and transactions being conducted on phones and computers, the silent, remote hacker is indeed the modern equivalent of Willie Sutton – whose answer to why he robbed banks was simple – because that’s where the money is. Now that the money is in computers and transmitted by electronic networks, that’s where the money is, and there was a great deal to be said about this ongoing battle between good guys and bad guys – and the rapidly escalating arms race that makes the outcome of any one battle so uncertain.
It’s clear that this topic will continue to grow in importance in coming years.
Cryptocurrency and blockchain
There was a whole track devoted to this hot topic, and some time on the big stage. In particular, David Marcus, the leader of Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency effort, had the center seat of the giant center stage to himself, answering softball questions from a moderator. His smooth explanations acknowledged the widespread attention and questioning the Libra effort has engendered, while giving comforting answers and putting a calm, confident face on the effort.
There was quite a contrast between all the sessions devoted to this subject and what you saw on the show floor, which wasn’t much. Given that Money 20/20 is a show about payments, and given that cryptocurrency is, after all, a kind of currency, it’s natural there should be widespread interest in the topic, fueled by a generous portion of FOMO. There are lots of efforts and noise on the subject, but still not much evidence of real action. Everyone follows and will continue to follow the high-profile Facebook Libra effort with interest.
New Technologies: AI and ML
AI and ML continue to be the buzzwords nearly everyone wants to be associated with, in one way or another. This was particularly remarkable when you walked the show floor, with a high fraction of the booths claiming leadership in these subjects. Given the arcane nature of the underlying technology and the widely diverse technologies that are reasonably described as AI or ML – combined with the fact that most peoples’ eyes quickly glaze over when a nerdish person tries to explain what makes one of the dozens of machine learning algorithms different from another – it’s clear that the marketing person has an impossible task, and most of the show attendees have a challenge figuring out which approach is better than the others.
Nonetheless, this is one of those cases where the hype is clearly justified. For example, Feedzai is catching more of the bad guys than its direct competitors because its technology is just plain better, even though the others arguably also use AI/ML.
Eventually, people will figure out that this has happened before. It’s like decades ago, when a few leading companies claimed to be better than the competition because … they used computers! Yes, those incredibly advanced things that no one really understands. It wasn’t long before everyone first claimed to be using them, and then, eventually, everyone still in business was actually using computers! This year’s Money 20/20 clearly demonstrated that we’re still in the intermediate stage, in which the claims to be using AI/ML are widespread, and the reality is still in catch-up mode. We’ll know we’re really there when it’s just assumed – if you’re still in business, you must be using AI/ML; the only question is, who does it better. We’re getting there!
Lending, payments, banking
The show contained an amazing demonstration of continuing innovation in making it easier for people and businesses to send money, get money and borrow money. The days of checking that you’re properly dressed and groomed for your important meeting with the bank lending officer are long gone. Even the days of filling out forms, not just on paper, but also on the computer. As ever-growing portions of your financial history are stored and available in various online repositories, the job is mostly making sure you really are who you say you are. Once that’s settled, a couple simple actions on your phone are increasingly sufficient to get, send and borrow money, cheaply and quickly.
We saw an array of companies from point products to comprehensive, one-stop services, coming ever-closer to making every aspect of banking as quick and painless as messaging on your phone. The competition is fierce. It’s enough to make you wonder why the big banks survive. But all the big-name players are in the game and were at the show as well, with their own approach to making transactions as easy and efficient as possible for consumers and merchants. While everyone likes convenience, change isn’t particularly convenient; the big institutions have most of the customers and aren’t going to give them up without a fight. So they’re offering their own brands of ease and convenience to their customers. It was all on display at the show, and it’s clear that the war for the customer is far from over.
Regulation
As one of the most regulated industries, payments is doing an amazing job of innovating while avoiding the long arm of the bureaucratic enforcers. This is partly because regulation technology is advancing, as we saw at the show. But it’s got a ways to go. Automating regulation is a bit like teenagers eating vegetables – they respond to parental demands, but it’s not the first choice. As regulators continue to ratchet up the stakes and catch up to modern technologies, this is a field that continues to grow in importance at Money 20/20, both in the speakers and the exhibits.
Money 20/20
Next year will be 2020. Will this show be re-named Money 20/30? Or will moving towards 20/20 vision be the metaphor that justifies sticking with the name? Regardless of the name, the show will go on. It’s the one place you can go and see everyone who is anyone, and everyone who wants to be someone, all in one place in a short period of time. We’re already looking forward to next year.
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