The Conference Season Is Now In Full Swing

It's that time of the year when many of us are on the road. September to November is usually a very busy time with conferences and industry events. Of course, it's a great way to meet our clients and prospects, other industry experts, and learn from attending the sessions and presentations. Usually, someone from Celent is at all the major events - for example, a few of my colleagues have attended SIBOS and wrote about it on this blog. In this post, I wanted to discuss the events that are keeping me busy over the next month of so. Last week I was at EFMA Retail Payments Week. As always, it was a great event and I wanted to extend my thanks to the organizers for inviting me again to speak. I presented my research on lessons from launching NFC payment solutions, which judging from comments and discussions after the presentation was well received by the audience. NFC payments was an important theme throughout the conference. While NFC is really struggling to take off in the US, there still seems to be a significant level of activity and interest in Europe. However, I was actually somewhat surprised at how strongly a clear message was coming through many conference presentations - even in Europe, banks are starting to lose patience with MNOs and are beginning to give up on the idea of collaborating. Instead, they are launching contactless cards (the good old plastic), and are exploring alternative approaches to mobile payments (secure element in the cloud, payments directly from the bank account, etc.) I am convinced that we will see NFC-based mobile payments in Europe in due course, but I suspect most of the solutions will be driven by mobile operators, with very selective participation from banks. I am getting on the plane tomorrow to go to Money2020, which again promises to be a very interesting show. I will be moderating a panel discussion titled The World of Payments Meets the World of Marketing, continuing the debate around how payments transaction data can be used effectively to the benefits of consumers, merchants and financial institutions. I will also be presenting at the ATM, Debit and Prepaid Forum, where I will be asking the question whether the retailers can ignite mobile at the POS. Given that NFC models haven’t taken hold, and open wallets such as Google Wallet continue to struggle, I will be arguing that retailer apps might actually be the ones that spark adoption of mobile payments. On the morning of October 17th, we are hosting a Banking Roundtable discussion in London on The Future of the Bank Account. It is a confidential, bank-only forum, with an emphasis on idea exchange. We already have a strong roster of registered participants, but there are still a few places available. If you work for a bank and would like to find out more, please contact Todd Carter (tcarter@celent.com) or Chris Williams (cwilliams@celent.com). Finally, most of the Celent's Banking team will be at BAI Retail Delivery in Denver. So, if you are going to any of these events, don't hesitate to drop us a line so that we could arrange to meet. Look forward to seeing you!