The Payments Association, which held its main industry event last year at the smaller Old Billingsgate site, returned this year with a broader mandate than ever before. Delegate badges bore the motto “Back: Bigger, Better”.

The two-day event focused on all of the hot themes in the industry right now, such as the surge in financial crime powered by artificial intelligence and changing consumer expectations and payment trends.

The Payments Association's director general, Tony Craddock, asserted in an interview with FinTech Futures that the event had effectively doubled the number of delegates this year and called it "a global watering hole for the payments industry" and "a catalyst for industry growth."

The primary concerns facing the industry as a whole were the focus of this year's program, which included major topics such real-time cross-border payments, infrastructure interoperability, worldwide consistency, data protection, and automated push payment fraud.

According to Craddock, this year's Pay360 actively promoted a "range of approaches" that may each lessen the impact of fraud inside payments, so attempting to minimize the harm it does.

In addition to facilitating the discourse that drives this initiative, the association runs seven working groups with a wide variety of industry leaders in them. According to Craddock, the overall goal of these organizations is to "lead education on financial policies through the likes of policy roundtables and stakeholder working groups."

One such regulation that has been within its sightlines is the new APP fraud reimbursement guidelines from the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR), which were published by the organization last summer and aim to guarantee the safe restoration of payments to fraud victims.

Even yet, the director general says he is "totally incensed" with the regulator's "unwillingness to listen" to the Payments Association's recommendations for improving this strategy, which were provided to the PSR directly from its business members.

He anticipates that this year's Pay360 agenda will strengthen ties between the business community and legislators and act as a major showcase for how the most recent advancements in payments can drive change.

Data, open banking, and payments in the future

On Wednesday, the second day of the event's activities, there were several thought-provoking keynote speakers, panel discussions, and limitless streams of ideas.

John Penrose, the Weston-Super-Mare conservative MP, kicked off the day by talking on the UK's Data Protection and Digital Information Bill on the Track A platform in the morning.

The upcoming regulation, which Penrose referred to as "one bill to rule them all," addresses a number of areas related to the contemporary use of data, including its processing, storage, analysis, application, and access.

Penrose told the audience that the bill aims to maintain the UK's position as a leader in payments innovation and will open up "new commercial frontiers" for the application of cross-sector data standards to the expansion of payment and financial sector technologies like open banking, which are proving to be incredibly successful in the nation.

Additionally, he made vague references to the possibility that the bill will name a "standard setting body" for the use of data and that new details regarding the bill's arrival and its investible assets would be made public "within the next week or two."

A panel discussing the future, led by Teresa Connors, ambassador for the Payments Association, moderated the event after the keynote and aimed to give guests a "glimpse into the payments crystal ball."

The following people joined Connors on stage: Jessica Richards, head of performance and business management at NatWest Payments; Adam Bealey, head of Swift UK and Ireland; Saira Khan, head of innovation and partnerships at First Direct Bank; Jessica Himberg-Wild, managing director of Barclays corporate and investment bank; and Natasha Zurnamer, CEO and founder of payments platform Optty.

According to Khan, a look into the crystal ball showed the human element would triumphantly return to banking, with an emphasis on "the community element." According to her, the sector is "becoming a little bit fatigued with the amount of digital channels," which is why she held this opinion.

Similarly, Bealey used the panel to advocate for the unification of core payment systems. He also emphasized in his response that if "new forms of value" don't first achieve industry-wide interoperability, they will eventually cause system fragmentation and worsen customer experiences.

Zurnamer expanded on these remarks by projecting the arrival of "the checkout of the future," which, according to her, will feature an array of distinct payment methods combined into a single interface, enabling merchants to hyper-personalize the consumer experience.

Richards combined her forecast with a longer-term perspective on payments innovation, expressing her belief that, despite still having "a long way to go," central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) will eventually be used.

She also expressed support for the growing use of cash, particularly among younger people, and predicted that open banking will soon reach "a tipping point" that will lead to the development of "a viable commercial model" for the technology.

Richards expressed hope, but she also cautioned the audience about the growing usage of "bad technologies," pointing out that scammers are also taking advantage of advancements like artificial intelligence (AI) that are actively improving the sector.

After the panel, Richards spoke with FinTech Futures and went on to say that "a political perspective" was a major factor in the global rise of CBDCs. He compared the growing acceptance of cash transactions among individuals in the 18 to 25 age group to the resurgence of vinyl records, which have also gained popularity in this demographic recently.

She lauded the use of AI, and particularly GenAI, in the fight against fraudsters and bad actors in the payments industry because of its capacity to gather data that can subsequently be applied to minimizing future threats—a process she believes is currently ongoing at NatWest.

Following two full days of professional development, thought leadership, and industry networking, Pay360 demonstrated this year how the payments sector has changed recently.

However, fraud still poses a challenge to payments. Craddock says he anticipates the Pay360 event to stay at the top of the agenda for the upcoming year. He discloses that the event is scheduled to return to the ExCel Centre in March 2025.

In his final remarks, he said, "We've doubled every year in the last five years and we're looking to double again, with an even more global scale."