On Tuesday afternoon, one of the stages at Europe’s biggest fintech event Money 20/20 had a rather unfortunate malfunction.
The “Na.i.ture” stage at the Amsterdam fintech conference has twice now been co-hosted by Aiana, a proprietary AI model built by the show’s organisers to interact with a human cohost to fill the space between sessions. The co-host was built to celebrate last year’s AI-heavy event.
But this year, Aiana didn’t work as intended.
When the on-stage emcee asked what the bot knew about the next speaker and their company, it misunderstood the question, offering only a generic overview of the Amsterdam event (it’s “the ultimate gathering of fintech power players” in case you didn’t know), even struggling to pronounce its name correctly (“Money 20 slash 20”).
While a minor glitch caused no real delays to proceedings, it felt symbolic of the shifting priorities of the event and the wider fintech industry, which appears to be beginning to reckon with the limitations of the buzzy technology.
Last month, Klarna — one of fintech’s biggest proponents of the technology — unveiled plans to slow its AI-driven cost-cutting efforts by recruiting a new division to remote workers in its customer service department.
And while AI was the focus of a fair few panels this year, this year’s event was a return to its fintech roots with bigwigs from traditional banks, financial regulators and fintech execs high on the billing.
The spectre of deregulation
The spectre of the deregulation movement we’ve seen in the US in the wake of Donald Trump’s election also haunted the event, with a number of panels focusing on regulation in Europe.
There was also chatter about stablecoins — a type of cryptocurrency pegged to the value of a fiat currency touted to be the next big thing in payments — at the event, with regulation on both sides of the Atlantic increasing both fintech and institutional confidence in the asset.
“The change in the US from the regulatory and legislative perspective has given institutions confidence they’re not going to be in a legal grey area,” Jess Houlgrave, CEO of crypto user interface company Reown told me.
Still, that’s not to say the event was bereft of the quirks fintech conferences are known for. Turkish authorities last week detained employees of fintech Papara over allegations of money laundering and illegal betting operations. But that didn’t stop the company from being one of the headline sponsors for the event and operating a large booth next to Visa.
But compared to last year, there was a lack of a cohesive narrative bringing the event together. It didn’t help that this was the first time Money 20/20 has had to compete for European fintech attention with SXSW, which made its London debut this week.
While some big-name execs like Monzo’s TS Anil and Starling boss Raman Bhatia were in attendance, Klarna’s Sebastian Siemiatkowski skipped out to attend the week-long event as did 20VC’s Harry Stebbing and Revolut’s chief marketing officer Antoine Le Nel.
And while attendance felt in full swing on Tuesday and Wednesday, crowds seemed to peter out on Thursday. Many of the attendees I spoke to remarked that many of the people they’ve made connections they’ve made were UK-based.
As Tim Chong, CEO of credit card fintech Yonder, said on LinkedIn (and repeated to me in person): “Money2020 is where everyone from London goes to meet each other in Amsterdam.”
With a big brand-new name in tech conferences now in town, Money 20/20’s organisers are likely hoping fintech, much of which is still very UK-focused, doesn’t decide to stay closer to home next year.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/money2020-roundup/
