As the Principal Sponsors of Payments International 2015 event, we had a slot to speak on the closing afternoon (I’m never sure if the last afternoon – especially a Friday afternoon – is a blessing or a curse).
One of our biggest clients in the payments industry, Worldpay, offered to join us at the event, so Nick Telford-Reed, their Director of Technology Innovation, and I both spoke on stage.
Fireside chat @Payments_Intl Bradley Howard @bradbox – Endava and Nick Telford-Reed – Worldpay #digital #payments pic.twitter.com/U28zhNjjOP
— endava (@endava) March 20, 2015
When Nick & I met up to discuss what we’d present, we thought that there’s so much going on in the industry, what’s the best way of helping defog the innovation and market trends. So we decided to just talk about it. No PowerPoint, just good old conversation.
We thought we would distil the myriad of payment options into the following categories:
- Crypto-currencies (e.g. Bitcoin)
- Internet of Things (e.g. Wearables)
- Security
- Identity
- Invisible payments
During our session, I asked the audience to put their hands up if they own a Bitcoin. About a quarter of the audience (about 150 people) raised their hands. Bearing in mind these were senior managers inside large banks and financial institutions, specifically at an event about payments, and so many of the presentations over the last four days were about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, this was a poor result.
I call this industry lethargy. My kids call it CBA. At an event like this, the majority of the audience (who I should add, were not asleep) should have experienced Bitcoin from first-hand. Bitcoin is not purely theoretical – the user experience teaches a lot about how Bitcoin works.
Here are the questions which I asked Nick:
- Starting off with Crypto-currencies (e.g. Bitcoin), what’s Worldpay’s viewpoint on Bitcoin, both today and the future?
- Bitcoin has a poor reputation, some very large retailers and media organisations have been compromised, so by opening up more devices, from mobiles to wearables – how does this affect cyber-security?
- We talk about the Internet of Things, but from today’s audience’s perspective we’re probably more interested in wearables than Internet connected traffic lights and dishwashers. How do you think wearables will change payments and banks?
- Another common element we’ve been discussing is “invisible payments”. What does the future look like here?
- Will invisible payments be a real headache with the likelihood of increasing chargebacks?
- Any questions from the audience?
And finally, I asked Nick whether he had any advice for the audience to stay up to date.
The presentation went well. In earlier sessions some of the audience left during the presentation, but with ours I didn’t see anyone leave.
A huge thanks to Nick Telford-Reed for helping with the discussion.