European Tour: Payments, CBDC & Metamoney

by | Sep 15, 2023 | Events

David Birch presenting on stage at the Banking Scene BBQ event

European Tour

It’s been a very busy week for David Birch as he’s been on a European tour stopping in Rotterdam to talk payments, Brussels to talk CBDC as well as money in the Metaverse and Amsterdam to chat crypto and CBDC!

Rotterdam

The first stop on this week’s European tour was Rotterdam with David’s Consult Hyperion hat on where Dave moderated a couple of sessions:

Image of bio images of the 4 speakers in the Digital Euro Session

  • Digital Euro and its new legislative framework touching on: the Distribution of Digital Euro and how it will work?, Customer Protection and Liability and the Customer Journey and how the use of Digital Euro makes payments easier. Panellists included Nilixa Devlukia – CEO of Payments Solved, Ella Adler – Regulatory & Oversight Affairs Counsel at EBA Clearing and Edwin Sanders – Lead Strategy Payments at Rabobank. Afterwards, David commented “Fortunately the debate was civilised although I have to say that I’m not clear on how exactly the digital euro will pan out. But Nilixa Devlukia Ella Adler and Edwin Sanders gave informed and interesting perspectives and they know far more about it than I do.”

David Birch on stage with other panellists for the tokenisation session

  • Beyond Cards: Tokenization which covered Tokenization v Network Tokens, Collaboration Between Merchants and Issuers and Delegated Authentication. Panellists included Thomas Pappas – Corporate Director at Insparx, Chris Thompson – Director of Digital Payments at United Airlines and Christian Rau – Senior Vice President Fintech and Crypto Enablement Europe at Mastercard.

 

Brussels

Image of David Birch and other panellists taking part in the chat on Building Blocks for a successful future proof construct of money

The next stop on David Birch’s European tour was Brussels where he took the audience on a journey into the not-so-far away future and explored new forms of money and their potential impact on our daily lives in his thought provoking keynote “Metamoney – Payments in the Metaverse”.

Before that, David moderated a panel on the “Building Blocks for a Successful Future-Proof Construct of Money” with Tim Hermans, Director, National Bank of Belgium, Maria Staszkiewicz, Secretary General at European Digital Finance Association and Tom Lambrecht, Country Head Benelux & Nordics, Sopra Banking Software in a session that was packed full of insights.

Amsterdam

Stop 3 on the European Tour: XFW23 advert with images of various speakers

Stop 3 on the European Tour

The last stop of David’s European tour was Amsterdam where he headed to Amsterdam Fintech Week’s XFW23 Event. This year the event focused on ‘From Meta Fintech to Impact Fintech’ and explored market developments through these two lenses: meta fintech (enhancing business with financial technology) and impact fintech (using tech for positive customer and societal outcomes). This shift towards impact
fintech addresses pressing global challenges, driven by the financial sector’s essential role. With rising demand for values-aligned products, impact fintech offers new opportunities for companies and investors to create measurable positive change.

David sat down with Mastercard’s Senior Vice President Crypto and Fintech Enablement Europe, Christian Rau, to chat all things Crypto and CBDC.