Merchant Payments Ecosystem 2025
Last week, David headed to Berlin for one of his favourite events of the year Merchant Payments Ecosystem 2025! And what a busy week it was, from opening the show, to podcasts to roundtables and panel sessions and then closing the show with the infamous conference outcomes session.
The Big Talk: Wallets, Stablecoins and Identity
Merchant Payments Ecosystem 2025 kicked off with a panel entitled The Big Talk which was a deep dive into the future of merchant payments with industry thought leaders covering off wallets, stablecoins and identity.
David moderated an insightful panel of:
- Wally Mlynarski – Bank of America
- Ugne Buracience – Payabl
- Brice van de Walle – Core Product Lead, Mastercard
- Stefan Hölscher – OTTO Payments
- Nikogiannis Karantzis – ISX Financial
Roundtable: The European Digital Identity Wallet
David hosted the roundtable all about the European Digital Identity Wallet. The goal of the roundtable was to brainstorm a few ideas about how the payments industry can benefit from its deployment. Is it really true that “ Identity in the new money” and a standard European digital identity wallet will completely change the payments industry? Or will a new parallel payments sub-sector grow up to use the new infrastructure? The roundtable discussed the relationship between the EU digital identity wallet and different positions in the payments value chain and the group came up with some use cases for it beyond what is envisaged today!
Interview: Fintech Power 50 x MPE 2025
Next up, David popped over to the media lounge to be interviewed by Alex Rolfe at The Fintech Power 50.
Podcast: The Executives
This short interview by Majid Mahmood, host of The Executives podcast and recorded at the Fime x Consult Hyperion stand covered what Fime x Consult Hyperion does and what brought them to Merchant Payments Ecosystem 2025 and the trends Davis is seeing in the industry today.
Dinner: Fime X Consult Hyperion
At the Fime x Consult Hyperion dinner, David gave out copies of his latest book, Money In The Metaverse, and gave a talk to accompany it which James Lloyd succinctly summed up as: “Long story short: “the bots are coming!”
Panellist: Embedded Payments
This Embedded Payments session moderated by Dr Carlos Nasher and featuring our very own David Birch as well as Pragya Jauhari of Booking.com, Tom Ronayne of LHV, Oliver Cousens of TrueLayer and Maurice Jongmans of Online Payment Platform.
covered the rebundling of payments with modular components, embedded finance as the pathway for achieving hyper-personalised experiences for customers, the benefits of merging the likes of banking, lending, insurance, and investment services into the embedded payments offerings and the latest API innovations and business models.
Interview: MPE 2025 Key Takeaways
David quickly popped along to the main stage between sessions to be interviewed by fellow Merchant Payments Ecosystem Advisory Board member, Dwayne Gefferie. The two discussed their key takeaways from this year’s conference.
Moderator: Wallets, Apps & Payments
This session featuring panellists Soner Canko of Fintech Istanbul, Branislav Straka of CSOB Financial group, Arda Cagaptay of Delivery Hero and Arnaud Crouzet of Fime discussed:
- Who will be top of the wallet in the future?
- How does this affect payment mix / cost / risk for Merchants?
- Loyalty programs and personalization driving the next generation of digital wallets
- Unlocking the full potential of digital wallets through seamless integration across platforms
- Apple NFC transactions using the Secure Element
Panellist: Innovation in the World of Payments
This session at Merchant Payments Ecosystem was moderated by David’s good friend, Flavia Alzetta and covered off which technologies and innovations are set to revolutionize payment processes and the payment innovations and their impact on consumer behaviour and merchant strategies. The panel also featured Serhii Makarenko of PrivatBank, Janine Kaiser of The Payments Association EU, Simon Redfern of TESOBE and Jianmin (James) Yang of UnionPay.
The Closing Session: Merchant Payments Ecosystem 2025 Conference Outcomes
Traditionally attended by the hardcore in the payments industry who are truly interested in the learnings from the 3 day event, David moderated the final panel of the conference all about its outcomes.
David was joined on stage by fellow co-host Dr Ruth Wandhofer, Bart Szypowski of DisputeHelp, Amatran Gupta of Worldline and Petar Dakovic of Get Your Guide. The panel discussed how wallets, identity and stablecoins were the upcoming trends to look out for in the world of payments.