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What Is Money20/20? — Part One
By Brandes Elitch
CrossCheck Inc.
T he organizers of Money20/20 (MTT) said, "In
four years, MTT has fundamentally disrupted
the status quo, and established an entirely new
and groundbreaking scale and standard for
payments industry events." This might sound like hyper-
bole, but here are statistics to back it up:
• More than 11,500 attendees, 540 speakers, 3,000
companies in attendance
• A Money Hackathon with 600 participants to
"create new experiences to expand commerce in
previously unseen ways, using Visa's apps" with
$125,000 in cash prizes
• A Startup Pitch 180 for earlier-stage companies,
with 30 firms presenting their businesses in 180
seconds
• A second Startup Pitch 180 for 30 later-stage
companies.
A show that dwarfs others
But there's more: I counted over 400 exhibitors in the exhibit
hall, divided between booths and kiosks, and a Startup
Row featuring 60 presenters. Indeed, the show dwarfs
"traditional" cash management and payment shows I have
attended over the last 20 years.
There were 20 separate tracks, over two full-day and two
half-day sessions. I don't have the space to list all the
tracks, but here are several topics offered, some of which
might surprise you:
• Data and algorithm based innovation
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• Insurance tech
• Legal and regulatory: business issues and fraud
and compliance
• Entrepreneurship and investing
• Risk, security and fraud from an operational
perspective
• New market research
You'd better have walking shoes on because the show is
really big. Also, the Venetian Hotel, where it is held, is
cavernous, which is why this show probably has to take
place in Las Vegas, as there aren't many other places that
could handle the logistics of something this size.
The physical layout was surprisingly compact: sessions
were on four floors connected by escalators, so you didn't
have to walk miles to get to the next session; you could
take the escalator. Kudos to the organizers for getting the
ergonomics right at the show. Sometimes at a conference
in Vegas, you never leave the hotel/conference center. This
was the case here. Distances are deceiving; it is only a
15-minute taxi ride to the airport, but to walk from the
Luxor to the Venetian's exhibit hall takes a full hour.
An air of possibility
Excitement was in the air, as reflected in commentary, such
as this statement from a source who requested anonymity:
"We've entered the most profound era of change for
financial services companies since the 1970s, when we
got ATMs, mutual funds and discount brokers. No firm is
immune from the coming disruption, and every company
must have a strategy to harness the powerful advantages
of the new fintech revolution.
"The battle already underway will create surprising
winners and stunned losers among some of the most
powerful names in the financial world. The most
contentious conflicts will be between startups that
are completely re-engineering decades-old practices,
traditional power players who are furiously trying to
adapt with their own innovations, and total disruption of
established technology and processes."
As you might expect, the focus was on mobile POS, mobile
P2P, gateway vendors, digitizing B2B, mobile wallets, the
Internet of Things and, of course, blockchain.
John Sculley (yes, that John Sculley, "Cola expert" and
ex-Apple CEO) commented about the need for this
conference. He said that while most attendees are used
to working in "linear times," that is, slow and incremental
improvements, we are now living in "exponential times,"