Author

Dan Brightmore

Published

16 December 2025

Estimated Read time

6Mins

FinTech Connect was a crossroads for strategy and execution. Global banks, FinTech challengers, regulators and investors gathered to define 2026 priorities, debate operational challenges and benchmark technology roadmaps.

A Decade of Fintech Innovation

FinTech Connect marked its 10th anniversary at ExCeL London. Drawing 5,000+ industry professionals, 140+ speakers and 100+ exhibitors to explore banking, payments, compliance, digital transformation and blockchain innovation. The co-location with Tokenize: LDN brought deeper coverage of tokenisation and digital-asset infrastructure alongside core FinTech topics.

AI in Fintech: From Vision to Practice

A theme threaded through almost every theatre was AI adoption in financial services. But unlike earlier years’ speculative hype, this edition focused on practical deployment and risk management.

One standout panel, “GenAI That Customers Can Trust: The One Zero Digital Banker Story,” shared how One Zero built responsible generative AI features tailored for banking workflows, emphasising transparency and user trust. Industry leaders underscored that explainability, governance and compliance are no longer optional in enterprise AI.

A direct follow-on session, “How Do We Make AI Responsible in Practice?”, featured Rajeev Chakraborty from the Home Office discussing model governance and ethical safeguards for operational AI—an area rapidly becoming central to CIO and risk officer agendas.

Across both days, panels also explored how AI can reduce backlog in financial institutions, with Santander UK’s Head of AI demonstrating measurable impact on operational efficiency, and tackling tech debt at scale—a perennial challenge heightened by the influx of automation projects.

Key takeaway: AI’s role has shifted from emerging trend to core enterprise infrastructure, but success now hinges on responsible implementation, observable outcomes, and regulatory alignment.

Digital Transformation & Core Banking Strategies

Transforming legacy systems was another anchor topic. The Digital Transformation stage hosted robust discussions around neobanks and challenger strategies, with executives from TSB Bank and HSBC highlighting how incumbents are adopting agile ways of working while balancing risk and customer expectations.

The session “All In on Legacy? Driving Time to Market Without Big-Bang Migrations” resonated with many practitioners: incremental modernisation beats wholesale lift-outs when prioritising stability and customer continuity.

Another practical highlight, “Engineering Productivity Measurement: Traditional Bank to UK’s Largest Fintech,” narrated the journey of building measurable engineering benchmarks to align business goals and product delivery.

Key takeaway: Attendees left with a reinforced understanding that successful transformation blends cultural shift, incremental modernization, and strategic tech investment—not hurried replacement of core systems.

RegTech & Ethical Compliance: Balancing Innovation with Governance

RegTech, Compliance & Security sessions tackled the tension between rapid innovation and tightening regulatory guardrails—a debate central to fintech scaling.

A standout session titled “Ethical AI in Regulatory Technology: Balancing Innovation & Compliance” featured voices from governance, compliance and data-ethics functions. Panelists discussed strategies for embedding fairness, bias mitigation and traceability into machine-assisted workflows—a crucial step for institutions deploying automated decisioning.

Another forward-looking talk, “How Quantum Innovation Will Redefine Regulatory Operations,” examined how future computing paradigms could reshape compliance tooling and data verification—but also stressed the need to prepare today’s infrastructure for tomorrow’s disruptions.

Key takeaway: Compliance isn’t just a cost centre; speakers argued that robust RegTech can be a competitive advantage, reducing risk while enabling faster scaling.

PayTech & eCommerce: Securing the Digital Commerce Era

The PayTech & eCommerce stage delivered insights on securing payment flows and shaping the next wave of commerce innovation.

In “Emerging Global Tech Trends in Payments & Cash Management,” HSBC’s payment leaders unpacked how real-time rails and open APIs are influencing cross-border flows. Fintech Connect 2025

The panel “Transforming Payment Security with AI” brought together payment experts and academics to examine fraud detection innovations—AI-enabled risk scoring, adaptive authentication and cooperative intelligence sharing—as a defence against evolving threats. Fintech Connect 2025

A later session on “Tackling Cyber Threats in a New Era of Digital Payments,” addressed real-time threat detection, third-party risk and securing complex ecosystems, underscoring cybersecurity’s front-and-centre role for digital commerce. Fintech Connect 2025

Key takeaway: Payments remain fertile ground for innovation, but trust and security are foundational determinants of user adoption and ecosystem resilience.

Tokenisation & Blockchain: Institutional Pathways Ahead

The Tokenize: LDN co-located stage brought in robust debate around real-world asset (RWA) tokenization and Web3 infrastructure—not as fringe buzzwords, but as emerging institutional tools.

Panels like “Bridging the RWA Infrastructure Gap” unpacked regulatory friction points and scaling challenges, highlighting custody risk, compliance complexity and standardisation needs—critical prerequisites to institutional adoption.

Another session on “Expanding Investment Opportunities With Fractional Ownership” featured cross-sector thought leaders, including Dr Lisa Cameron (MP & Crypto APPG Chair), exploring how tokenised assets can democratise access to traditionally illiquid markets.

Web3 panels examined trust, privacy and compliance in blockchain ecosystems and navigated the practicalities of smart contracts and decentralised identities—topics that are rapidly gaining traction with enterprise adopters.

A key session, titled Blockchain and CBDCs: At the Heart of Public Transformation? featured NatWest’s Head of Group Payment Strategy Lee McNabb, EY’s Emerging Tech & Innovation Leader Igor Mikhalev and Joy Adams, COO for Digital Assets at Deutsche Bank. A lively debate chaired by CommerzBank’s Poonam Ahuja examined the pros and cons of digital currencies and the rise of stablecoins.

Key takeaway: Tokenisation is still nascent, but panels stressed it’s transitioning into a practical institutional infrastructure conversation, with regulatory clarity and integration tooling cited as catalysts for broader uptake.

Startup Innovation & Demo Highlights

The Innovation & Start Up stage and Start-Up LaunchPad provided rapid-fire exposure to emerging companies pushing the frontier.

Live demos included:

  • DaMoney.ai, showcasing AI-guided compliance workflows;
  • Narrative, an AI-native engagement platform for SMEs;
  • Profylr, offering comprehensive consumer duty landscapes analytics;
  • 3AI, demonstrating self-learning investment intelligence models.

These sessions were among the most interactive parts of the show, with founders directly answering questions on integration, compliance and product-market fit.

Key takeaway: Startups revealed solutions that dovetail with enterprise needs—especially around AML automation, customer engagement and data orchestration—making them compelling partners for larger financial services buyers.

Networking, Community & Celebration

FinTech Connect didn’t just deliver talks; it facilitated dense networking across peer groups, investors, regulators and tech leads. The AI-powered networking app helped attendees pre-book conversations and tailor agendas, turning serendipity into structured discovery.

The 10th anniversary celebration—complete with drinks, a Christmas Market theme and live entertainment—reinforced the community aspect and capped the event on a high note.

Conclusion: A Hard-Working Fintech Forum

FinTech Connect 2025 proved to be more than a conference—it was a strategic inflection point. While technology and vendor showcases were abundant, it was the panel debates and operational talks that delivered the most actionable insight. Attendees departed with:

  • A clearer view of AI adoption roadmaps;
  • Practical frameworks for RegTech and compliance transformation;
  • Nuanced understanding of payments security and real-time rails;
  • Emerging tokenisation playbooks suitable for institutional pilots.

As FinTech leaders prepare 2026 budgets and technology plans, FinTech Connect has reaffirmed itself as a must-attend forum where strategy, innovation and regulation intersect—and where the next decade of financial services will continue to take shape.

  • Artificial Intelligence in FinTech
  • Blockchain & Crypto
  • Events
  • Host Perspectives
  • InsurTech
  • Neobanking

Author

Dan Brightmore

Published

20 February 2025

Estimated Read time

4Mins

Akbar Hussain, Co-founder and Chief Legal & Compliance Officer at TerraPay. on how money is travelling faster and further than ever

In the last few years, we’ve seen capital become increasingly mobile, with ever greater sums of money travelling across national borders. This trend in international payments has largely been shaped by shifting consumer behaviours and needs, an unprecedented global health crisis, technological advancements and the rapid rise of eCommerce. However, just because more of us are doing it, that doesn’t mean international money transfers have become all that much easier or quicker.

International Payments

Sending a digital bank transfer from A to B is one thing. But when you’re sending cash across national borders the complexities are compounded. However, while cross-border money movement can be a challenge, there are opportunities on the other side of the coin. The big prize? A chance to reimagine how money flows. 

In a frictionless world, international payments could, and should, be effortless. But cross-border payments are still bogged down by regulatory demands, technological gaps and transparency issues. Until fairly recently, the word ‘instant’ was not associated with cross-border money transfers.

If we get it right, and substantially ease the difficulties of sending money abroad, we can empower individuals and open up the global economy. Smoother cash flows mean markets can function more effectively, and geographic barriers to wealth and attainment can be broken down. First, it’s incumbent on us to dismantle the following barriers:

Financial Illiteracy

Traditionally, navigating international payments has felt like an exclusive club, accessible only to those fluent in its jargon. From formatting payments correctly to ensuring BIC and IBAN numbers are accurate, it’s easy to see why so many feel excluded.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Streamlined systems can make it easier for people to send their money wherever they want. Moreover, you don’t need to be wealthy or well-heeled for your cash to be a frequent flier.

High Costs

Hitting “pay” on an international transfer can often feel like throwing it into a black hole and hoping for the best. With no tracking or transparency, the money disappears until it finally surfaces in the recipient’s account days later. Transaction fees are high, which can really add up if you’re transferring small payments at a time.

Compliance

As financial regulations tighten to combat fraud and crime, cross-border payments face more scrutiny than ever. Large transfers, in particular, often encounter unexplained delays as banks – yours, intermediary banks, or even the recipient’s – verify the legitimacy of the funds. Customers are rarely kept in the loop. Instead, they’re left waiting, powerless, for their money to clear. It’s an opaque, frustrating experience that feels anything but consumer friendly.

These challenges all pertain to traditional cross-border payments. But what if we thought about these transactions differently? Let’s reimagine cross-border payments in the same way we’ve revolutionised communication. If an SMS can reach anyone, anywhere in the world, instantly, affordably, and without interruptions, why can’t money work the same way?

Digital Wallets

In just over a decade, digital wallets have transformed the financial landscape, connecting millions of unbanked and underbanked individuals to the formal financial system. These tools have proven especially vital for small-value cross-border transfers, which are often critical for families, businesses, and communities. By 2026, global wallet users are projected to exceed 5.2 billion, driving transaction volumes past $12 trillion. These numbers highlight not only the scale of their impact but also the untapped potential for advancing cross-border payments.

The question isn’t whether digital wallets can play a role in cross-border transactions, because we know that they do. The question is how we can maximise their potential across geographies. What does a payment ecosystem look like when wallets are at the heart of it?

Two key factors are essential: building a more comprehensive ecosystem for digital wallets and ensuring greater interoperability between systems. These changes would simplify cross-border transactions for individuals and businesses alike. Creating a global financial environment where sending money is as intuitive as sending a text message.

A thriving digital wallet ecosystem – characterised by low fees, simple interfaces, transparency, and robust security – could redefine how people connect, collaborate, and seize opportunities across borders.

The Future for Payments

To achieve this, the financial industry must come together to dismantle systemic barriers. Interoperability, regulatory alignment, and infrastructure upgrades are essential to creating a unified global payment framework. Advocating for cross-border interoperability at the domestic level, for example, would pave the way for transactions that transcend silos and fit within a globally recognised standard. This would lower costs, reduce risks, and boost the efficiency of cross-border payments.

Digital wallet innovators have an opportunity to bridge the gap left by traditional banks. While established financial institutions bring legacy and scale, they’ve often been slow to innovate in ways that meet the needs of a fast-moving, increasingly interconnected world. For billions of people, the future of finance is already in the palm of their hand. 

  • Digital Payments
  • Neobanking

Author

Dan Brightmore

Published

15 November 2024

Estimated Read time

2Mins

FinTech Connect shapes the future of financial services with the UK’s only full FinTech ecosystem event at London’s Excel December 4-5

Join us as FinTech Connect welcomes world leading Fintechs, Financial Institutions, Challenger Banks, Merchants, Scale-Ups and StartUps, Investors, Accelerators and Media to The ExceL, London. 

FinTech Connect

Each year we welcome visionaries from the UK, Europe and beyond all looking to innovate within the market, expand their footprint and drive businesses forward. The event brings all this under one roof, over two insight-packed days, sparking ideas, forging partnerships and accelerating change. 

Tackling the hottest topics and biggest challenges in the fintech market. Including: embedded finance, Web3, cross-border payments, investment, scaling, Gen AI, crypto, regulation, digital innovation and customer experience (CX).

Our mission is to connect the global thought leaders across the FinTech ecosystem in an event like no other. Set yourself up for a strong 2025 by signing up for the UK’s only full FinTech ecosystem event and join 2,000+ fintech leaders in London.

Insights from FinTech’s biggest names

We’ll be asking the big questions… What AI elements do financial institutions need to follow? Build, buy or partner? What opportunity works best in the modern ecosystem? How are banks advancing their digital transformations in 2024? Who owns the CX?

Gain insights on these topics and more from some of the biggest names in financial services. Speakers include Victoria Cleland, Executive Director – Payments, Bank of England; Rory Tanner, Head of UK Government Affairs at Revolut and Nick Kerrigan, Managing Director, Swift. Thought leaders will also be taking to the stage from HSBC, DZ Bank, Lloyds Banking Group, BT and a host of other leading institutions.

Keep up to date with the latest speakers, discussions and more. Download the full agenda here.

Book your place now!

Visit Fintech Connect to book your place at The Excel now.

For a 20% discount use the code: FS20

The Global FinTech Ecosystem. Connected.

  • Artificial Intelligence in FinTech
  • Event Newsroom
  • Neobanking