So many conversations, so little time
This was the first conference I have attended since I joined Meniga just over a year ago. I had hoped to catch some of the great speakers who were contributed to the event but the sheer number of people who came to our booth made this quite impossible.
Money 20/20 as a fintech crash course
Although it would have been great to catch the many thought leaders in the digital banking space, the event was something like getting a crash course in the fintech industry. We met people from all over the world who play varied roles in the industry. I was expecting mostly to meet people representing US banks and credit unions. There were many of those of course, but we met so many people from Latin and Central America, Asia and Europe.
A melting pot of ideas
The conference showed how Fintech is a melting pot of ideas. People from many different companies and countries came to us with a fantastic variance of use cases, issues, potential solutions. ideas for collaborations or ideas for new products. If you doubt that fintech is a hotbed of innovation, think again.
Do you want engagement with that banking app?
The overall themes of the things that people talked about were, however, familiar to us. Pros in the financial industry want to offer their customers engaging apps with great looking transactions. They want to show customers granular information about their finances, they want to enable them to act upon this information and give people great financial advice.
Download Insight Paper on Meaningful Engagement in Digital Banking
Geek out on transactions with me
A lot of financial institutions wanted to hear about how Meniga does data consolidation and transaction enrichment. When I showed them about how Meniga had correctly enriched (merchant mapped and categorized) my transactions from such different places as Vilnius, London, and Boston, they were geeky enough to share my thrill.
Find a pot of gold in your banking data
Another hot topic was creating value from data. I was happy to share how we have been able to help a bank triple the number of credit card upgrades. Banks were also super interested in being able to run engagement campaigns for well-defined customer segments with a similar interface like Facebook ads or Google ads.
Talking banking business models
Business models were, of course, a big thing at Money 20/20 in Las Vegas. Many banks were super interested in creating engagement with financial challenges that drive the uptake of deposit products. Being able to engage with people when they are highly motivated to take financial decisions is a key differentiator in today’s competitive environment.
Download Insight Paper on Data-Driven Business Models in Digital Banking
Rewarding conversations
But perhaps the hottest thing we demonstrated was our transaction-based rewards platform. This is already live in Sweden in Finland. It is a great way for banks to create new revenue sources while delivering great value for both businesses and people.
The future is so bright, I got to wear shades
That brings me to assert that the future of banks is a lot brighter than a lot of people think. All the representatives of financial institutions we spoke to at Money 20/20 in Las Vegas were driven to create innovative business models and ecosystems that benefit all participants.
The race is on
The excitement around Open Banking encapsulates this. The many banking professionals I spoke to, are excited about enriching their banking apps with data from other financial institutions and even other data sources. Their objective was clear: win in the growing competition about the best customer experience. I guess the race is on.
Download Insight Paper on Innovating with Open Banking
About Money 20/20
The 2019 Money 20/20 event in Las Vegas brings together more than 6,000 financial services professionals, investors, fintechs and more. The event is the doorway to the epicenter of the Payments, Banking, Fintech and Financial Services ecosystem.