PUBLISHED: 25 February 2020 AUTHOR: FINTECH CIRCLE After over a year of crowdsourcing a global network of payment thought leaders to write The PAYTECH Book, the day had come for us to meet each other in person and celebrate the official launch in London. The initial call for co-authors of the book was shared across the wider FINTECH Circle community which resulted in 170 submitted proposals. Our editors Susanne Chishti, CEO, of FINTECH Circle, Tony Craddock, Director General of Emerging Payments Association, Robert Courtneidge, CEO of Moorwand, Markos Zachariadis, Full Professor and Greensill Chair in Financial Technology Information Systems at Alliance Manchester Business School, had the difficult task of shortlisting the abstract. In the end, 76 authors were selected and invited to officially contribute to The PAYTECH Book. Our authors flew in from Sydney, Mumbai, Delhi, Toronto and all across Europe for the book launch on 17 February 2020 in London, which was followed by the PAYTECH Innovation Conference.

The PAYTECH Book covers:

• Payments explained
• Payment System Infrastructures and Money Transfer Technologies
• Payment regulation and compliance
• Blockchain regulation all around the world
• Payments in Practise
• Blueprint for Change

With an afternoon of keynotes and an evening of drinks and networking ahead of us, our co-authors and editors joined forces once again and signed over a hundred books to share amongst those who had helped to produce this latest instalment of the FINTECH Book series. PAYTECH Book editors Robert, Susanne, Tony and Markos talked about the origins of the book from it’s inception through to editing the final draft and publishing with Wiley. A fantastic afternoon concluded with an evening of networking drinks where individual stories of collaboration and payments innovation were shared amongst friends of the FINTECH Circle Book series. We were thrilled to be a part of such unity and positivity amongst our growing fintech community. Rarely do we see this level of commitment to a common cause in finance and payments. Many thanks to our partner Societe Generale who hosted the event in their new building in London, Canary Wharf and our sponsor Mastercard.  The evening concluded with a group shot honouring International Women’s Day on 8 March. The next day started early at Societe Generale for the PAYTECH Innovation Conference. With a break in the recent storms there were great views across the district and City welcoming our guests energised for an agenda packed with paytech experts passionate about the future of payments. Many thanks to our partners who made this possible: Mastercard, Emerging Payments Association (EPA), Electronic Transaction Association (ETA), Fintech Finance, Financial Services Club, LATOKEN, PAY360, and Financial IT. With paytech panels waiting in the wings, Edoardo Volta of Mastercard opened the conference with a keynote address highlighting the Top 10 Payment Predictions for 2020. These included P2P payments becoming the new anchor for customer acquisition and better and cheaper POS systems to transform the store merchant experience. The theme of future payment trends was carried on by a thought provoking panel session moderated by Tony Craddock. The second panel of the day looked into payment systems infrastructures and money transfer technology moderated by Markos Zachariadis with panellists Julian Sawyer, Managing Director, Europe at Gemini, James Green, VP Innovator and Intrapreneur, Societe Generale and Mel Tsiaprazis, Group COO from Crown Agents Bank. The next to be welcomed onto the stage to discuss new technologies shaping the future of payments were Muhammad Asim, Founder, Arro Money, Ekaterina Safonova, CS Consulting & Advisory Ltd, Prem Barthasarathy, Managing Partner, Pontaq and Anna Tsyupko, CEO, Paybase. Finally, it was great pleasure to be part of a live recorded podcast Fintech Unplugged with varied points of view on the future of cryptoassets regulation from Suresh Vaghjiani, CEO & Co-Founder, Tribe Payments, Robert Courtneidge, CEO of Moorwand, James Burnie, Head of Blockchain and Cryptoassets, Eversheds Sutherland and a lawyer Bruna Jachemet Esin. Both days stood as an ongoing testament to collaboration being at the core of fintech innovation. Paytech now stands at taking a 50% share of the fintech ecosystem connecting consumers and businesses across borders. In the book and during conversations financial inclusion was a hot topic with paytech now able to provide the unbanked an entry point into financial services and small businesses new revenue streams. We now look forward to The AI Book launch event on 21 May 2020 in London, which will look at the ways artificial intelligence will impact financial services, with fintech innovation taking a quantum leap into the next generation of products and services. To join the celebrations book your ticket here. The launch will be followed by the inaugural xAI Conference on 22 May – find out more and book your tickets here!