From AI and embedded finance to the realities of global regulation, last year’s agenda offered a sharp preview of the CFO priorities shaping 2025. Here’s what to keep front of mind before you land in Amsterdam.
As we head into Money 20/20 Europe 2025, The CFO team will be on the ground in Amsterdam, tracking the sessions, speaking to finance leaders, and looking for the real-world takeaways that matter to corporate finance teams.
But before diving into this year’s themes, it’s worth taking stock of the signals that came out of the 2024 event – and why they still matter.
Last year’s theme, Human x Machine, wasn’t just a nod to AI – it was a recalibration. The conversation moved away from AI as a job killer and toward a more nuanced, collaborative framing.
The message: AI works best when paired with human judgment. Keynotes from the likes of Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Mistral AI emphasized the importance of keeping humans in the loop, particularly in decision-heavy areas like compliance, financial planning, and risk management.
For CFOs, that signals a shift in mindset. The question isn’t “What can AI replace?” It’s “What can AI elevate?”
As Patrice Amann of Microsoft put it, “Copilot is a very important word. It’s not an autopilot.” Financial institutions that embraced AI in 2024 weren’t just chasing productivity—they were rethinking how success is measured.
ROI, speakers insisted, should go beyond cost-cutting and include metrics like customer loyalty, employee retention, and long-term agility.
That’s a call to action for finance leaders. As AI budgets grow, so does the need to anchor investments in multi-dimensional performance metrics.
If your team is rolling out intelligent automation across reconciliation, spend management, or reporting, it’s no longer enough to point to efficiency gains. You’ll need a broader framework, one that shows value to customers, regulators, and employees.
Another enduring takeaway from 2024 was the evolution of open banking into something much larger. What began as a compliance-driven initiative is now a driver of new business models.
Last year, exhibitors like Tink, Token.io, and Brite Payments spotlighted account-to-account (A2A) payment infrastructure and embedded finance capabilities.
The conversation moved from APIs to outcomes: credit access, frictionless payments, and personalized customer experiences.
This matters for CFOs not only as a trend, but as a live consideration. Are your payment partners leveraging open banking rails? Is your treasury function exploring A2A options to reduce costs? Are finance systems capturing the new datasets that open APIs enable? These aren’t futuristic questions, but competitive ones.
Cross-border payments also remained high on the agenda. While the tech itself has matured, last year’s panels highlighted that market knowledge, regulation, and customer behavior still create significant friction.
Remittances and real-time settlement were discussed through a strategic lens: how to build partnerships that unlock local access, and how to manage risk while scaling globally.
For CFOs managing multi-jurisdictional operations, this is a clear signal—cross-border payment optimization isn’t just an ops issue, it’s a strategic one.
A similar strategic shift occurred in the fraud and compliance conversation. Instant payments have exposed the limits of legacy fraud models, and the industry response has been swift.
Real-time behavioral analytics, predictive fraud detection, and shared intelligence platforms were all championed in Amsterdam. The key message: fraudsters have gotten smarter and faster.
What does that mean for the office of the CFO? It means that compliance can’t remain reactive.
Finance leaders need to think about fraud prevention as a live investment category – on par with financial reporting, forecasting, and controls. It’s about enabling security teams to get ahead of the threat, not just clean up after it.
Finally, the broader conversation around digital identity, tokenization, and future money is becoming more practical.
Where once central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and tokenized assets were discussed as theoretical ideas, last year’s panels brought the conversation back to real-world implementation challenges: interoperability, regulation, user adoption.
As regulators like the FCA and institutions like Citi voiced caution, hype has given way to execution.
So what’s next? As we look to 2025, the key themes to watch include:
We’ll be covering all of this live from Amsterdam. Make sure you’re subscribed to The CFO newsletter for daily coverage, exclusive interviews, and insights that cut through the noise.