The stack, the subscription, and the stablecoin - Money 20/20, Day 2

By mid-morning on Day 2 at Money20/20 Europe, it was hard not to overhear a recurring refrain in the RAI Centre’s corridors: “If the rails don’t hold, nothing else matters.”

From Monzo’s CEO TS Anil detailing why his bank built every line of code in-house, to Adobe’s Matt Wegner warning that no payment method survives without subscription-ready plumbing, and LexisNexis’s Rocio Suarez cautioning that instant transfers only heighten money-laundering risks, the day’s discussions left no room for ambiguity.

For finance leaders, the takeaway was unmistakable: innovation must stand on a foundation of resolute infrastructure and iron-clad compliance—or it simply won’t stick.

1. Monzo’s Mission and Moat

Monzo’s fireside chat—with CEO TS Anil and Bain’s Jeff Tijssen—set the tone early. Anil, who has led Monzo since 2021, did more than celebrate record-setting metrics (12 million customers, £1.2 billion in revenue, and 16.6 billion in deposits). He explained why Monzo insists on owning its entire tech stack rather than bolting an app on top of legacy systems.

“In 2024, we handled £16.6 billion in deposits at five-nine uptime. That’s a 35-second blip in 525,600 minutes,” Anil said. “When customers trust you with their money, every second offline costs more than any feature you could ship.”

That “Stand-In” feature—automatic transaction rerouting during outages—underscores Monzo’s belief that infrastructure is mission-critical.

Anil argued that Monzo’s custom microservices, built from Day 1, allowed the bank to function uninterrupted when incumbents went dark earlier this year. For CFOs, that sets a high bar: Can your payment processing or core banking layer claim similar resilience?

The other half of Monzo’s moat is a mission-driven product DNA. “We don’t seek to arbitrage ignorance. Every feature must reduce anxiety or give customers genuine choice,” Anil explained.

Customizable gambling blocks, one-pound-minimum investing, and real-time budgeting tools aren’t revenue grabs; they are trust anchors.

Takeaway: If your product doesn’t solve real problems—or at least empower your customers—don’t expect loyalty or word-of-mouth acquisition.

2. Payments Reality Check

Less than an hour later, PPRO’s CEO Motie Bring chaired a panel featuring Eric Tak (ECB/ING), Martina Weimert (EPI), and Matt Wegner (Adobe). The verdict: surveys lie, merchants matter, and habit trumps novelty.

Tak, who helped launch iDEAL, confided that consumer research predicted lukewarm demand—but iDEAL exploded anyway.

“Consumers may say they don’t need a new method, but then they adopt en masse when utility aligns,” Tak said. The lesson for CFOs: measure behavior, not opinions.

Wegner, responsible for Adobe’s payment strategy, drove home the merchant-pull imperative. “For us, recurring B2C subscriptions are bread and butter. If a new method can’t handle automated, ten-million-customer pulls, it’s dead on arrival,” he said.

In short: design rails for subscriptions first; one-off purchases are table stakes.

Weimert suggested “use-case shortcuts” to scale. Embedding payments in daily activities—transit, EV charging, streaming—creates instant frequency.

“Look at Starbucks Wallet: daily coffee, loyalty points, frictionless reloads. That’s how you acquire and retain volume,” she noted.

Takeaway: Focus on high-frequency verticals to win adoption.

Subscription friction also surfaced as a hidden tax. Wegner observed that mandatory one-click cancels help consumers but force merchants to rework retention strategies on the fly.

“Regulators want frictionless exits; merchants need a path to salvage those revenue streams.” CFOs must weigh the cost of churn against the value of convenience.

3. Digital Money’s New Frontiers

Post-lunch, Solana’s Maya Caddle moderated “The Future of Digital Money: Who Wins?,” featuring Patrick Agopian (Credit Agricole), Iana Dimitrova (OpenPayd), and Julian Sawyer (Zodia Custody).

The underlying message: stablecoins are real, CBDCs are coming, and compliance is now part of the rails.

Sawyer, whose custody shop backs tokens with top-tier banks, asserted that stablecoins have migrated from fringe to mainstream.

“If I can pay a supplier in Amsterdam USDC, and it lands in Singapore in seconds with 5 bps of spread, why go through SWIFT and 75 bps of fees?” he asked.

CFOs should model stablecoin corridors—initially in commercial treasury flows—rather than consumer wallets.

Agopian positioned the digital euro as “a work in progress,” but noted the ECB is already designing an account-to-account acceptance layer to compete with closed-loop card rails.

“We’re not trying to eliminate banknotes, but we must offer a resilient digital fallback,” he said. Europay, Mastercard, and Visa may not enjoy that luxury in perpetuity.

Dimitrova hashed out the two-sided conundrum: new rails must serve both merchant and consumer.

“Emerging payment methods often focus on point-of-sale experiences, but if they can’t handle a recurring subscription pull from a streaming giant, they’re irrelevant,” she said. Early pilots at EPI pivot around streaming and SaaS verticals, where failure isn’t an option.

On compliance, all three agreed that “programmable tokens” must bake in KYC/AML checks. Agopian highlighted ECB working groups that gather issuers, acquirers, open banking players, merchants, and consumers to codify on-chain AML rules before launch.

Sawyer described “real-time, on-chain screening” as inevitable. For CFOs, that means token design must account for regulatory gates, not just market share.

4. IFX Payments’ Scale Play

In an exclusive interview, Will Marwick (CEO) and Adam Dowling (COO) explained IFX’s ascent from an FX brokerage to a full-service “alternative banking partner” for EMIs and PSPs.

Since snagging an EMI license in 2018, IFX has deployed virtual IBANs, multi-currency accounts, and embedded FX. Their sales pitch to CFOs: a plug-and-play treasury toolkit that sidesteps legacy bank bottlenecks.

AI in compliance was a headline: integrating Intrepid Fox’s AI engine cut false positives by 40 percent and reduced manual transaction reviews by half. “Clients don’t care if AI sits backstage; they care that we spot suspicious flows faster and at lower cost,” Marwick said.

Next up: IFX’s acquisition of Gen X PLC, expected to close by Q1 2026. The deal will double IFX’s headcount (220 ? 400), add structured products to its roster, and give it regulatory wings in the Netherlands and Australia.

“It’s a launchpad for global scale,” Dowling said. CFOs watching consolidation will note how nimble, EMI-driven firms are gobbling up regulatory licenses that banks once jealously guarded.

5. Compliance as a Differentiator

From LexisNexis Risk Solutions, Rocio Suarez, Financial Crime Compliance Director (EMEA), offered a harsh truth: instant, digital payments amplify AML/CTF risk.

With PSD3 mandating 24/7, sub-five-second euro transfers, banks must screen inbound credit transfers in real time—which most cannot do today.

“If someone initiates a €10,000 credit transfer at 11:59 p.m. Sunday, can you stop it before it lands? The majority of institutions simply lack the real-time screening engines. That’s a strategic vulnerability,” Suarez warned.

Suarez argued that “perpetual KYC”—a unified, always-on view of each customer—has moved from “nice-to-have” to “nonnegotiable.”

“Siloed KYC or fraud teams will miss complex linkages between accounts, transactions, and new digital wallets. You need a 360-degree lens that spans onboarding, screening, and monitoring,” she said.

Finally, Suarez highlighted how AI-driven screening can reduce false positives by up to 50 percent in early pilots.

But she insisted that any AI must be “auditable, adaptable, and data-governed.” For CFOs, that means budgets must fund enterprise-wide data lakes and cross-department data collaboration, not just bolt-on detection engines.

6. ING’s AI in the Field

Bahadir Yilmaz, Chief Analytics Officer at ING, described how the bank moved from AI skepticism to enterprise-wide trust in under twelve months.

ING’s pilot portfolio spanned eight domains: contact centers, KYC workflows, AML analytics, personalized marketing, mortgage advice, and wholesale banking.

“We discovered that if AI delivers genuine customer value—like cutting mortgage approval times by 50 percent—clients don’t care if a machine is involved. But generic AI outreach emails? Nobody responds to those,” Yilmaz said.

ING is prioritizing AI-driven mortgage and investment advice by year-end.

As Europe’s largest mortgage originator, ING can feed its proprietary credit data into AI models, producing near-instant, personalized loan quotes. Early tests show a 17 percent lift in closure rates when applications shrink from five days to two hours.

Despite high internal AI confidence, Yilmaz cautioned that “data readiness remains a bottleneck.” Even at ING, “our legacy rails still treat data as an afterthought.

Banks that invested in data governance five years ago are now sprinting; the rest are playing catch-up.” For CFOs, the imperative is clear: allocate capital to clean data before chasing flashy AI pilots.

7. Delta Capita’s Data Foundation

Michael Levens, who heads Data, Tech, AI & Payments at Delta Capita, sketched a three-pillar strategy—consulting, managed services, and in-house FinTech products—built around “mutualizing services across the financial value chain.”

Recent wins include replatforming HSBC’s OCC derivatives back-office (350 staff) and revitalizing London Stock Exchange post-trade systems.

Levens unveiled Delta Capita’s AI risk assessment toolkit, a rapid diagnostic for EU AI Act compliance. “We asked 30 banks if they’d pass today. Twenty-seven would fail,” he said.

The discovery has spawned urgent data governance projects, as clients scramble to align with impending AI regulations.

On stablecoins, Levens sees initial traction in corporate corridors—payroll, supplier invoices, intercompany settlements—where treasurers already grasp rails and FX risk.

“A .02 percent savings on a $1 million payment is a $2,000 line-item win. That’s easier to justify than a consumer app that offers ‘faster checkout.’” CFOs should map high-value corridors and run stablecoin proofs of concept against legacy flows.

Last, Levens teased a major acquisition—a market-infrastructure tech play that will bring customers, licenses, and regulatory scope.

“In weeks, we’ll announce a bolt-on that doubles our scale by mid-2026,” he said. For CFOs, Delta Capita’s growth illustrates how service providers with mutualized infrastructure are gorging on regulated assets once jealously held by banks.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s coverage!

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