Trust, scale, and the real future of fintech - Money 20/20, Day 3
The final day of Money20/20 Europe 2025 didn’t fade out quietly. The final sessions stripped away hype to reveal what fintech leaders actually plan to do next.
And The CFO was right there on stage to ask the hard questions. Our own Editor-in-Chief, Marina Mouka, moderated a candid conversation with senior finance leaders from Payhawk, Starship Technologies and Dott on how CFOs will really use AI – from pinpointing the right tools to making targeted hires that drive measurable growth.
Across the venue, one common thread connected the standout sessions: fintech’s future belongs not to those making the most noise, but to those building with discipline. Where Day 1 was about vision and Day 2 about friction, Day 3 delivered strategy – and in more than one panel, reality checks.
From Checkout.com’s Rory O’Neill warning against “feature list fatigue” to bunq’s Ali Niknam redefining stablecoins as tools of economic dignity, here’s the kind of grounded insight CFOs crave – and rarely get.
Marketing’s Mandate: Cut Complexity, Not Corners
In a 1:1 interview that stood out for its unflinching honesty, Rory O’Neill, CMO of Checkout.com, laid out a threefold mandate for modern marketers: “fuel the pipeline, build the brand, inspire the team.” But in an enterprise-grade fintech stack that now spans acquiring, issuing, fraud, AI routing, and beyond, simplicity isn’t a luxury – it’s survival.
“When tech grows more complex, marketing has to simplify,” O’Neill said. “Nobody buys ten features. They buy one promise they can trust.”
That promise, increasingly, is measured in deal velocity. Checkout now attributes revenue impact not just to campaign clicks, but to shortened sales cycles and improved deal size – metrics CFOs can take to the board.
Scaling Internationally? Get Local, or Go Home
“Organic first, acquisition second,” said Alexandre Prot, CEO of Qonto, and Ingo Uytdehaage, CEO of Adyen, during a session on international growth. Both stressed that winning new markets isn’t about splashing capital—it’s about getting licensed, staying nimble, and integrating deeply without importing legacy baggage.
Uytdehaage underscored the role of local licenses in Europe and abroad:
“A banking license gives you the flexibility to build what your customers really want—without middlemen.”
Prot, whose startup is IPO-bound, was candid:
“We still need to scale a lot before we go public. You only get one shot at that.”
The caution was clear: don’t mistake headcount for readiness, or funding for sustainability.
Partnerships Aren’t Paperwork – They’re Product
One of the more pragmatic panels—How to Create and Leverage FinBank Partnerships—cut through the hype. Nium’s Alex Johnson summed up the new reality:
“You have to stand out enough for a bank to endure six months of onboarding. Maybe more.”
Banks, still wedded to legacy infrastructure, aren’t agile by nature. Fiserv’s John Power noted that fintechs can add value “at the front end” of those systems, creating scalable, cross-border products on top of core platforms. But the partnerships that work now aren’t just handshake deals—they’re aligned on KPIs and shared customer metrics.
In a crowded session on platformification, panelists agreed: embedded finance isn’t a product category, it’s an expectation.
Mangopay’s Zack Powers noted that “most platforms are diversifying revenue—and fintech is moving from auxiliary to primary.” Pipe CMO Amy Loh added that small businesses want “fewer stitched-together tools, more holistic platforms.”
And independent consultant Hiba Chamas reminded the audience that regional nuances still matter: “Embedded finance will look different in Dubai than it does in Dublin.”
NASA Lessons from a New Kind of Launchpad
Lisa Valencia, formerly of NASA and now of Pioneering Space LC, delivered the day’s most unexpected—but perhaps most relevant—lesson: when regulation can’t keep up, invent around it. She likened private space partnerships to fintech’s evolving ecosystem:
“Back in the day, NASA got 4% of the national budget. Now it’s 0.1%. SpaceX thrived because we couldn’t go it alone anymore.”
Her anecdote on colonizing the moon’s south pole to mine hydrogen drew chuckles, but her underlying point was serious: innovation survives best in hybrid models—and that’s a framework fintechs would do well to replicate.
Neobanks Are Not Dead
Ali Niknam, founder of bunq, offered a rare view inside a profitable neobank. And unlike some peers, he’s not chasing hypergrowth at the expense of stability.
With AI baked into customer support, trading, and multilingual UX, bunq is gearing up for UK and US expansion. Niknam also delivered one of the day’s more philosophical soundbites:
“Stablecoins are just another abstraction layer—like fiat currencies themselves. In places like Zimbabwe, they’re not theoretical. They’re survival.”
The message? Real financial innovation doesn’t show up in pitch decks. It shows up in seconds saved, fees cut, and users retained.
The ‘F’ in Fintech Still Fighting for Space
A late-stage panel on gender equity—Putting the F in Fintech—brought overdue realism.
Iana Dimitrova of OpenPayd noted that being underestimated can sometimes be useful—if you “leave the ego at the door and just execute.” Megan Cooper of Caywood warned against self-categorizing:
“Don’t call yourself a female leader. Operate as an equal.”
And Valerie Kontor of Black in Fintech gave the audience a final metric to remember:
“Only 53% of Black women over 60 have enough to retire. We need to marry who’s in fintech with who we’re supposed to serve.”
It was a sobering reminder that transformation isn’t just technical—it’s cultural.
A Final Note on the Mood
The crowd thinned by late afternoon, but the conversations didn’t lose heat. “Simplify as you scale” echoed from more than one corner of the venue, and leaders looked noticeably more grounded than on Day 1. Call it pragmatism. Or, more likely, maturity.
After three days of flash and forecasts, Day 3 brought the kind of clear-eyed strategy CFOs can build real budgets around. If Day 1 showed us the hype, and Day 2 the cracks in the rails, Day 3 gave us a map forward—with fewer slogans and more substance.
That’s a wrap on Money20/20 Europe 2025. The stages are quiet, the coffee carts closed. But the themes – trust, scale, real-world impact – will linger in boardrooms far beyond Amsterdam. If you missed it, here are the wrap-ups of Day 1 & Day 2. Until next year!
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