One of the best things about the payments industry is the events. From large-scale conferences to focused summits, they’re the perfect opportunity to bring us all together and find out what topics are at the top of everyone’s mind.

So far in 2025, the events have been coming thick and fast, and we’ve learnt a lot.

If you couldn’t attend every event, we’ve summarised what the biggest themes we’ve seen are, as well as what the TrueLayer team were talking about.

Where have we been in 2025?

ICE:📍Barcelona

We began the year attending ICE, the leading international gaming event in its new home, Barcelona. Held over three days, ICE is the perfect opportunity for operators and payment providers alike to showcase innovative solutions, technology, and valuable insights, while catching up with peers across the gaming industry.

A growing appetite for Pay by Bank across Europe

From our conversations, it was clear that numerous gaming operators have seen huge success with Pay by Bank. Because of this, there is a strong appetite to offer Pay by Bank in multiple geographies to give users a local payment option. Similarly, because of the success to date, many operators asked about innovation. What is the next iteration of open banking? What’s the next solution that can help us? We discussed our Signup+ solution, which combines onboarding and first-time deposit in one simple flow as an example.

The TrueLayer team was exhausted at the end of the three days, but it was the perfect opportunity to catch up with everyone. In a world where conference calls now rule, you simply can’t beat face-to-face chats.

Smarter Payments Summit:📍London

Following ICE, we attended the Smarter Payments Summit, which offers senior payment and fraud specialists the opportunity to discuss all of the latest developments, as well as turn their attention to the future.

TrueLayer’s UK Public Policy Lead, Megan Coulson, spoke on the Payment regulation in 2025 and beyond’ panel, where she discussed the regulatory priorities for the UK to become a world-leading payments ecosystem.

During the panel, there were a lot of questions around where open banking and Pay by Bank fit into the overall UK government strategy for payments. Is the UK government championing it? Are they encouraging regulatory changes to fuel its growth?

Navigating the National Payments Vision

Well, in the National Payments Vision (NPV), which sets out the regulatory framework for payments, open banking is mentioned 61 times. It’s clear that they see it as an area worth focusing on. Specifically, it envisions account-to-account payments powered by open banking to be seamless and ubiquitous. This essentially means that in all the ways we use our cards, we should also be able to use Pay by Bank, which will drive choice for consumers in how they pay, and an important choice for merchants in how they accept payments.

We have some way to go to make this a reality, but we’ve seen a huge shift in regulatory momentum since the Vision was published, with progress from the FCA, PSR, and Bank of England. This is translating into Pay by Bank already accounting for over 27 million transactions a month in the UK alone, with over 9 million Brits using it every month.

Merchant Payment Ecosystem (MPE):📍Berlin

Next, we attended MPE Berlin, which brings together around 1,400 merchants and suppliers from across Europe all under one roof. MPE’s longevity is impressive. It’s been running for 18 years, bringing together the brightest minds and introducing groundbreaking innovations to help shape the future of payments.

Lisa Scott’s — TrueLayer’s Chief Strategy Officer — keynote on 5 reasons you don't need open banking, was tagged as one of the sessions to watch before the event. In keynote, Lisa presented five challenges she hears regularly about why Pay by Bank might not work, candidly exploring whether each challenge was a reality, a myth, or somewhere in between.

If you’re interested in finding out where each challenge landed, you can watch the full keynote here.

Consumer protection: debunking a myth

One clear takeaway from MPE is that attendees are keen to learn more about consumer protections in Pay by Bank. The more Pay by Bank grows and the more checkout share it takes in ecommerce, the more consumer protection will be raised. And this interest is justified.

Therefore, it’s important to address the common misconception that Pay by Bank’s lack of a chargeback mechanism sees consumers less protected than when they use cards.

In fact, with Pay by Bank, if something goes wrong with your payment (e.g. wrong amount taken or duplicate payment), you have the exact same legal protections you have with any other payment option: you can get a refund from your bank.

This is because the financial regulation that makes Pay by Bank possible prioritises safety and security of payments. Pay by Bank does not involve sharing any card or security details online — so unauthorised transactions (where card details are stolen to make purchases) are practically a thing of the past.

Merchant Risk Council:📍Barcelona

Merchant Risk Council was next, a flagship event where industry professionals meet to help shape the future of ecommerce. The event was made up of several keynotes, hands-on workshops and breakout sessions, designed to tackle the most pressing challenges in ecommerce. It’s safe to say the main theme was collaboration.

When the lights came back on after an unexpected — and well-documented — power outage, Nadja Bennett, TrueLayer’s Strategic Accounts Director and event veteran, hosted a talk with Papa Johns, Kingfisher, and payment orchestration platform Br-dge titled Is the future of checkout Pay by Bank?.

It was great to hear the whole panel's thoughts on the topic, in particular Eamon Lindsell from Papa Johns, who spoke about the results he was seeing with TrueLayer’s Pay by Bank solution to date. He highlighted that they have achieved reduced fraud, high organic adoption rates without any incentives (which is planned for the next phase of growth), and significant cost savings. Eamon delves into all of this in more detail in a recent conversation.

Pay by Bank adoption: more consumer education is needed

Amongst many of the industry professionals we spoke to, it was clear that consumer education is critical to drive adoption of Pay by Bank.

The number of consumers paying with Pay by Bank across the UK and Europe is unquestionably growing. TrueLayer alone processed $10 billion in payments last month. Yet, there is still room for improvement.

Challenges were raised around inclusion. For example, some consumers are reluctant to move away from card payments. It’s important that Pay by Bank providers, including TrueLayer, educate these individuals so they can transition to a new way of paying successfully. The early signs of the consumer marketing and incentives campaigns we are running with our merchants are yielding good results.

Payment leaders summit:📍London

The Payment Leaders Summit brought together solution providers and payment leaders across the ecommerce and financial services industries. This event allows leaders to network with senior peers in a more relaxed environment.

VRP opportunities in the pipeline

We chatted to many attenedees about what the upcoming changes to Variable Recurring Payments (VRP) might mean for businesses. Today, VRP is restricted to the movement of funds between two accounts owned by the same customer, also known as sweeping.

It’s clear that upcoming changes are welcome. The FCA is currently working to enable consumers to make recurring payments using VRP to utility providers, Central and local government (including the purchase of rail tickets and museum entry), and Financial services firms (eg mortgages and pensions). The FCA also committed its support for open banking in ecommerce, pointing towards VRP being extended beyond the sectors above. This is most likely to happen in 2026.

UK Fintech Week 2025:📍London

UK Fintech week is a combination of its flagship event IFGS 2025, which is now in its 11th year, and a raft of smaller events that run over a week-long showcase. This year, the whole week highlighted the impressive amount of innovation across Fintech that continues to promote more competition and greater inclusion across UK financial services.

Here’s a round-up of what we got up to.

• Mo Mirza, TrueLayer's CFO, joined the Global Fintech Forum hosted by the Department for Business and Trade, diving into the future of open banking and smart data.

• Francesco Simoneschi, TrueLayer's CEO and Co-founder, took to the main stage at IFGS alongside Zopa Bank, Block and Thought Machine, discussing how emerging technologies are reshaping the future of financial services.

• Robert Kerrigan, COO at TrueLayer, joined a roundtable with Nikhil Rathi, CEO of the FCA, to explore how the FCA’s 5-year strategy can support the growth of Pay by Bank in the UK.

• Megan Coulson, TrueLayer's UK Policy Lead, hosted a powerhouse roundtable on the future of Pay by Bank, joined by Luke Charters MP, Andrew Self from the FCA, and Angus Moore from HMT.

We closed the week with a packed UK Fintech Week reception at TrueLayer HQ, a brilliant evening with friends, partners, and changemakers across the open banking ecosystem.

Money20/20:📍Amsterdam

Finally – hot off the press – the TrueLayer team attended Money 20/20 in Amsterdam this week, where industry professionals from across the whole of Europe from banking, payments, tech, retail, policy, and startups, came together to discuss and showcase what’s next across the world of Payments and Financial Services.

Nadja Bennett hosted her second panel discussion of the year: 'The checkout revolution: what merchants need to embrace Pay by Bank. This time with guests from Booking.com, Wayfair and Boku.

The panel discussed their thoughts on the current state of Pay by Bank, what challenges need to be overcome, and — in the case of merchants with a live Pay by Bank experience — how their customers have responded to Pay by Bank so far.

See you at the next round of events?

The TrueLayer team will be at the Stripe Tour events in Paris and Berlin and the Merchant Advisory Group Payments Summit in London over the next couple of months.

We’d love to meet you there!