For teams exploring practical AI use cases, operational efficiency, fraud, compliance, and customer experience in payments.

For leaders evaluating stablecoin rails, settlement models, compliance questions, and real-world cross-border use cases.

Building on Someone Else’s Rails: independence vs. integration in the network era

Opening Panel Sponsored by 45 min

No cross-border company operates alone. (...) Banks, card networks, instant-payment systems, blockchain rails, and liquidity partners increasingly sit underneath the customer experience. Which capabilities are worth owning, which are better integrated, and when does efficiency become dependency risk? Read more

Coverage Isn’t Payout / What reliable last-mile delivery into Africa actually takes

Sponsored Spotlight 20 min

Why being “live” in an African market is not the same as delivering reliable payout, and what the last mile actually requires. (...) Getting money to the edge of a market is not the same as getting it to the person or business being paid. The last mile, whether into a bank account, mobile wallet or cash pickup point, is where a cross-border payment ultimately succeeds or fails. Africa makes that challenge especially visible. Markets differ in currencies, banking infrastructure, mobile-money adoption, local payment systems, regulation and customer behavior. Being technically “live” in a country does not necessarily mean every payout method works reliably when a customer needs it. This session looks at what reliable coverage actually requires: local connectivity, payout choice, liquidity, redundancy and the operating infrastructure behind consistent delivery. As cross-border demand expands beyond remittances into business payments, the question becomes harder: what does it really mean to say you can pay into a market? Read more

Pix did more than make payments faster. (...) It changed customer expectations, competitive dynamics, bank strategy, and fintech business models in Brazil. What other markets can genuinely learn, and what gets lost when its success gets reduced to a blueprint anyone can copy. Read more

Financial companies spend enormous energy improving speed, price, and functionality. Customers don’t always choose on those terms. (...) Familiarity, perceived control, brand, fear, friction, and social proof can matter just as much. Why people adopt, abandon, and recommend financial products, and what that means for product and growth strategy. Read more

AI is moving from helping people make decisions to acting on those decisions. (...) Once software can initiate a transaction, authorization, identity, and liability get much harder. Who establishes intent? Who’s responsible when the wrong payment is made? And what happens when software starts choosing the rail itself? Read more

Every strategic priority sounds important until capital becomes finite. (...) Give cross-border leaders an extra $50 million: customer growth, compliance, AI, infrastructure, geographic expansion, M&A, or something else? They make the call, explain the expected return, and tell us what they’d deliberately leave unfunded. Read more

As moving money gets faster, cheaper, and easier, the economics of the industry change with it. (...) Margin may migrate away from the transaction itself toward compliance, distribution, treasury, data, or customer ownership. Where durable value sits next, and what that means for companies built around yesterday’s economics. Read more

Cross-border payments depend on a world that’s becoming more politically and financially fragmented. (...) Sanctions, capital controls, currency instability, and growing concern over who controls financial infrastructure all change how and where companies operate. The business decisions created by that environment: markets, partners, currencies, rails, and risk. Read more

The industry has spent years trying to make systems connect. (...) Cards, bank accounts, instant-payment networks, wallets, stablecoins, and eventually AI agents are increasingly expected to work together. But connection creates a second set of questions: who sets the rules, owns the customer relationship, and captures the economics? Read more

The same changes making payments faster and more capable also create new ways for them to fail. (...) Instant settlement shortens the time to stop fraud. AI increases both automation and social engineering. We close the program asking what vulnerabilities this new system creates, and what the industry needs to solve before it scales further. Read more