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Take a look at the 2026 agenda below to get a sense of what to expect. If you’d like to help shape this year’s agenda or get involved, click the “Speak in 2026” button below and we’ll be in touch.
Over the next 5 years, end-user expectations are set to change dramatically, driven by technology, convenience and evolving business models. Understanding the key pain points to personalise and target new products is essential in reaching the modern user, whether consumer or business, and is vital to surviving a competitive climate.
This session will explore what these shifts mean for the industry and uncover new opportunities for product development and infrastructures.
Our panel will examine the new standards that will define both consumer and business payment experiences in order to stay ahead of accelerating demands and to prepare your organisation for the future of payments.
Keith Douglas’ Pay360 headline keynote will reflect on the National Payments Vision (NPV) and Deputy Governor Sarah Breeden’s call for a next‑generation UK retail payments infrastructure co‑designed by the Bank of England and industry and delivered at pace.
It will explore how the whole ecosystem – banks, fintechs, regulators, merchants, end-user representatives, big tech and infrastructure providers – can collectively advance the objectives of the NPV, balancing the drive for innovation with the need to maintain resilience. It will also emphasise the importance of continuing to modernise current services to ensure operational certainty, while creating the time and flexibility required to build the UK’s future retail payments infrastructure.
Mastercard’s role will be presented through its work in areas such as AI‑driven fraud prevention, tokenisation, financial inclusion and digital‑native payments, while highlighting Vocalink expertise in providing the regulated resilience essential to the UK’s critical national payments infrastructure, supporting operational reliability and secure interoperability.
The speech will highlight that the UK’s future payments landscape must be built on genuine choice – allowing people and businesses to pay how they want, when they want and across a range of trusted, interoperable rails. That means not only modernising the UK’s A2A infrastructure, but ensuring cards remain a benchmark for reliability, digital wallets continue to grow as everyday tools, merchant needs around cost and certainty are met and consumer protections remain strong across all rails.
For centuries, money came in three forms: cash, central bank money, and commercial bank money. A fourth is now maturing, digitally native,
programmable, and borderless by design. Stablecoins aren’t just another crypto asset; they are evolving into regulated payment instruments
with real-world rails, enabling faster, cheaper, and global payments.
Regulatory momentum is now aligning with innovation. In the UK, FCA CP25/14 & CP25/15 and Bank of England guidance are creating a clear path for stablecoins as money-like instruments. In the US, AML/CFT obligations under the PATRIOT Act and BSA provide a compliance framework for on-chain payments. Europe’s MiCA regime authorises e-money and asset-referenced tokens across the EU, while Asia’s MAS, HKMA, and JFSA are establishing payments-first licensing, reserve, and redemption standards.
Market leaders are already taking action. PayPal’s PYUSD, J.P. Morgan’s JPM Coin, Ripple’s USD stablecoin, and pilots from Mastercard and Visa
show how stablecoins are moving into consumer, merchant, and institutional payments.
The takeaway is clear: stablecoins are no longer theoretical—they are live, regulated, and reshaping payment rails. The question for banks,
fintechs, and payment providers is whether they will shape the future of money—or ride it built by others.
Riccardo Tordera, Director of Policy and Government Relations, The Payments Association (Moderator)
Matthew Long, Director, Payments & Digital Assets, Financial Conduct Authority
Cassie Craddock, Vice President and Managing Director, UK and Europe, Ripple
Gary Palmer, CEO, Payall
Open Banking in the UK is evolving from a competition remedy to an innovation-driven model with a real focus on driving wider economic growth. Marion King, Chair of Open Banking Limited, will outline projections for the potential benefits, growth, and opportunity before us, what we need to do collectively to achieve this, and the changing nature of the open banking model to better drive innovative products and services.
Marion King, Chair, Open Banking
Artificial intelligence is changing the face of payments, allowing financial services to evolve at an unprecedented speed, but its rapid adoption also presents new ethical and security challenges. Simply integrating AI isn’t enough; the key is to set clear guardrails to ensure its responsible implementation. How will incoming regulation like the GENIUS Act impact the usage of AI on a global scale?
This session will go beyond the hype to provide a practical guidance for your payments business. Hear from leaders who are proactively defining the rules, turning potential risks into a competitive advantage.