Recap: TRANSACT Tech San Francisco

By Brandes Elitch, Director of Partner Acquisition, CrossCheck Inc. 

On Nov. 19, ETA hosted its annual TRANSACT Tech San Francisco conference at the Wells Fargo Connections Center, located in the downtown area of the Financial District. It’s an hour north of Silicon Valley, and it’s the densest hub in the world for high tech, with over 2,000 tech firms located between Palo Alto and San Jose/Cupertino.

If you are interested in hosting a tech conference on payments, this would be the place to do it. Going south on U.S. 101, you will find firms such as Apple, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Twitter, Yahoo, and eBay nearby, as well as dozens of hardware and software manufacturers whose brands are familiar to payments professionals.

By the way, the conference was a success; in fact, it was sold out.

Last year, I was impressed with the quality of the speakers, and this year was no different. ETA worked very diligently to get to this leveland obtain high-quality speakers. The same can be said of the moderators who played an important rolein conducting the panel discussions.

Topics in Discussion

The subject was FinTech, the merger of finance and technology. The speakers talked about artificial intelligence, machine learning, transaction security, data science, blockchain, distributed ledger, bots, and more. Right now, there are almost 6,000 FinTech startups in the Americas. Of course, many ETA member companies focus on the retail environment. Here we see online payment systems, mobile wallets, and even cryptocurrency. Consumers can now shop from their smartphones or tablets, with any number of online and offline apps, with immediacy, and even use real-time payments.

A study by PYMTS.com predicted that in five years, these changes will mean digital payments will account for sixty trillion dollars in revenue.

Part of this value is derived from data. Over 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created every day, and increasingly, they will be used by payment processors, or intermediaries, for insights into purchasing behavior, decision making, and automating the sales process.  We will have data-led customer strategies for growth by harmonizing the data and providing insights and measurement solutions for merchants; these were topics for discussion at the conference.

Another recent study by PaySafe indicated that ISVs want to increase the number of payment methods for their merchants from four to nine.

Top product priorities are risk and fraud services, followed by a bigger range of payment options, as well as enhancements, such as digital wallets. We hear that the Internet of Things (IoT) will motivate consumers to make seamless, secure payments across multiple merchant channels and payment-use cases.

FinTech will combine the previous work on the Internet, with developments in the cloud, and mobile apps will evolve to perform “traditional” financial services such as retailing, banking, insurance, and investing, digitally. Everyone is asking if these new entrants will need to deal with the big issues that financial institutions face today: audit, compliance, and regulation.

The panelists certainly had a lot to cover!

The conference was opened by the new CEO of ETA, Jodie Kelley. Ms. Kelley has an impressive background, including being a VP and deputy general counsel at Fannie Mae, and a partner at a law firm. In turn, she introduced the Keynote speaker, Braden More, the EVP of Partnerships and Industry Relations at Wells Fargo. Mr. More spoke with authority on many products, topics, and developments current and projected that the bank is following.

There were five speaker panels, and 16 panelists.Topics and moderators included: ):

• Bringing Value to Small and Medium Businesses Through Payments (Moderator: Amy Zirkle, VP Industry Affairs, ETA)
• Big Data for Small Merchants (Moderator: Chip Kahn, CEO Boomtown)
• Software in Partnership with Payments (Moderator: Howard Wettan, Partner, White and Case)
• Expanding the Payments Ecosystem: Blockchain, Cross-Border, and Real-Time Payments (Moderator: Robin Leidenthal, Senior Director, Global Payment Partnerships, eBay)
• Funding and Investment Trends Driving Payments (Moderator: Greg Cohen, Operating Partner, Lovell Minnick Partners).

The day went by quickly. Following the panels, everyone adjourned downstairs to the branch for a cocktail hour and mixer. Oftentimes these sessions are as important as the agenda itself.

Currently, there are many new developments going on in the payment ecosystem. For example, the value of mergers among payments firms this year was nearly $100 billion, So,  it is clear why a conference like TRANSACT Tech would sell-out, particularly in San Francisco. ETA is focused on improving and enriching the experience for its merchants, and there is no shortage of brainstorming and creative-thinking on that score. Thank you to Amy Zirkle and her team for another successful conference.