To cover this fascinating and highly important topic, we have put together several articles and interviews, including a comprehensive interview with the worldfamous EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, about the EU’s visions for PSD2, and for regulation in general, going forward. As part of the PSD2 theme, we also have the pleasure of introducing such notable people as Fidor CEO Matthias Kröner, as well as Worldline CEO Gilles Grapinet, and Worldline PSD2 expert Michael Salmony. And in our effort to give a varied overview of the many significant implications of PSD2 we are pleased to have three more companies’ views of PSD2. Those companies are India’s LTI, and the two Nordic companies SDC and Signicat. Payments and beyond Payments are - still - a cornerstone in fintech and an essential theme for this magazine. ‘Beyond’, however, indicates that payments alone should never become the sole focus. What is interesting is the consumer experience, and the reduction of friction. As AEVI CEO Nelson Holzner writes: “This is bringing banks and fintech start-ups closer, to create a seamless consumer journey which extends beyond payments.” Furthermore, ‘Beyond’ points to the importance of finally releasing the potential of value added services, which has been an unfulfilled promise in mobile payments for years. Canada’s Carta Worldwide has set out to deliver on this promise by launching so-called Smart
Tokens, “designed in a way that can deliver more advanced functionality, more intelligence, and more value to the user experience.” ‘Payments and Beyond’ is the most comprehensive theme in the magazine with additional views and thoughts on innovative new solutions from heavyweight industry players such as Matica Technologies, Nets, Visa, CeleritiFinTech, Infineon, Paysafe, and Vocalink. Emerging fintech hubs Last, but not least, MoneyMag has put together a series of articles about recent changes and developments in the landscape of emerging fintech hubs. The primary focus is on the Nordic region with articles about Nordic Finance Innovation (NFI) co-founded by Norwegian BankAxept, on Nordea’s collaboration with Nordic fintech companies, and on the latest news from the Danish fintech scene according to Copenhagen Fintech and Copenhagen Capacity. But apart from this Nordic mini-theme, we are delighted to present articles about current fintech developments in places like Istanbul, Amsterdam and London. Furthermore, as part of this theme we are happy to publish an excerpt from the report A Tale of 44 cities by Deloitte and the Global FinTech Hubs Federation presenting a global overview of the bestperforming fintech cities; fintech VC deals; and regulatory sandboxes. MoneyMag is edited and produced by Norfico in collaboration with the organisers of Money20/20, and we at Norfico are extremely grateful to the Money20/20 Europe team for its support during the production process. We sincerely hope that you – the readers – find MoneyMag interesting, stimulating and entertaining, whether you choose to read the magazine in print or digitally. // Happy reading! Michael Juul Rugaard & Kristian T. Sørensen, Founding Partners of Norfico
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MONEY MAG // Preface by NORFICO
PSD2 is probably one of the most disruptive pieces of financial legislation ever to be created by the European Commission. It requires all 4,000 European banks to open up their customer’s payments accounts to so-called Third Party Providers (TPPs) – fintechs, merchants, and even competing banks. Furthermore, it gives rise to a race towards elimination between those banks whose modest ambitions equal compliance and nothing more, and those with a much broader vision, aiming far beyond compliance and into the promised land of open banking.
