Payments Leaders' Summit: Insight from Tim Jefferson, Senior Consultant at FirstPartner
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The event with its unique format of high quality and well curated panels, speeches and roundtables alongside very productive 1:1 meetings with technology vendors brought value, knowledge sharing and actionable insights to all attendees, sponsors and knowledge partners, such as FirstPartner.
Key themes to take out from the April, 2026 London event were:
- Agentic Commerce - AI is starting to act, not just assist. Payments, authorisation and fraud risk management will increasingly happen in real time within AI‑driven environments. Great insights from the panel of Google, PayPal, GSK and THG Ingenuity who unpacked the latest developments and the real “so what” for the industry. The key message from Sean Douglas at PayPal was "it is here, developing fast and you need it to be in your strategy!"
- Data as value - The real opportunity goes beyond compliance and transactions, using payment data to better understand customers and unlock new commercial opportunities, re-think data compliance, as a value driver, rather than a cost and overhead.
- Payment Optimization – The future is integrated platforms bringing everything together for better control, visibility and efficiency.
- Open Banking - Bank on File (BoF), commercial Variable Recuring Payments (cVRPs) all were discussed in depth, both on stage and also at the roundtables, with robust discussions on the effort required to make consumers change habits and the commercial viability and reality of both.
Roundtables and Knowledge Drop-in Sessions
One of the real value adds of the event are the Rountables, which allow valuable dialogue among a diverse group of merchants, banks, PSPs and technology vendors, encouraging the sharing of different perspectives on the rapidly evolving payments ecosystem.
I chaired the Consumer Engagement and Loyalty roundtable, where a diverse range of merchants discussed and shared great insight on how payments were critical to engagement, where merchants developed customer trust and therefore loyalty. Engagement was a recurring theme, to drive not only conversion, but also retain customers. Also, whilst merchants always talk about a "frictionless payments experience", sometimes a little friction, allows "consideration" by customers, which is beneficial overall to the merchant and customer loyalty.
I also facilitated the new "Knowledge Drop-in Session - on Digital Wallets", where attendees can stop by and eat their lunch and chat all things digital wallets. Real in-depth discussions on how recurring payments can be a challenge in mobile wallets with some PSP/merchant acquirers not supporting well subscriptions. Another topic was digital wallets for cross border payments and especially in the cryptocurrency and stablecoins era where on and off ramping from and to fiat currency is so crucial.
Another stand out was the "Cross Border Payments Reimagined" session that I chaired with Stuart Bailey, Head of Payments Industry and Regulation, Lloyds Banking Group and Aidan Meikle, Head of Digital FX and Payments, Investec Bank.
They both provided real insight into how SWIFT is helping resolve pain points in remittances, around preserving the principal, end to end to give certainty to customers, ending un-expected fees, especially deductions will drive better value. Also, providing better tracking, that will give confidence of delivery and key, "faster" delivery by instant payments. Stuart and Aidan also gave a great view of the corporate needs around timeliness and integrated solutions. Great to have two such eloquent experts on the stage sharing their knowledge and experience.
Conclusion
The depth and openness of the conversations created a highly engaging and thought-provoking environment and one not to be missed going forward. If you are a merchant, payments technology vendor, PSP or payments fintech, get yourself involved in future Payments Leaders Summits
Tim Jefferson, Senior Consultant, FirstPartner - www.firstpartner.net and tjefferson@firstpartner.net
