Money 20/20 2025: What To Expect From This Year’s Event

Building the Architecture of Trust

Across the industry, compliance is no longer a defensive task, it is a pillar of value creation.

Modern financial institutions are designing systems to enable agility and compliance in lockstep, turning requirements into real-time capabilities. Fraud prevention, digital identity and AI governance now require unified, continuously monitored controls that ensure auditability and human oversight at every turn.

Insurance players are adjusting as well. Self-healing risk engines and explainable models are swiftly becoming the standard. Today, risk frameworks must articulate narratives validated with data, meeting not just regulatory scrutiny but board-level demands for transparency. The focus now is on design: resilient capital structures, tech-enabled controls and cross-industry standards that turn risk into strategic strength.

DIG DEEPER: How digital transformation is driving modern collaboration.

Scaling AI to Move From Experimentation to Institutional Backbone

Artificial intelligence is transitioning from showcase status to the very fabric of financial services. The real momentum is in the backbone: Autonomous agents, self-optimizing workflows and scalable decision systems are driving operational gains. The AI use cases that create the most value aren’t always customer-facing chatbots, but powerful engines such as regulatory compliance overlays, automated code conversion and anomaly detection. IT leaders from American Express, Microsoft and OpenAI will participate in a panel discussion at Money 20/20 focused on the future of AI payments, especially through the use of agentic AI.

Industry leaders are adopting “model of models” frameworks, enabling generative and traditional models to mutually reinforce, self-correct and remain governable at scale. And there will be more on agentic AI during a panel discussion that will include leaders from Citibank and Mastercard.

The bar for executives is rising. Data strategy, model governance and operational accountability must be inseparable, with every AI initiative accountable to domain owners who have the authority to accept or override automated outputs. The difference between experimentation and lasting change is proven, referenceable deployments — not lab concepts.

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Rewiring the Money Movement Machine for Digital Payment

The payments landscape is undergoing fundamental transformation. Open banking, real-time payments, orchestrated flows and tokenization are merging in unexpected ways, creating new opportunities and risks.

Stablecoins and central bank digital currencies are no longer theoretical; regulatory frameworks are taking shape, compelling banks and payment players to reconsider their roles throughout the liquidity and settlement chain. Money 20/20 is stocked with content addressing the increased use of stablecoins, including a panel discussion with leaders from Chainalysis, Fiserv and Brightside Financial titled “Speaking Stablecoins to Banks.”

The challenge is to build infrastructure capable of seamless operation across legacy rails and tokenized assets, supporting cross-border integration and orchestration at scale. The institutions that treat payments as core infrastructure — investing in embedded finance, merchant enablement and seamless execution — will be positioned to command greater volumes and deliver cross-product economic value.

Advance the Client Journey With Trust, Identity and Embedded Experience

In 2026, competitive advantage is forged at the union of trust, identity and embedded experience. Financial services leaders are leveraging real-time data to shape each customer interaction, tailoring insights and interventions at the moment of need. Money 20/20 has made the customer experience a focal point of several sessions this year, including one with American Express and Plaid titled “Beyond Bots: Creating Meaningful Customer Experiences with AI.”

But agility is only as strong as the trust it inspires. Transparency, consent, human fallback and explainability must underpin every innovation.

Growth increasingly comes from orchestrated, cross-product journeys built on unified identity and preference data — not from siloed offerings. Institutions embedding their services within commerce, insurance and retail platforms will capture greater share by surfacing relevant insights to users precisely when and where they matter most.

Retention and cross-sell, measured by genuine loyalty and customer experience, are fast becoming the industry’s most reliable growth levers as economic discipline returns to the executive agenda. This playbook is designed to help industry leaders chart a strategic course for 2026 — where technology sales and advisory partners will empower financial institutions to build, adapt and thrive in a world defined by speed, trust and purposeful innovation.

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