Latest news with #EBAday2025
Finextra
2 days ago
- Business
- Finextra
AI: The Inflection Point for Payments
Speaking at EBAday 2025, Peter Hazou, Business Development Director, Financial Services, Microsoft, highlights how the banking industry has adapted to the introduction of AI, where we are seeing the most tangible impact from AI and new technologies, and how banks are currently tackling the conflict of AI being both an enabler and a security risk.
Finextra
2 days ago
- Business
- Finextra
True Value of ISO 20022: Turning Compliance into Innovation
Speaking at EBAday 2025, Paul Thomalla, Unifits, discusses ISO20022 and the move from compliance to innovation, revealing the true value. With ISO 20022, banks and PSPs across Europe have a new foundation for smarter services, real-time payments, and data-driven growth, but to unlock this potential, reliable, automated testing is essential.
Finextra
28-05-2025
- Business
- Finextra
EBAday 2025: Managing the complex European regulatory ecosystem
How well-crafted regulation can act as an accelerator, not inhibitor, in becoming more resilient and successful in the future was answered by industry experts at EBAday 2025. 0 This content has been selected, created and edited by the Finextra editorial team based upon its relevance and interest to our community. The panel was moderated by Thomas Egner, secretary general, Euro Banking Association, and consisted of Giorgio Andreoli, director general, European Payments Council; Heather Xiao, founder and CEO, Horizon Zero; Jenny Winther, head of payment schemes, Handelsbanken, and Nuno Epifânio, team leader payments policy, European Commission. Egner kicked off the session by asking panellists to reflect on what went well and what didn't go so well in the past year, and to provide recommendations for the future. Andreoli highlighted the success of the self-regulatory body in managing the complex European ecosystem. 'The starting point was a situation where every single country had different standards and rules, in some cases hardly conceivable rules, to what is now the point everybody is able to issue credit, credit transfer, or perform a direct link, cross border, across Europe, or more than Europe across the CEPA. I believe this approach paid off.' Xiao mentioned, 'we have gone quite a long way in open banking and SEPA, most of Europe has been leading the way because we have clear regulation. I felt that's something that was celebrated.' Adding to Xiao's point, Winther discussed the importance of market-driven initiatives in driving innovation and standardisation, 'even though we don't have a regulation like SEPA, we now realise standardisation and harmonisation is so important. Hence we created the Nordic payments Council, in order to make our countries with different currencies to the Euro also adapt. This was strung completely by a market driven initiative.' Epifânio highlighted the role of other EU legislations in governing payments, and the need for improved clarification. 'We have a number of other pieces of EU legislation that are relevant for payments, like the Digital Services Act, that might provide some legal answers we need for payments. Again, moving towards regulations, but also clarifying there are other sources of law out there that need to be considered. I assume that is something that we as legislators need to do better.' The conversation was directed by Egner to the importance of strategic guidance from regulators, and the need for clear and timely regulations to support innovation. Xiao commented on the role of regulators in guiding, rather than pressing the industry into a framework, giving the analogy 'like a gardener in the ecosystem, the gardener will be able to foster a very fertile, innovative environment, guiding off the pests and then allowing frogs or other animals to help the ecosystem. Basically, the regulators play this enabler role to help, that's how I see we help the ecosystem.' Winther highlighted 'I think one of the important enablers is to actually allow all the different actors in infrastructure to have sustainable business models. I think that's one of the key issues.' On the importance of collaboration and communication in driving innovation. Epifânio then discussed the challenges and responsibilities of creating effective regulation. 'Good regulation should encapsule vision for payments, but it also becomes complex because it needs to solve problems that are already in the market that need to be fixed, and that is being brought to our attention by credit institutions and third party providers. Every time we address a given problem, this generates a reaction, that's why people have mixed views about our role as legislators, someone is going to be upset with the fixes that we are coming up with in legislation. To get it right, we need to learn from the market.' Xiao added, 'what regulation needs to be is simple and clear, and then using principles to get everyone aligned so regulators can use the power of helping the market or helping ecosystems align to galvanize our efforts.' The panel concluded by Egner highlighting the need for clear and simple regulations, and effective collaboration and communication to support innovation.
