ACI Worldwide has announced Payments Unleashed EMEA in London, an invitation-only event for senior payments executives from banks, technology groups and payment companies.
The two-day meeting will bring together participants from ACI Worldwide, Mastercard, Santander, Amazon, NVIDIA, PayPal, Rabobank and Nationwide, along with regulators, analysts and fintech executives. Dr Leda Glyptis is scheduled to deliver the keynote.
The event comes as Europe's payments sector faces pressure from policymakers seeking to reduce reliance on non-European infrastructure. Banks are also confronting tougher rules on fraud reimbursement and the spread of artificial intelligence in commerce.
The agenda will focus on control of payment rails, liability for fraud in real-time transactions, the competitive position of cards against pay-by-bank and instant account-to-account payments, and the effect of AI systems making purchases on behalf of consumers.
These issues have moved from product and technology teams to the boardroom, as banks, card networks, merchants and technology suppliers assess how regulation and changing customer behaviour could alter the balance of power in payments.
Industry pressure
Across the region, initiatives including the Digital Euro and Wero have intensified debate over payments sovereignty. At the same time, instant payments are expanding, and fraud controls are facing closer scrutiny as reimbursement obligations shift more losses onto financial institutions.
Another strand of the debate centres on AI agents. As software tools move beyond suggesting products and begin to carry out transactions, questions are emerging about authentication, liability, and ownership of the customer relationship.
ACI said the mainstage programme will examine where payment groups should place bets as instant payments grow. Fraud costs are rising, whether Europe can regain greater control over payment infrastructure without losing scale, and how AI is moving from operational support to transaction execution.
Confirmed speakers include Paul Horlock, Chief Payments Officer at Santander; Otto Benz, Director of Customer Technology and Payments at Nationwide; and Philip Bruno, Chief Strategy and Growth Officer at ACI Worldwide. Senior leaders from Discover, Checkout.com, Nium, Fnality, Solaris and Rabobank are also expected to take part, along with analysts from Celent.
Glyptis, whose books include Bankers Like Us and Beyond Resilience, described the scale of the decisions facing the sector.
"Payments is no longer about keeping systems running; it's about deciding who controls value, risk and trust in a real-time world. Those choices are being made now, and they will define the industry for the next decade," she said.
The event reflects a broader shift in the payments market, where the boundaries between banks, card schemes, merchants and technology groups are being tested by real-time infrastructure, regulatory intervention and new forms of digital purchasing.
For established players, the rise of account-to-account payments poses a direct challenge to card-based economics in certain use cases, particularly when merchants seek lower costs and faster settlement. For banks, mandatory reimbursement rules and the speed of instant transfers are increasing the financial and operational burden of fraud prevention.
Technology groups also play a growing role in the debate. Companies involved in cloud computing, AI and online commerce are influencing how transactions are initiated and authenticated, making them harder to separate from the traditional payments chain.
Strategic questions
Thomas Warsop, President and Chief Executive Officer of ACI Worldwide, said the issues under discussion had become central strategic decisions for the industry.
"The biggest questions in payments are no longer technical, they're strategic," Warsop said. "Who owns the rails? How do we manage fraud in a real-time world? And what happens when AI becomes an active participant in commerce? These are no longer abstract debates; they are live decisions that will determine who leads and who follows. Payments Unleashed is where those decisions get tested."
The invitation-only format underlines how closely senior executives are watching these questions as Europe's payments market enters a period of regulatory, commercial and technological change.