See Latest APEX Europe Attendee List

In just a few short weeks, 200+ payments and retail executives are heading to Marbella for All Payments Expo Europe. This is Europe's only devoted retail & payments business development meeting, where the prepaid and retail value chain host meetings, create new partnerships and explore synergies.


With delegates coming from 25+ countries, you'll be able to hear insights from an international group of merchants, programme managers, issuers, MNOs, networks and processors. You'll sharpen your strategies with expert insights on:

• Latest data on prepaid's growth and market size
• New opportunities created by HCE technology
• New sales channels for gift cards
• White space for prepaid partnerships in mobile money, education and B2B
• Consumer demands in contactless
• Contextual commerce's impact on conversion and more!

Join an international community and get face time with the peers and partners you need. Register today to secure your spot - PLUS save €100 when you use the code XU2940BLOG.

Here are some of the companies you'll meet:
3V Transaction Services • Accent Intermedia • ACI Worldwide • Airplus International SRL • Al Fardan Exchange • ArbitorSports • Auctionata • Bankable • C24 Payments Contact Center LLC • CardOneBanking • Cardwise • Centigo AB • Contact Payment System • Coop Danmark • Dansk Supermarked A/S • Di Pocket • Edgar Dunn & Company • Emerging Payments Association • eNett International • ePayService • Epipoli SpA • EuroCommerce • First Data • FlexCard • Flex-e-Vouchers • Gap Inc • Gemalto SA • Genesys • GKFX • Global Prepaid Exchange • Globoforce • Gruppo Poste Italiane • Hobbs Limited • Home Retail Group plc • Hotel Voucher Shop • IKEA MOS • IMA • IQ Card • John Lewis Partnership • Leroy Merlin • Italia srl • Load & Go • Localz • Locke Lord • Lycamobile UK Ltd • Marks & Spencer • MBXP ApS • Mercator Advisory Group • MintCombine • MTACC Inc • MySafePay • Nordic Choice • Optimal Payments • Orwell • P&MM Ltd • Payment Card Solutions • Payoneer EU Limited • PerfectCard Ltd • PMA Media Group • Polymath Consulting • PPRO • Prego Prepaid Solutions • Prepaird International Forum • PSI-Pay Ltd • Raphaels Bank • Rapid Financial Solutions • Reward Technology • Rideau Recognition Solutions • Riverbridge Partners LLC • SafeCharge Card Services • Sears Holding Company • Signet • Simple Card • Skrill Ltd • Smart Concepts BV • Swift Prepaid Solutions Inc • TESCO Bank • Thames Card Technology LTD • The Billing Project LLC • Ticket Surf • TJX Europe • Trancash Italia • Travel Payments Amadeus IT Group • TrustEu Affairs • TrustPay • Tuxedo • WEX • Wickes Building Supplies Limited • XXImo BV • Yandex Money • Zalando SE


Event Partner

Platinum Sponsor

Supporting Sponsors

 Bronze Sponsor

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Last Chance to Save for APEX Europe is Friday!

 LAST CHANCE TO SAVE ON YOUR APEX EUROPE REGISTRATION!

All Payments Expo Europe is designed for you to meet with industry peers to analyse the impacts of new technology, regulation and new players in the payments and retail landscape. By attending, you will hear new insights from leading players, best position yourself among competition and your improve business relationships with clients and partners.

Access 8+ hours of unique networking opportunities, including:

Private Executive Boardroom Sessions: Capped at 20 participants, these sessions are off-the-record and limited to senior-level executives. These are discussion driven, private discussions focused on the biggest opportunities and challenges facing the prepaid and retail sectors.

Match-Making Lunch: Looking to meet a particular type of attendee? We'll help you set up lunch dates to stimulate deal flow and collaborate with new businesses. E-mail Diana Middleton at dmiddleton@iirusa.com for more details.

Two Evening Receptions: Some of the best conversations happen after the sessions conclude. Receptions include a welcome party a Guey Marbella and a White Party at La Sala By the Sea.

View the Agenda

Register by Friday 17 April and save €200! Use the code XU2940BLOG

I hope to see you in Marbella this May.

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Will Cashless Payments Cause Us to Spend More?

Contactless payment is widely regarded by many as the future of payments. Many believe that technology such as the Card Case app or Apple Pay will start to dominate the payments world as they are easy and fast forms of payments. In some cases you may not even need a wallet anymore.

Businesses are looking increasingly at giving customers the easiest possible experience in terms of their consumer journey. They want to make sure that at the end of the journey the customer doesn’t have to struggle to part with their hard earned money by waiting in long queues or wondering which credit card has the most on. Many believe it is in the best interests of the customer to be able to swipe something quickly and walk out with your new purchase. However, as easy and convenient as it is, could it mean increased spending for us on a day to day basis?

New research has shown that many people, especially the millennial generation, find that paying with cash is an easier way to not spend as much money. Personally, as someone who is fresh out of University, with student debts and an apartment in a foreign country, I am trying very hard to make every dollar count. This means taking out a certain amount of money in cash at the start of each week and saying to myself, I will spend this much and no more. It is a very simple budgeting technique used by many; however contactless payment threatens it. Waving a phone over a scanner or quickly swiping a card, to me and I’m sure to many others, does not really feel like you are parting with money as it does with cash.

More convenient payment systems will mean even if you have no cash, a consumer will simply spend little bits here and there, especially with credit. Obviously internet statements are a good way of keeping track every now and again but that will not stop when you want that desert at a restaurant instead of having a cash limit.

So much of the excitement surrounding the rise of contactless payments is focused on how much it is for the customer without looking so closely about the benefits for businesses. An interesting development for me would be a form of inbuilt budgeting system within the app or form of payment. As contactless payment develops, as does the internet of things, meaning more interconnection. This could mean a weekly budget for those millennials trying hard to make the pennies count that is on a payment app which is connected to a calendar which may warn of upcoming events that could stop you getting that pair of jeans that may not strictly be necessary. In a world where businesses need to increasingly think about the consumer’s experience, helping them with little things like that could ultimately mean the difference between gaining or losing a customer.

About the Author: Harry Kempe, a marketing intern at IIR USA, who works on various aspects of the industry including social media, marketing analysis and media. He is a recent graduate of Newcastle University who previously worked for EMAP Ltd. and WGSN as a marketing assistant on events such as the World Architecture Festival, World Retail Congress and Global Fashion Awards. He can be reached at hkempe@IIRUSA.com

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Big Data and Omnichannel Retail Analytics

Big data analytics are revolutionizing the shopping experience and the way retail organizations engage their customers. With the array of shopping channels available to the modern consumer - including in-store, online, mobile and membership platforms – retail organizations generate and have access to a wealth of underutilized data. By leveraging open source big data technologies, retailers can turn this data into actionable insights on buying behavior and customer 360 view.

The legacy relational database – long the enterprise workhorse for storing and processing data – is being challenged by an explosion of data generated by internet, mobile and cloud applications. Not only is more data being generated, it is being generated by more sources - social, geo, sensor, machine, network (The Internet of Things), to name a few.

Open source big data tools such as Hadoop and NoSQL enable businesses to become more agile and create value from their data by being able to process, store and analyze large volumes of data from disparate sources. Legacy systems were not designed to handle fast-growing volumes of structured, unstructured and semi-structured data in a cost effective manner. With its parallel processing and cost effective scalability, Hadoop provides businesses with greater flexibility on how they can use data.

The journey to becoming an agile business leveraging big data analytics for greater customer insights is filled with many challenges. Ankur Gupta, Sr. Director of Big Data at Sears Holdings Corporation, shares insights into overcoming these challenges at All Payments Expo Europe this May. In addition to sharing lessons learned, Ankur will discuss several key big data analytics use cases that are essential for a successful omnichannel retail strategy.

Smart Network Analytics for In-Store Customer Insights
Hadoop can be used to store, extract and transform data from network devices (IoT) for use by various business users to generate value for the organization. The ability to perform analytics and continuous reporting on this network data in-house is a big cost saver and delivers added business intelligence capabilities, such gaining insight into customer mobile device usage within guest networks.

Fraud Detection for Loyalty Rewards Program
Using big data tools, organizations can develop an intelligent system that learns from customer online behavior to determine if the customer could be a fraudulent user. By applying machine learning techniques on sets of historical data that have already been defined as legitimate or fraudulent, the system “learns” as the user generates new data. Using parameters of fraudulent use, the system determines if the data is legitimate or if the user is tampering with the data to “game the system” to earn points.

Sentiment Analysis using Social Media Data
Using Hadoop, marketers can gain insight to the perception of their products and brands, such as hashtags used, number of mentions, time of day people are mentioning, tone or any other statistic the business user is looking to discover. Furthermore, marketers can gain unparalleled insight into sentiment about the quality and services of their products; whether those sentiments are positive, negative or neutral. Social media analytics allows business users to see the detail of the overall view of what is being discussed about their product or brand, or those of their competitors.

While there are proprietary tools in the market that give businesses similar analytics capabilities, these tools typically carry a hefty price tag and lack the scalability and flexibility of open source tools. Data is growing and changing faster than ever. By leveraging open source platforms, businesses can build analytics solutions that can easily scale with their data, are flexible to meet new business requirements and avoid vendor lock-in to reduce long term costs.

Ankur Gupta

About the Speaker
As a Senior Director of Big Data at Sears Holdings Corporation and GM of MetaScale, a subsidiary of Sears, Ankur spearheads a team that has expertise in building, deploying and managing enterprise-scale big data platforms for a variety of customer analytics initiatives. An Engineer from Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee and MBA from Duke University, Ankur uses his knowledge and skills to manage big data projects for organizations focused on seamlessly connecting digital and physical customer experiences.


Your customers expect a modern shopping experience…are you equipped with the tools and technology needed to provide one? Join Ankur Gupta for his Big Data and Omnichannel Retail Analytics Keynote Address at All Payments Expo Europe. Be sure to register by Friday 17 April to save €200! Just use the code XU2940BLOG.

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Mark your calendars for APEX Europe | Brochure now available!

APEX Europe is the international meeting place for prepaid, technology and retail executives to grow business and identify consumer needs.

Access Insights: Hear next generation consumer needs - and gain a better understanding of how to position your company to capture new business.

Merchants:
Participating retailers include: Home Retail Group, Zalando SE, Coop Danmark, Dansk Supermarked, M&S, Tesco Bank, John Lewis, Nordic Choice, Auctionata and more
Hear from other merchants on the new path to purchase:

• How omni and multi channel strategies are impacting every customer touch point, from in-store payments to gift cards
• How mobile can tangibly improve customer engagement and drive bigger conversions and increase in-store visits
• How mobile can tangibly improve customer engagement and drive bigger conversions and increase in-store visits
• How digital gift cards are transforming brick-and-mortar institutions' strategies
• The impact of ApplePay and digital wallets on retail marketing and couponing
• The implications of new in-store technologies, including iBeacon and geolocation
• How e-commerce executives are anticipating customers' evolving needs across Europe     

   
Prepaid:
Participating programme managers include: Bankable, IQcard, Tuxedo Money Solutions, Perfect Incentive, 3V, WEX, Payment Card Solutions (UK) Ltd., eNett International and more
Hear from industry stakeholders on new consumer needs:

• New innovations in grants administration
• Prepaid's evolving role in gaming
• The rise of new use cases, including social media payments, prepaid for the affluent and alternative banking platforms
• The latest developments in corporate payments, and how to identify new opportunities
• The implications of the latest regulations, and the impact on product development
• The latest consumer-centric links between prepaid and loyalty
• What's blocking global issuing?
• Partnership opportunities with new players, from cryptocurrency to P2P technologies     

Access the full agenda here.

Join attendees from across Europe to meet, partner and devise powerful new partnerships. Use the code XU2940BLOG to save. Register now to lock in the lowest rates.

We look forward to meeting you in Marbella, Spain in May this year!   

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Paybefore Announces Winners for European Awards

Today Paybefore reveals the winners in 2014 Paybefore Awards Europe.

The third annual competition proved fierce throughout all 10 categories—the most ever—which included Top of Wallet, Market Mover and The One to Watch. This year, awards judges created the category Best Problem Solver, which recognizes winning programs using prepaid as an elegant solution to a significant problem. Entries across categories represented programs from the U.K., Turkey, Austria, France, Germany, Portugal, Poland, Hungary, Italy and more.

“Paybefore Awards Europe shine a spotlight on the innovators using payments to solve complex problems for a variety of constituents,” said Loraine DeBonis, Paybefore editor-in-chief and chair of the judging panel. “Our winners are pushing the boundaries of what is possible in payments.”

Paybefore CEO Marilyn Bochicchio added, “It’s an exciting time in payments everywhere in the world, but this year’s Paybefore Awards Europe winners demonstrate how quickly prepaid and mobile solutions are replacing legacy paper-based systems. Paybefore Awards is thrilled to recognize the organizations that are taking on paper in its many forms—not just cash—to improve business, government and consumers’ lives.” Paybefore Awards Europe’s distinguished winners were selected by a five-judge panel comprised of Dr. Hugo Godschalk, PaySys Consultancy GmbH, managing director/partner, and Prepaid Forum Deutschland founder; Craig James, Neopay CEO and director of Prepaid International Forum; Siobhan Moore, associate, Locke Lord; and Paybefore’s Bochicchio and DeBonis.

Today’s winners now compete for the Best-in-Category distinction, which will be announced during a presentation at the All Payments Expo Europe in Marbella, Spain, on 19-21 May 2014. Before and during APEX Europe, visitors to Paybefore.com will be able to vote for one People’s Choice winner. Stay tuned for more details coming soon at Paybefore.com. Congratulations to all our winners!

Best Choice Retail Card:

ASDA Closed Loop Gift Cards
ASDA and First Data

HTA Garden Gift Card
Horticultural Trades Association, StoreFinancial

River Island Gift Card
River Island

Top of Wallet

Kalixa Pay
Kalixa

Skrill Prepaid MasterCard
Skrill

Vodafone SmartPass
Wirecard AG

Best Travel Companion

airberlin Flight Voucher
airberlin

Fair FX
Payment Card Technologies

ICE Travellers Cashcard
International Currency Exchange, Lenlyn Group

Top Motivator

Air BP Sterling Reward Programme
Air BP and Citi Prepaid Services

Bridgestone Prepaid Card
The Bancorp

Nikon Consumer Cashback Programme
Nikon and Citi Prepaid Services

Boundary Buster

Bread4Scrap
Payment Card Solutions

EE Cash on Tap
EE Ltd.

mpass
Wirecard AG

Prepaid with Soul

fastPay
DENIZBANK A.S.

ICE Travellers Cashcard
International Currency Exchange, Lenlyn Group

One4all BBC Children in Need Gift Card
One4all

Best Problem Solver

Austrian Airlines Prepaid Card
PayLife Bank GmbH

Canon Easy Warranty Plan
Epipoli

Travel Welfare
Payment Card Technologies

Market Mover

fastPay
DENIZBANK A.S.

Gordio Pointstic
Epipoli

Pingit
Barclays

Consumer Champion

cash4web MasterCard
PayLife Bank GmbH

ICE Travellers Cashcard
International Currency Exchange, Lenlyn Group

paysafecard
paysafecard.com Wertkarten AG



The One to Watch: Program

Genç Bankkart
Ziraat Bankasi

Infinite Aisle
InComm Europe

One4all Personalise My Card
GVS

The One to Watch: Company

CashStar Inc.

Skrill

Wirecard Card Solutions



Join us at APEX Europe to see who wins Best-in-Category! See you May 19-21 in Marbella, Spain!

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King of the Payments Jungle?

If you’re taking charge of the payments jungle, we want to give you your rightful crown. Enter the 2014 Paybefore Awards Europe, recognising ferocious innovation and a mighty commitment to excellence in prepaid, mobile and emerging payments in Europe. In 2014, Paybefore Awards Europe will honour winners in 10 categories, which reflect the vibrant market for prepaid, mobile and emerging payments.

The nominations submission deadline is Friday, 14 March 2014. Download the Nomination brochure today. Paybefore subscribers and members of UKGCVA, PIF, or IMA organisations receive a discount on the nomination submission fee.


Benefits of Winning:
Because Paybefore Awards Europe (http://bit.ly/1byo4R6) involves rigorous analysis of nominations by an independent, experienced judging panel, the value of the awards is unparalleled.

• Roaring rights. Recognition from colleagues, clients and prospects of winning in a rigorous and highly competitive juried competition. There’s no more impressive way to let the world know the value of what you do than by winning a Paybefore Award.
• Brand building. All winners may publicise their awards in appropriate ways, such as issuing press releases, posting information on Websites and using the 2014 Paybefore Awards Europe badge for winners and Best in Category in advertising and other communications— extending your influence and building your brand.
• Paybefore coverage. Coverage in Paybefore publications and Paybefore.com, reaching thousands of industry members worldwide. As a winner, your accomplishments will be highlighted in our extensive media coverage.


Awards Presentation:
The Paybefore Awards Europe presentation will take place during All Payments Expo Europe, being held 19-21 May 2014 at the Don Carlos Resort and Spa in Marbella, Spain.

All Payments Expo Europe converges 500 executives from diverse industries to build the next generation of prepaid, retail payments, emerging technologies and alternative financial services. With a focus on innovation and interoperability, this is the most relevant gathering of Europe's payments stakeholders, including retailers, card networks, processors, issuers/acquirers, programme managers, financial institutions, payments start-ups, technology and investors.

All Payments Expo Europe is co-located with Retail Payment Innovations, a one-day event, focusing on retail innovation and payment technology. This event dissects the future of shopping, omnichannel merchant perspectives, mobile payments and wallets, as well as e-commerce & m-commerce. Leading organizations will have the ability to showcase their game-changing technologies in mobile loyalty, M-POS, and mobile payments & wallets through interactive on-stage demonstrations.

Download the programme.

Register now to lock in the lowest rate.

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