Payment Market Conference RIGA
25-26 October, 2023

Thank you!

We at Vedicard would like to thank everyone that attended Payment Market Conference Riga 2023!

2 Conference days full of information, 22 speakers, 7 hours and 20 minutes of presentations 40 minutes of summaries and keynotes, 220 delegates from Baltics and beyond.

Those are just a few of numbers plus unmeasured hours of preparation.

Apart from numbers - topics covered this year - Crypto, Fintech, issuing, e-money, AI, MiCA, Corporate welfare, Digital banking, Digital receipts, Regulatory news, Cross border payments, SME's, EPI, Acquiring, Machine learning and more. And endless amount of topics discussed while networking.

This was intense, but so refreshing at the same time, to see you all, to meet in person and realise one more time how big is our Payments world.

Thanks to our partners and conference sponsors that built event together with us, thanks to everyone who attended, see you next time!

This year

event gathered 220 participants and 22 speakers from payment schemes, banks, fintechs, regulatory, processors...

Radisson Blu Latvija Conferences & Spa Hotel,

Elizabetes 55, Riga, Latvia

Topics

Cloud solutions; SaaS; User experience, Case studies; E-receipts; Open banking solutions; Acquiring; Regulatory issues, updates; AML updates; Digital currency; Crypto issues and much more...

PROGRAMM

25.10.2023

11:30-12:30	Registration and Coffee
12:30-12:40	Welcome speech (Visa)
12:40-13:00	Future of Payments Juha Sillanpaa, Group Country Manager Finland and Baltic, Visa
13:00-13:20	The Pulse of Latvian Fintech: A Strategic Pillar for Economic Growth and Innovation Tīna Lūse, Head of Fintech Latvia Association
13:20-13:40	Smart Sustainable Issuing in a changing world Ainar Nurk, Chief Sales Officer, Nets Estonia AS
13:40-14:10	Networking and Coffee break
14:10-14:30	The new E-Money 4.0 - regulatory issues Hugo Godschalk, Managing director and founder of PaySys Consultancy
14:30-15:50	Digital First – but not digital only Lillian Grosman, Strategic Sales, Idemia
14:50-15:10	Lithuania is (not) Fintech Hub of Europe Asta Grigaitytė, Chairwoman of the Board, Fintech Hub LT Association
15:10-15:30	How Generative AI Is Transforming the Financial Services Industry Megan Martinsone, Founder, Gen AI Partners
15:30-16:00	Networking and Coffee break
16:00-16:20	The Path to a License and Beyond Guna Janelsiņa, Senior Legal Advisor, Latvijas Banka
16:20-16:40	MiCA: Challenges and opportunities Mārtiņš Puķe, Board member, Chief Legal Officer of Latvian Blockchain Association
16:40-17:00	Crypto and payments. Expectations and reality Krišs Pujāts, Co-founder / CTO, Gravity Team
17:00-17:10	Nets/ Nexi Group first day summary
17:10-18:00	Conference networking and drinks

26.10.2023

08:30-09:00	Good morning coffee
09:00-09:10	Moderator keynote
09:10-09:30	Hot topics inside traditional banking Ģirts Bērziņš, Head of Digital Strategy at Swedbank Group
09:30-09:50	Consumer Redress - EU Regulatory Contagion on The Horizon Peter Jones, Chairman and Founder, PSE Consulting
09:50-10:10	Challenges to AI powered compliance Renatas Makelis, Chief Compliance Officer, Walletto
10:10-10:40	Networking and Coffee break
10:40-11:00	Corporate Welfare & Employee Benefits Marco Fava, Managing Director and founder of CleverAdvice
11:00-11:20	From disruption to enablement - Digital Banking Solution as a key success factor Aivars Belis, CTO, DECTA
11:20-11:40	Digital receipts – an inevitable must or something customers want? Mikko Rieger, Managing Partner, rieger.fi – consulting in payments
11:40-12:00	Collaborative and embedded solutions as a trend of fintech industry - does they work equally across the EU? Oļegs Černiševs, CTO, Blackсatсard
12:00-13:20	Lunch
13:20-13:40	Why cross border payments need to change Patrik Havander, Head of Visa B2B Connect/ Cross Border Money Movement Europe
13:40-14:00	Are Payment Service Providers Missing Out on the Baltic SMEs? Mihails (Mike) Safro, CEO & Founder of xpate
14:00-14:20	Nexi as Co-Founder of EPI – The New European Payment Scheme Tony Bach Christensen, Director of Strategic Partnerships, Nexi Issuer Solutions
14:20-14:40	Elavon - key areas of Pan EU acquiring Michal Kirszenstein, Strategic Partners Sales Manager, Elavon Financial Services DAC
14:40-15:00	Leveraging Machine Learning in Fraud Prevention Aleksandrs Romanovs, Pre-Sales Manager, D8 Corporation
15:00-15:10	Moderator Conference summary

SPEAKERS

Patrik Havander

Visa - Head of Visa B2B Connect/ Cross Border Money Movement Europe

Patrik has a long and extensive experience in corporate banking prior to joining Visa in 2022. He has been leading Nordic and international teams for Nordea, SEB and Danske Bank. Focus has been on the Transaction Banking landscape, where he has earned a strong reputation for his strategic vision and commercial development expertise. He has been very engaged in the international bank to bank community in various boards and partnerships. He is currently member of the Board of Directors in BAFT.

Ainar Nurk

Nets Estonia AS - Chief Sales Officer

Ainar Nurk is a card expert from Nets Estonia who has been related with card issuing and acquiring services since Year 2006 when he started to lead card business at Sampo Pank (late Danske Bank).

Ainar has been running multiple developments in different banks and payment institutions and was cofounder at Baltic fintech company Wallester.

Since Year 2020 he has been engaged with Nets/Nexi and helped to build up new value propositions for Nets Estonia successful card issuing program.

Oksana Sivokobiļska

SQB Bank - Council Member, Independent Director at SQB Bank

Classical Banker with 25 years of experience in digitalization and Retail business development across 7 countries, from West to East and back... From heading marketing to leading a 500-member IT team, I am now a Council Member in a bank within a country of 40 million people, with 55% under 30. As a representative of "classical banking," my professional hobby involves exploring how the crypto world influences Classical banking teams.

Tīna Lūse

Fintech Latvia Association - Managing Director of the Fintech Latvia Association, Attorney-at-Law

Since January 2021, Tīna leads the Fintech Latvia Association. The aim of the Association is to unite the providers of financial services of the non-banking sector based on financial technologies in order to ensure the representation and implementation of their interests at the national and international level, promoting sustainable development and growth of the Latvian financial sector.

Lillian Grosman

IDEMIA - Strategic Sales

Lillian Grosman has an extensive background in Telecommunications with major operators Telia and Orange within Interconnect and Roaming before moving to Payments in Fintech, where she worked to introduce Remittance in White Label OTT Messaging Apps and later joined MEEWallet, which was the first mobile payments solution with in-store payments in Denmark back in 2015. Later, she joined Danske Bank as Head of Payments for Personal Banking Business Development before moving into Payments Rails in the P27 infrastructure project. In 2019 Lillian joined IDEMIA as Strategic Sales, where she today works with banks, payments providers, and partners in the Financial Sector on bridging Digital Payments and Platform services with physical and digital card issuance.

Ģirts Bērziņš

Swedbank - Head of Digital Strategy at Swedbank Group

Ģirts Bērziņš has a strong technology and business management background. He has held various senior positions at Swedbank Group in all home markets. Ģirts has managed cards business, branch network, IT and administration services, retail banking and Channels Competence Centre. Ģirts has also worked for Lattelecom as Chief Technology Officer. For the past two years Ģirts has been the Head of Digital Strategy at Swedbank Group working as well with the topics of open finance and fintech partnerships and investments.

Ģirts has masters degree in economy from University of Latvia, where he has also studied law.

Guna Janelsiņa

Latvijas Banka - Senior legal advisor

Guna is an expert in the field of payments and electronic money, as well as in various innovative financial services. Guna is one of the creators of Latvia regulator's Innovation Sandbox and specializes in the legal and compliance aspects of innovative financial services, consulting on extraordinary financial service solutions. Guna is an expert in various fields of financial law, which allows her to find suitable solution to every business case. Guna was the EU Council negotiator in the PSD2 trilogues, she also participated in the transposition of the PSD2 into national legislation and now is gearing up to tackle the Open Finance package. She has also been a guest speaker in various conferences and forums in Latvia and abroad (FKTK Dialogs, Payment Cards Conference, EU and Taiwan Consumer Protection Seminar on Online Transactions, FinReg).

Krišs Pujāts

Gravity Team - Co-founder / CTO

Tech visionary, philanthropist, angel investor and Co-founder/CTO at Gravity Team - Crypto market maker, liquidity provider and one of the largest crypto trading firms in the world. Kriss is a seasoned startuper and serial software developer with 15 years of experience.

Juha Sillanpaa

Visa - Group Country Manager Finland and Baltic

Juha Sillanpaa is the Group Country Manager of Visa in Finland and Baltics. As Group Country Manager, his key focus is on Visa’s clients and partners. Prior to joining Visa, Juha worked in Management consulting and business development for firms such as Deloitte and Lindorff.

Renatas Makelis

Walletto - Chief Compliance Officer at Walletto

I've been working as a legal professional for over 10 years. Started working in finance 5 years ago in a major Lithuanian EMI and later moved on to working in one of the major law firms in the Baltics. Currently I am the Chief Compliance Officer at Walletto.

Ove KREISON

Tuum - Co-founder and CTO of Tuum

Ove’s career in information technology began at Ernst & Young, from where he moved to Icefire. In his position as Head of Research and Development, Ove played a critical role in developing future-looking services for several Nordic banks and financial institutions. In 2018, he was awarded the Fintech Futures Banking Technology Award for ‘Best Use of IT in Corporate Banking’ for a project with OP Bank in Finland.

Michal Kirszenstein

Elavon Financial Services DAC - Strategic Partners Sales Manager

Michal Kirszenstein is representing payment industry for last 17 years. After 5 years in American Express he moved to Elavon Financial Services where he is responsible for Partnerships management since 2020. Michal is responsible for implementation of several strategic products for Elavon in Europe like Softpos, Unattended or Deferred Authorization for Airlines. As an addition to his role Michal is also engage in driving innovations, promotion of new ideas to schemes and implementation of new technologies in CEE region.

Currently Michal and Partnership Team concentrate on cooperation with fiscal institutions, Airlines, Schemes and new sectors like B2B payments on cards and EV charging stations.

Hugo Godschalk

PaySys Consultancy - Founder and managing director

Hugo Godschalk, founder and managing director of the Frankfurt-based PaySys Consultancy, is for 40 years in payment and card business, thereof 30 years as consultant. His focus is on card business, e-money, crypto currencies and payment regulation.

In 2011 Hugo initiated the Prepaid Verband Deutschland (PVD) as platform of the prepaid industry in Germany. He is represented this group as managing director until 2018. Since 2003 he is member of the advisory board of PayComm (database community of the European payment industry). Hugo is a regular blogger on payment issues (www.paytechlaw.com).

Marco Fava

CleverAdvice - Manaing Director and founder of CleverAdvice

Marco Fava is Managing Director and founder of CleverAdvice, an independent strategic advisory firm with a focus on the payment industry since 2001 and Member of the European Payments Consulting Association (EPCA).

He led projects on product strategy, digital onboarding, instant payments, B2B payments and he is an expert in employee benefit solutions. Marco helped a number of European banks in addressing Open Banking opportunities and designing alternative lending and BNPL options.

Marco holds an MBA from the Wharton School, is a member of the European Consulting Payment Association and holds speeches at payment conferences internationally.

Mārtiņš Puķe

Latvian Blockchain Aassociation - Board member, Chief Legal Officer

Martins is a board member of Latvian blockchain association and chief legal officer of crypto market maker and liquidity provider Gravity Team. Martins is passionate about making Latvia an attractive place for crypto businesses and investments. Prior to joining the crypto industry Martins has worked for several fintech companies and Deloitte.

Megan Martinsone

Founder of Gen AI Partners

Megan Martinsone is a former AI & Emerging Technologies consultant at PwC Amsterdam & London offices, where she contributed to the development of Responsible AI and Explainable AI frameworks.

Currently, she is a founder of 2 Generative AI ventures, one being an AI Tools Directory featuring ~2,000 innovative AI Tools; and second upskilling businesses in ChatGPT technology, and building Generative AI agent solutions. Most recently, Megan has helped TWINO in new Generative AI use cases discovery.

Aleksandrs Romanovs

D8 Corporation - Pre-Sales Manager

Aleksandrs has been with D8 Corporation since 2015, in a Pre-Sales Manager role since 2016. Aleksandrs is working in the Risk Analytics division of the company, focusing on fraud prevention and AML automation solutions.

Day to day, Aleksandrs is helping D8 clients in Europe and abroad to improve the efficiency of their fraud prevention programs and reduce fraud-related costs and associated risks. Aleksandrs is also participating in the development of Machine Learning services for D8’s StrongHold Risk Management Platform, working closely with engineering and data science teams.

Tony BacH Christensen

Nets Denmark A/S - Director of Strategic Partnerships, Nexi Issuer Solutions

Tony Bach Christensen is a FinTech industry expert and corporate intrapreneur with two decades of product launch history to his name. Tony has been a first-mover in bringing leading-edge solutions to the financial industry within such areas as Customer Analytics, Data Management, Financial Risk Management, and Payments.

Joining Nets/Nexi in 2016 to head the FinTech partnerships program, he has since then taken on the role of managing several strategic initiatives within Nets-Nexi and is currently leading Nets-Nexi Group’s engagement with EPI – the European Payments Initiative – where Nets-Nexi has a prominent role as co-founder and shareholder helping to build the first European-owned cross-border payment solution for citizens and merchants in the European Union.

Peter Jones

PSE Consulting - Chairman and Founder PSE Consulting

Peter Jones, Chairman and Founder PSE Consulting, has over 40 years business and IT experience, four with a major European retailer (C&A Brennikmeyer), 17 with a UK clearing bank (National Westminster Bank) and 32 as Managing Director/Chairman and founder of PSE Consulting. He is from a processing and IT background and has led major development projects relating to consumer and corporate cards, electronic banking and ACH payments systems.

Asta Grigaitytė

FinTech Hub LT Association - Chairwoman of the Board @FinTech Hub LT Association,

Country Ambassador @European Woman Payment Network

Asta comes from a recognized European Fintech hub with more than a decade of experience in the finance industry. She has been working with the payments infrastructure at the Central Bank of Lithuania where her focus was on Fintech and development of the SEPA retail payments system CENTROlink. Apart from the institutional experience, she has also seen the market from commercial bank, global information technology infrastructure company as well as a few payment service providers by assisting them with licensing and business management issues. Hence, her miscellaneous experience in the financial sector working for different sides -Regulator and Fintech – allows her to see the full picture of the European fintech market.

Mikko Rieger

rieger.fi – Managing Partner

Mikko Rieger is an advisor and independent consultant in the payment industry who set up shop and his own consultancy rieger.fi in the spring of 2019.

As a talkative German Finn he looks with Nordic FinTechs into market expansions, helps larger merchants in their payment strategy, he currently helps to build out the e-receipt infrastructure in Europe’s German speaking region and works with banks on card value-add services, e-invoice infrastructure and their crypto AML readiness.

Mikko is less Fin, more Tech, he's never been a banker, but rather grew up with mobile and cloud tech at Nokia and Microsoft prior to leading the issuing back-end business at the Nets Group and operations at Enfuce, a Nordic cloud issuing service provider.

Mikko is married, father of three, with a dog to fit the Helsinki suburban stereotype. He holds a Bachelor and a German Dipl. Ing. degree in Computer Engineering and an MBA from the Kellogg School.

Oļegs Černiševs

Blackсatсard - CTO

Oļegs is involved in Blackcatcard product development, optimization of technological infrastructure, and improving the service’s performance to ensure smoother operations. Olegs has a long history of working with systems used by payment services and banks, like PrivatBank and the First Swiss Card financial services platform. He has headed the Acquiring Committee of the Association of Commercial Banks of Latvia for two years.

Olegs also founded SIA Starbridge – an IT development and consultancy company. There, he is engaged in developing software, mobile applications, payment card systems, as well as various other IT projects for European financial institutions. Olegs graduated from the Riga Technical University in 1998 with a master’s degree in international business and management.

He attained two certificates in the field of anti-money laundering management – from the Associazione Finaziarie Italiane (AFIN) in 2014 and from the Italian Banking Association (ABI) in 2015.

Aivars Belis

DECTA - CTO

Aivars is an experienced payment industry professional with extensive knowledge of payment industry business and technologies; being able to merge those competences into innovative, cost-effective software/enterprise solution’s designs supplementing them by full-fledged justifications to stakeholders to explain all aspects of proposed innovation.

Strong technical and business qualifications with track record of more than 25 years of hands-on experience in industry - starting from programmer and coming up to leading positions for financial service providers, being responsible for technologies choice and software/enterprise architecture to deliver solutions on a market within areas like card acquiring, card issuing, fraud prevention, mobile payments, ecommerce, instant payments, loyalty solutions, PSD2 and other new development within industry.

Mike safro

CEO & Founder of xpate, Fintech Advisor at Industra Bank

Mike is the pioneering force behind xpate, a fintech firm dedicated to revolutionizing the payments industry with a focus on simplicity, speed, and superior user experience. Under his stewardship, xpate has flourished, establishing a strong international presence.

In addition to his role at xpate, Mike serves as a Fintech Advisor at Industra Bank, where he leverages his extensive industry expertise to help navigate the bank's digital transformation journey. Mike’s investment in Industra is a testament of commitment to the institution and his faith in its future.

Beyond fintech and entrepreneurship, he is a fervent advocate for maintaining a balanced life. When he is not driving innovation in the fintech world, you can find him wake-surfing, heli-skiing, on a tennis court, or on a track with his professional drift car.

Having recently obtained EMI license with xpate in Latvia, Mike and his team is focused on untapping his homeland’s e-commerce potential. Over the course of this journey Mike has been in close contact with a plethora of SMEs in Riga and beyond doing research regarding the key trends, growth areas and pain points.

PLATINUM SPONSORS

GOLD SPONSORS

SILVER SPONSOR

CONFERENCE SPONSORS

Informative Partners

EPCA (European Payments Consulting Association)

FinTech Latvia Association

Fintech Hub LT Association

LCCI (Latvian Chamber of Commerce and Industry)

ORGANIZERS

Vedicard is one of Nordic’s and Baltics leading payment consulting companies offering advice based on passionate payment industry professionals with more than 20 year’s experience in this field.

Vedicard offers quality experts advice, guidance and help starting from strategy development, market research, business modelling, regulatory advices and required document development, supplier selection, solution requirements definition ending with being main integrator, project management, solution design, UAT development, solution implementation, migration and certification as well as training. Vedicard can cover various areas starting from traditional payment cards and banking solutions to emerging new payment methods like mobile, cloud based payments, instant payments and other innovations.

The company’s target customers are financial institutions, Electronic Money Institutions (EMI), payment Institutions, processors, transaction gateways, merchants and retailers as well as payment business start-up.

The European Payments Consulting Association (EPCA) is a European network of independent payments consulting companies, who cooperate in offering advisory services to international and Pan European payments industry players and merchants.

The European Payments Consulting Association (EPCA) was created in 1998 by three independent payment consulting companies – PaySys in Germany, PSE Consulting in UK and PlusCon in Denmark. The founder members recognised they needed a Pan EU network if they were to deliver payments assignments to large International and European clients.

The EPCA network has the full range of capabilities to meet the needs of international payments companies.

SEE YOU IN CONFERENCE!

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Payment Market Conference RIGA25-26 October, 2023