Payments Unleashed EMEA: Europe’s Payments Leaders Gather in London as Control, Fraud and AI Reshape the Industry

ACI Worldwide is convening senior payments executives in London for Payments Unleashed EMEA, a strategic summit addressing the shifting landscape of European financial infrastructure. As sovereignty mandates, real-time fraud liability, and agentic AI commerce converge, the event aims to define who will control the underlying rails and manage risk in a rapidly modernising ecosystem.

What was announced

Payments Unleashed EMEA is an invitation-only gathering scheduled for June 29–30, 2026, in London. The event is designed for senior leaders across the banking, fintech, and merchant sectors to address the decisive phase of the European payments industry. Key themes include the rise of AI-driven commerce, the pressure for European payments sovereignty, and the impact of tighter regulations on fraud and reimbursement.

The summit will feature a keynote from Dr Leda Glyptis, author of Bankers Like Us and Beyond Resilience. 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. Additional participants include senior executives from Mastercard, Amazon, NVIDIA, PayPal, Rabobank, Discover, Checkout.com, Nium, Fnality, and Solaris, alongside analysts from Celent.

The agenda focuses on four core industry questions: the control of payment rails amidst sovereignty mandates, the financial burden of fraud in real-time environments, the survival of card schemes against account-to-account (A2A) payments, and the implications of AI agents executing transactions. The event begins with a reception at 12th Knot at Sea Containers London, followed by a full day of keynotes and executive roundtables at the Hilton London Bankside, featuring dedicated tracks for both banking and merchant perspectives.

The companies involved

ACI Worldwide (NASDAQ: ACIW) is a global provider of payments technology and software. The firm develops the infrastructure used by banks, merchants, and billers to facilitate electronic payments globally. By hosting a summit that includes a broad spectrum of the ecosystem—from traditional institutions like Santander and Nationwide to technology giants like NVIDIA and Amazon—ACI is positioning itself as a facilitator for the strategic dialogue surrounding European payments modernisation.

The involvement of organisations like Mastercard and PayPal alongside emerging infrastructure projects like Wero and the Digital Euro highlights the current tension in the market. ACI’s role in this landscape is primarily as a technology partner that enables these diverse entities to navigate real-time processing and the shifting regulatory requirements of the EMEA region. The company’s focus on the intersection of high-performance computing and retail commerce is reflected in the inclusion of AI-centric firms on the speaker roster.

What this means

The European payments sector is currently caught between the desire for strategic autonomy and the efficiency of global networks. The push for initiatives like the Digital Euro and Wero represents a direct challenge to established card schemes, putting pressure on incumbents to justify their fees and value-add. Simultaneously, the regulatory shift in fraud liability creates a significant financial burden for banks, which could stifle innovation if not managed through better real-time data sharing. Perhaps most disruptive is the transition to agentic AI, where software begins to make purchasing decisions. This shifts the point of authentication and threatens to decouple the consumer from the traditional banking interface, raising fundamental questions about who owns the customer relationship.