ATMIA’s CEO Stresses Strong Future for its European Events

ATMIA reaffirmed that the association’s 2018 flagship European event, “The ATM & Payments Innovation Summit”, will take place on 17-19 October next year in Madrid.

“We are delighted with both the timing and the venue in a major European city,” explained Mike Lee, CEO. “We consulted with many of our members and gained a large measure of support for both moving our flagship conference to the European mainland and into the October scheduling.”

The response of the industry to the Madrid event so far has encouraged European Director, Ron Delnevo.

“We have already been contacted by many potential speakers, sponsors and trade exhibitors,” he said. “That so many people want to commit at this early stage, underlines the esteem in which the ATMIA and our events are held in the Financial Services industry as a whole.”

The dates of the ATMIA event on the mainland of Europe were first announced in early September 2017, with this timely announcement aimed at avoiding potential date conflicts for the industry. ATMIA had earlier decided to switch around its flagship conference and its annual security conference on the 2018 calendar to avoid any conflict with RBR events. Despite these clear intentions, RBR announced on their website last week that their 2018 ATM & Cyber Security event would be held on 9 -10 October 2018, only one week prior to the ATMIA’s Summit in the Spanish capital.

“By once again deliberately placing one of their conferences in exactly the same time period as an ATMIA event, RBR has reneged on the spirit of our earlier discussions to avoid the kind of scheduling conflicts which were so destructive for the industry in 2017,” Mike Lee explains. “ATMIA bent over backwards in these negotiations to avoid a schedule conflict but RBR’s response to our spirit of compromise has been surprisingly arrogant, creating yet another scheduling conflict and headache for the industry next year as was the case this year. Their behaviour towards the ATM industry is particularly shocking to me, since RBR benefitted greatly from a previous long-term partnership with ATMIA and were even at one time represented on our Board of Directors.  In my view, RBR have dishonoured the relationship that the ATMIA was generous enough to grant them for so many years and, indeed, are letting down the entire ATM Industry with their on-going unreasonable conduct regarding conference scheduling”.