Money20/20 USA Through Ellie's Eyes: Part the First

By Ellie Kirkman, FF News host, Money20/20 USA

Day one of Money20/20 USA has flown by. I'm writing this from the Movantis Happy Hour at The Venetian Expo. I'm slightly jet-lagged and very happy, and James, our camera operator, is grabbing the last of the b-roll before Movantis CEO Gustavo Ruiz gets mic'd up for his speech.

Our crew filmed seven interviews today: Coder, Movantis, Velocity, Ericsson with FIS, Keyrails, Zero Hash and Trulioo. Three themes kept coming up.

1. Stablecoins have grown up

Three years ago, the talk at Money20/20 was about central bank digital currencies and stablecoins arriving, and what new rails might mean. This year the question is how it actually works: stablecoins that are almost invisible to the customer but make their life a lot easier.

What struck me was how differently companies are getting there:

• Eric Queathem of Velocity talked about stablecoin settlement and FX for payments companies that don't want to rebuild their stack.

• Rajpal Khangura of Keyrails came straight off a Mastercard panel to talk about high-value B2B payments, where businesses fund in stablecoins and pay suppliers in local currency.

• Ryan Beaudry of Zero Hash explained how AUTH aims to make moving digital assets between platforms as simple and safe as a bank transfer.

• Rob Gatto, Movantis' new Chief Revenue Officer, talked about where stablecoins fit for enterprises expanding into Latin America.

Three very different routes to the same goal.

2. Verification now covers AI agents too

After the question of who can access stablecoins comes the question of who, or what, is on the other end. KYC and KYB are familiar territory. A new term for me today was KYA: Know Your Agent. It was the heart of our conversation with Sumant Gandhi of Trulioo, a company FF News has been covering for more than a decade.

AI has become a layer in almost every business. It can now touch a single transaction at three or four points: the consumer, the merchant, and the businesses that set those merchants up. Each of those links needs verifying.

3. Trust when a bot is doing the buying

The flip side of agentic AI is trust. Regulators, governments and businesses all need to know that what's happening is above board and not fraudulent, and that means real observability over who your customers are.

It also means taking the scaremongering out of the conversation. When a bot buys something on someone's behalf, how do we know the customer really wanted it? How did the bot know to buy it? Three years ago we wouldn't have thought to ask those questions. Now they're at the centre of the conversation.

The same thread ran through our other conversations. With James Frey at Coder, it was how banks give developers the AI coding tools they want without losing control. With Ericsson and FIS, it was how digital wallets keep people's money safe as AI-powered fraud speeds up.

Behind the scenes

The FF News team has been fantastic, our suite at The Venetian looks incredible, and once a few early production issues were sorted, James and I hit our stride.

A huge thank you to everyone who sat down with us today.

...and...

Day two starts in a few hours. See you on the show floor.