A Look Across the Pond: MoneyLive Summit 2025 Takeaways

By W.B. King

To keep our finger on the pulse of American banking counterparts overseas, Finopotamus periodically investigates European fintech trends and predictions.

Billed as one of Europe’s most influential fintech and banking conferences, the annual Money Live Summit took place on March 11 and 12, 2025 at London’s Business Design Centre. The event attracted more than 1,500 attendees and 200 speakers from organizations such as HSBC, Barclays, Google and Mastercard.

Topics discussed ranged from digital transformation, artificial intelligence (AI)-driven innovation, modernizing legacy systems to the future of payments. An onsite survey provided key insights into the banking industry’s provided real-time and forward looking insights.

“We asked our attendees what they saw as the top three commercial opportunities for banks over the next year. 49% identified that implementing AI solutions across the enterprise was one of the key commercial opportunities for banks in the year ahead, with deepening personalization and value-added services a close second,” the survey stated.

Prioritizing Operational Enhancement

When attendees were asked about their organizations’ progress in implementing AI across customer service, operations, fraud detection, lending, and software development, 30% of respondents were researching customer chatbots, with a 13% chance of implementation over the next 12 months. For process automation, the figures were 37% and 18%, respectively. And for coding/software, the numbers were 38% and 11%.

“From our audience responses, process automation is one of the core AI use cases that banks are looking to explore, with 37% currently researching or testing solutions,” the survey noted. “This aligns with our additional findings about banks’ priorities for operational enhancement. We asked banking attendees to identify their top five operational priorities for the coming year, with process automation and workflow optimization emerging as their primary focus.”

The noted five categories were:

1.      Process automation and workflow optimization

2.      Building data maturity (e.g. for AI or personalization)

3.      Enterprise agility and faster time to market

4.      Enhancing cybersecurity and operational resilience

5.      Cloud migration and overhauling on-prem architecture

Fintech Innovation and Open Banking

Respondents said the following three innovations top their wish list for 2025: AI solutions (49%), open banking (33%) and payments (26%).

“One third of our audience said open banking was most ripe for fintech innovation,” the survey stated. “When asked about the greatest commercial opportunities open banking presents for banks, both financial institutions and solution providers agreed that the most fertile ground lies in payments, closely followed by personal finance management.”

Those surveyed also noted open banking account-to-account (A2A) payments as credible alternatives to cards in the long term. “We asked our delegates whether they agreed that open banking payments will eventually replace cards as the dominant payment method in Europe. Fifty-eight percent agreed or strongly agreed compared to just 42% who disagreed.” The top three open banking uses cases were: payments, personal financial management and credit and lending.

When it came to catering to customer satisfaction, the survey noted that there is a strategic shift toward prioritizing enhanced consumer experiences. The top five priorities were:

1.      Digital services

2.      Personalized communication and recommendations

3.      Enhanced customer self-service and chatbots

4.      Enhanced security and fraud

5.      Valued-added services.

“Banks have sizeable commercial opportunities on the horizon, with advancements in artificial intelligence, personalization, banking-as-a-service and open banking presenting new ways to drive cost efficiencies, increase customer acquisition, and unlock new revenue streams,” the survey stated.