The 20th edition of NOCASH Gala, the most awaited and relevant annual event in the electronic payments industry in Romania, will take place completely off-line, in the real world, on July 27 at National Theatre of Bucharest.
At Gala NOCASH, market leaders are recognized based on their professional achievements. Each trophy is awarded by a jury formed by no less than 100 experts.
„We reward the people & institutions that push the boundary and highlight trends that are shaping the market. NOCASH GALA is not just about big numbers. It’s about meaningful numbers. Numbers that put the financial industry on the right path. The one that leads to the FUTURE,” said Sergiu CONE, founder & CEO of NO CASH Capital Consult.
This year’s anniversary edition comes with several premieres. One of them is a keynote speech in the opening at the event. The theme is “Embedded finance & the future of banking” and NOCASH Gala has landed an outstanding keynote speaker: Arturo Gonzales Mac Dowell, the President & CEO of Eurobits Technologies, „the dean of open banking in Europe” as he likes to describe his company. In 2004, as general manager, he was assigned the responsibility of launching and managing Eurobits Technologies*.
Arturo is a fintech banking expert recognized by the European financial community. He is Board Member of European Payments Council, Vice-Chairman of ETPPA (European Third Party Providers Association). Also, he represent ETPPA at the European Retail Payments Board and has a very strong commitment with the fintech industry as the Vicepresident of Asociación Española de Fintech e Insurtech (AEFI).
Arturo in his own words: „All my professional career has pivoted around the introduction to the market of high-tech products and services for the financial sector. The evolution from technical roles to management, through project management and then sales and marketing, has allowed me to remain rooted in the basic foundations of the business.
I’ve had the opportunity to collaborate and work with fantastic professionals to help bring to the market innovative services like electronic payments, mobile banking, electronic invoicing and Account Information Services.
My main goal in life is to enjoy the ride, which is something there is plenty of in managing Eurobits. One of the achievements I am most proud of is the first Account Information Service in Europe which we have been offering through Eurobits since 2004.”
How does Arturo see the future of banking?
“The banking industry is one of the last industries that is still vertically integrated meaning that they manufacture the products and they sell them to the end user. That is very unlikely to be a sustainable model,” Arturo believes.
“What has changed massively is the psychology of the consumer. Customers no longer fear sharing their financial data with a third party just as long as that third party is bringing some value to them.”
Eurobits was incorporated by two Spanish banks, Bankinter and Caja Madrid, to create the first account aggregation platform for the EU. It was initially a company owned by banks to serve banks for particular innovative services that were new at the time. This started in the US back in 1999 but in 2001, Bankinter was the first company in the EU to provide account aggregation services. With the creation of Eurobits, Bankinter gave Eurobits the technology and team they have since then.
Eurobits is an advanced digital services provider that leads the account aggregation, electronic invoicing and electronic banking monitoring services in Europe. The company is now owned by Tink, a fintech start-up founded in 2012 that has managed to build Europe’s most robust open banking platform.
Tink at a glance represents 3,400 banks and institutions integrated, 250 mil.+ bank customers reached across 18 European markets, 10,000 developers using Tink’s platform and 10 billion+ transactions processed per year.
Yesterday, 24 June, VISA announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Tink.
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The 20th edition of NOCASH Gala is powered by VISA. The event is also support by Smart Fintech, Idemia, Danubius-Exim, Symphopay, SelfPay and iSense Solutions, as research partner.
Banking 4.0 – „how was the experience for you”
„So many people are coming here to Bucharest, people that I see and interact on linkedin and now I get the change to meet them in person. It was like being to the Football World Cup but this was the World Cup on linkedin in payments and open banking.”
Many more interesting quotes in the video below:
