Converge

Download Convera's Q3 Economic Outlook here: Convera Global Economic Outlook 2023 Q3 Edition | As we enter H2 of 2023, businesses are growing increasingly concerned about the tightening monetary conditions. Despite one of the sharpest sequences of policy tightening in living memory, inflation, especially core inflation, remains too high. Only Canada is forecast to fall below the 3% upper tolerance threshold by the end of 2023. Canada is forecast to submerge into a recession for the duration of 2023, while US is expected to dip into a brief and shallow technical recession in Q1 2024. Industrial production and manufacturing sectors are forecast to contract in H2 due to their high exposure to long-term capital investment and faltering demand. The growth momentum for financial and businesses services expected to stall in Q3. Monetary policy, market volatility and changes in global risk sentiment will continue to drive currency trends. As we are approaching the apex of the tightening cycle for most major banks, heightened FX volatility is on the horizon. Join Nawaz Ali, Convera's Head of Market Insights, as he breaks down Convera's Q3 quarterly economic outlook in detail.

Within today's complex regulatory environment, blockchain and crypto-enabled payments provider Ripple has stood out for their continued growth. Their commitment to working with the current system has led to meaningful partnerships across the banking sector, and despite legal challenges in the US, ongoing expansion globally as well as important acquisitions. Hear from Sendi Young, Ripple's EU Managing Director and UK Board Director, on the company's future, the role of their native digital asset XRP, ways that blockchain can increase financial inclusivity, and the road ahead for the ever-evolving digital asset regulatory landscape.

While blockchain use cases have seen considerable growth in the past 5 years, there's still a long road ahead in the world of payments and the tokenization of real-world assets of value. Join Ryan Rugg, Head of Digital Assets for Citi's Treasury and Trade Solutions and Convera CEO Patrick Gauthier for an enlivening discussion on emerging digital asset tech, Citi's exploration in the space, focusing on customer needs over new technologies, Citi's GPS report on the trillion-dollar trade finance tokenization opportunity, and new regulations that could drive significant adoption in the near future.

Hear Mick Fennell, Global Business Line Director - Payments at Temenos, one of the largest banking cloud services providers, discuss the importance of progressive modernization for both incumbents and startups. From Temenos: "Progressive Modernization helps banks to de-compose monolithic core technology and use interchangeable capabilities to consume, compose and extend banking services, on infrastructure that scales to any size, for any segment and in any region." Learn about new AI models for rapid decisioning, ISO20022 harmonization between domestic and cross-border payments, and how cloud-enabled API services can help financial industry players improve processes, increase speed, and streamline the customer experience.

Rapid growth in Brazil's payments industry has been driven by a new crop of fintech companies, enabled by Central Bank initiatives like the low-cost, always on Pix payments platform. As a result, since the beginning of the pandemic, it is estimated an additional 16 million Brazilians have become part of the financial system. More broadly in Latin America, in 2021 there were more than 300 million users of digital payments in the region. At the center of it all? An unbridled obsession over the customer experience that we all can take a note from. Meet Inter's Super App, a one-stop, bank-based app that did its homework on where customers love to shop and integrated the ecommerce experience right into their preferred banking platform. If banks see embedded finance as a threat, here's one company proving that banks can stay firmly at the center of the consumer's mind and wallet. Join us as we chat with Aloisio Matos, executive director of cross-border payments at Inter, for a look at the fascinating and inspiring growth in LatAm with a focus on Brazil.

A roundtable discussion featuring: Susana Delgado, Global Head of Consumer & SME Payments Strategy at Swift, Nicole Olbe, Managing Director of Partnerships at Barclaycard Payments and Sendi Young, Managing Director Europe and UK Board Director of Ripple. This special episode, guest hosted by Convera CCO Jennifer Parker, brings together four remarkable women in the fintech and payments industries to discuss female leadership in the payments industry - where we’re at, how far we’ve come, and how far there is yet to go. Women now hold increasingly visible and influential roles across payments and finance - but it wasn't always this way. Our panel reflects on the unique challenges they faced in their early careers, their mentorship of younger women and development and implementation of policies to support gender diversity across their organizations. Representing traditional finserv, fintech and crypto, these dynamic female leaders share inspirational advice for women on how to overcome stereotypes, blockers and gender norms to realize their potential in the traditionally male-dominated worlds of tech and finance.

Co-hosted with Money2020. Avowed crypto skeptic and Convera CEO Patrick Gauthier sits down with crypto evangelist Teana Baker-Taylor, VP of Policy and Regulatory Strategy at Circle to discuss the fragmented global regulatory landscape for crypto assets, the new SEC lawsuits against Binance and Coinbase, regulation by enforcement, blockchain for real-time payments as a disruptive technology, creating a stable regulatory framework for digital assets, the payment ecosystem we don't yet know about that we're going to need, AR/VR, internet-enabled payments, the metaverse, the accelerating timeframe of adoption for new technologies, technology innovation vs. process innovation, and good friction vs. bad friction in the user experience.

Embedded finance is on a tear. McKinsey estimates the US market for embedded finance reached $20 billion in revenue in 2020, with Oracle seeing valuation reaching $7 trillion in the next 10 years. We sat down with legendary fintech thought-leader and influencer David Birch, Lisa Scott, EU CEO of global real-time payments network Banked, and Miroslava Betinova, head of fintech at Griffin, an API-first full-service bank to get the low-down on the future of embedded services, including the controversy and successes of Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL), digital identity, the future potential dominance of 100% digital banks, brands as banks and payments providers, the irrelevancy of physical banks, and more.

Building trust in times of uncertainty is crucial for navigating business (and life). Uncertainty is an opportunity then for businesses to thrive, and can accelerate the most meaningful innovation (with strong evidence throughout history). Furthermore, thoughtful regulation can play an important role in creating conditions for businesses to operate clearly and serve customers more efficiently. But are opportunities being missed and technologies misunderstood in these times of market volatility that distort the long view? Patrick Gauthier, CEO of Convera, joins us for a candid discussion on today's environment, emerging technologies including digital assets and new, faster rails for payments, and the need to always follow the customer above all else.

Get your copy of the 2023 Convera B2B Payments & Trade Report, here: https://convera.com/future-of-b2b-global-payments-trade-report/ In our inaugural episode of Converge we highlight Convera's annual B2B Payments and Trade Industry Report, looking ahead up to 2028 at what might influence these industries and reflecting on a wild three years past. Host Alex Lawrence sits down with Nawaz Ali, Global Head of Market Insights, to get a clearer picture of a very cloudy economic environment and make some bold (and exciting) projections for 2023 and well beyond. If you're an international business planning your FX, B2B payments or trade strategy for these uncertain times, you won't want to miss it.