Spending a few days at @Money2020. Crazy crowded with more than 7,000 registered.
There is both good and bad news for the show. First, the bad news – I could not get into some of the sessions this morning. The venue cannot really handle the crowd. Last year at 4500 it was manageable, enjoyable. This year’s 7000 is a stretch that made today somewhat unpleasant.
The good news – the show is moving to the Venetian next year where they can handle events of up to 30,000. Plus, I’ve always wanted to stay there.
The even better news – we had a full house for our session Biometrics: Secure Identity in an Evolving Mobile Payments Ecosystem and a “dynamic” discussion about the future of biometrics which boiled down to “To Cloud, or Not To Cloud, that is the Question”. I represented the “To” side, Bill Smith from PAyPal & FIDO the “Not To” side.
And the best news? The main sessions began at 3pm PT today and started with a video – The Future of Dough – Pay by Ass – that was not only laugh out loud funny but through its satirical view of biometrics made an important point. Biometrics are now truly part of the payments equation. Why mock biometrics if they don’t matter? No such thing as bad PR.
This was followed ay a second “behind the scenes” video which pushed the ”Pay by Ass” joke just a bit further. Somewhat crude, but once again the keynote kickoff of the conference was focused on biometrics.
Why does this matter? Because last year biometrics was a afterthought. Walking around the show floor most of the vendors either didn’t know what biometrics were or didn’t care. This year, everyone I spoke to was not only familiar with biometrics, but they were anxious to explain to me how biometrics could be integrated into their solution.
Positive progress all around.