AI will be the ultimate co-pilot for SMEs

Inside the key takeaways at Money20/20 Europe Day 1

Bobsguide
June 4, 2025
9 minutes

Hi there!

Before the curtain officially rose, the tone was already set.
At a private gathering in Amsterdam’s ARTIS Royal Hall, payments leaders, retailers, and startup founders exchanged honest lessons on what’s really holding back progress — from cross-border scale and checkout friction to AI’s uneasy relationship with compliance.

📖 Catch up on what you missed 👇

Payments leaders set the tone before the main stage – Money 20/20 Europe | Bobsguide

Before the fintech fest began, a quieter gathering set the tone. At Amsterdam’s ARTIS Royal Hall, payments leaders, retailers, and startup founders exchanged real-world lessons on trust, scale, fraud, and the uneasy alliance between AI and compliance.
From Silverflow’s scale-up story to IKEA and Wayfair’s checkout challenges, here’s what went down before the main stage at Money20/20 Europe.

With those grounded conversations as the backdrop, Day 1 at Money20/20 Europe kicked off with energy and no shortage of big questions. Here’s what stood out.

🧠 Day 1 Download

💼 The Future of SME Finance

In a warm, engaging fireside chat, Xero CEO Sukhinder Singh Cassidy and NALA CEO Benjamin Fernandes shared their vision for SME finance — and how automation and AI are reshaping what’s possible for small business owners globally.

🔄 From ‘Back Office’ to Real-Time Business Enablement
Finance used to be reactive. Now, real-time platforms like Xero aim to embed finance into the daily life of a business, making decisions faster, smarter, and easier to execute.

“We don’t just digitize records. We power better business outcomes,” Sukhinder said.

🧠 AI will be the ultimate co-pilot for SMEs
The conversation highlighted how AI will simplify complexity, particularly in compliance and forecasting. It about freeing up time and energy for entrepreneurs to focus on growth.

🌍 Access is everything — especially across borders
Fernandes brought the global view: too many small businesses still struggle with cross-border payments, credit access, and platform trust. He pointed to NALA’s work in emerging markets and stressed that “intelligent infrastructure needs to be inclusive by design.”

🚀 Big Tech, meet the small business boom
SMEs are no longer tech laggards. They’re the next frontier for embedded finance, predictive tools, and seamless integration — and they’re hungry for tools that give them control and clarity.

“What SMEs need is simplicity, not jargon,” Fernandes added.

And it’s not just founders raising red flags on complexity.

Rachel Whelan, Head of Corporate Cash Management – APACMEA at Deutsche Bank, reminded the audience that even institutional players see regulation as a double-edged sword:

“The challenge in Europe is the regulatory side of things; ensuring that doesn’t stifle growth and speed of change. That starts from the right focus, making sure you’re spending your energy in the right area.”

The alignment is clear — building for scale means clearing away friction. Whether you’re a bank, fintech, or platform, enabling SME growth starts with smarter infrastructure and fewer roadblocks.

📍Bobsguide is reporting live from Amsterdam—bringing you sharp takes, real-time recaps, and what today’s announcements really mean. Stay tuned.

🤖 Financial services: Finally Designed Around People, Powered by AI

Forget everything you think you know about mortgages — Koodoo and Experian just made them a hotbed for cutting-edge innovation.

The big idea? Use GenAI to strip friction from every stage of the customer journey. From smarter search to faster credit scoring, this case study showed how deeply broken financial processes can be reimagined when tech finally puts people first.

💡 Key Lessons from the Session

🔍 Search is a service, not a form field
Consumers don’t want to compare rates — they want answers. GenAI lets providers guide users through decisions in plain English, reducing confusion and anxiety.

⚙️ Back office work? Consider it automated.
From pre-qualification checks to affordability assessments, AI is clearing out tedious internal bottlenecks, freeing up advisors to actually advise.

🧾 Personalization is now table stakes.
Whether you’re dealing with mortgages or another vertical, generic experiences are out. AI makes it possible to serve relevant, real-time support at scale — and that expectation will spill over into every other consumer journey.

📈 This isn’t about tech for tech’s sake.
As Shail Deep put it:

❝

It’s not innovation if the customer doesn’t feel the difference.

Both speakers made it clear: GenAI’s job is to simplify the human experience — not just the system behind it.

🚨 Not just mortgages. Not just finance.
What’s happening in home lending is just the beginning. This is a playbook for any vertical where outdated systems block better outcomes.

And when it comes to applying this playbook at scale?
📊 Koodoo is leading the way — helping lenders power smarter digital distribution, intelligent customer journeys, and faster decisioning, all built on a unified intelligence platform.

When product meets pressure.
When trust meets tech.

Two of today’s most tightly packed sessions saw Liberis CEO Rob Straathof tackle the hard questions—on stage and without the safety net of fluff.

From the infrastructure behind embedded financing to the uncomfortable truths about AI accountability, the conversations drew sharp takes and sharper questions.

@bobsguide

📉 Traditional lending doesn’t just fail small businesses, it makes them feel like they’ve already lost. In this clip from hashtag#Money202… See more

Embedded Financing as a Catalyst for SMB Growth (Session with eBay)

📉 Traditional lending doesn’t just fail small businesses, it makes them feel like they’ve already lost.

In this clip, Rob explains why embedded finance isn’t just about speed or UX. It’s about trust.

💬 “When a small business applies for a bank loan and gets rejected, it hurts. We remove that fear by pre-approving them before they even apply.”

This is what embedded capital looks like when done right:

✅ Real-time approvals based on platform data

✅ Offers surfaced within the eBay seller dashboard

✅ Repayments that flex with sales, no pressure, no guesswork

Rob puts it plainly: small businesses need confidence, not complexity.

Thanks to Liberis for helping build systems that sellers can trust.

🤖 “Before AI agents make decisions, issue loans, or diagnose health conditions, we need 99.999% certainty they work.”

In a panel titled “Beyond the Hype: Building Trust and Transparency with AI Agents,” Rob pushed back on GenAI overreach:

🛑 “It’s not about laying off teams and handing the mic to bots.”

🔍 “There must be no black box. Every AI decision should be explainable, traceable, and challengeable.”

His forecast?

✅ AI will 10x the output of customer agents and underwriters — but only with safeguards, feedback loops, and transparency.

That push for responsible AI isn’t isolated.
Klarna CMO David Sandstrom echoed the same sentiment — with culture, not code, at the centre of it:
“AI isn’t just a tool — it’s embedded in how we work. That cultural shift is what truly drives transformation.”

@bobsguide

🧠 “GenAI isn’t ready for the front line. Yet.” Rob Straathof, CEO of Liberis, dropped a reality check at #Money2020 Europe👇 🗣 “We’ve seen … See more

When’s a better time to debut their AI agent, Ada, than right after two packed sessions on embedded finance and explainable AI 🤩

Built to tackle complexity, reduce bias, and halve manual underwriting time, Ada is Liberis’ boldest AI step yet.

Read the breakdown on Bobsguide 👇

Liberis debuts AI underwriting agent Ada for complex credit decisions | Bobsguide

Ada enhances accuracy, uncovers hidden risk and bias, and reduces manual decision time in complex cases by 50%

Curious how Ada could support your underwriting challenges or embedded finance roadmap?

🌟 What’s Coming Up Today

Let’s take a look at Day Two of Money20/20 Europe | Ian Horne, Head of Content at Money20/20

Our Tuesday agenda features neobank royalty, in the form of Monzo Bank Group CEO TS Anil and Starling Bank Group CEO Raman Bhatia.

We’ve also got ABN AMRO Bank N.V. CCO Annerie Vreugdenhil, and BBVA Corporate & Investment Banking’s Global Head of Digital Banks Murat Kalkan, both speaking about digital transformation and improving the customer experience.

If AI in banking is your thing, Martin Moeller, AI for Financial Services Leader at Microsoft will be joined by MOSTLY AI’s Chief AI and Data Democratization Officer Alexandra Ebert, and FINTECH.TV’s Patricia Wu. Seriously, this is such a good day for exploring the future of banks.

And how about new payment rails and tokenisation? We’ve got Evelien Witlox from the European Central Bank and Diana Carrasco from the Bank of England discussing the future of CBDCs, followed by a session on asset tokenisation with Stani Kulechov, founder of the world’s largest DeFi protocol by TVL, AAVE.

And then… there’s the Bank for International Settlements – BIS Summit focused on the future of money. A must attend for any payments professional.

For some Off the Record content, check out Robert Bueninck as he explains how Unzer bounced back from a client onboarding ban, and meet regulators like Marine Krasovska, Gillian Browning and Claire Simpson and have a say in the future of policy. We’ve also got Simone Maini from Elliptic offering powerful analysis of the Bybit hack, if that wasn’t enough.

This is already turning into an endless list. There will be an incredible wealthtech session with senior leaders from Raisin, Upvest and PensionBee UK, moderated by the excellent Efi Pylarinou. There’s a session on the EU DI with the European Wallet Consortium, led by Bianca Lopes.

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🎒 What to Bring

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📍 Venue: RAI Amsterdam Europaplein 24, 1078 GZ Amsterdam, Netherlands

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Enjoy Day 2!

The Unofficially Money20/20 Team

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