A real tulip in Amsterdam

Another day another dollar, and so SIBOS day two begins.

Up a little later today, after yesterday’s very early start for an interview on CNBC.

Yesterday also finished quite late as we had a speaker’s dinner with the high and mighty of the SWIFT community at a top restaurant in the centre of Amsterdam.

Must admit, it seemed to me as though the dinner was sponsored by ING as everything was orange ...

... but then realised that we’re in the Netherlands, so everything is orange anyway.

And my little pun about tulips from Amsterdam yesterday was greeted with this visage on the ABN AMRO stand as I walked in this morning ...

A real tulip in Amsterdam!

After that, I wandered down to the McKinsey open theatre session on the top trends in payments, which was amazingly well attended ...

Can't be that much going on at SIBOS at ten in the morning I guess.

 And what are their top trends in payments?

Well, there’s six:

1. The battle for liquidity will intensify globally;
2. Regulatory changes will force banks to reinvent their business models;
3. There will be a massive increase in electronic payments, thanks to things like e-invoicing;
4. There will also be a digital transformation of financial information and payments delivery, which will accelerate;
5. The resultant evolution of the competitive landscape for payments will be very different, with telco’s and others in this space; and
6. There will be a major rise in new models for banking the unbanked.

Nothing much new there then.

Anyways, off to the opening plenary now.