This year I had the pleasure to emcee, and help create the agenda content for, the Digital Money Forum, a wonderful little fintech oasis inside the massive 200,000-attendee CES conference in Las Vegas. First of all, a big thank you Robin Raskin and her team at Living in Digital Times for giving me this opportunity. It was a great experience, and this was my first time attending CES.
CES, the annual showcase for all things consumer tech, is something you have to experience to fully understand. CES takes over the city, from the Las Vegas Convention Center all the way to the Sands Expo at The Venetian. In fact, there were quite a few companies making good money providing customized tours of the event to other attendees that would have otherwise been as lost as me. Perhaps the reason that I had not attended CES before is that it never seemed to be a relevant venue for the payments and banking topics that are my usual fare, but that is definitely changing.
Google plans to offer checking accounts in 2020. Facebook has aspirations with Libra to create a new global payment system. Amazon Pay, integrated with Alexa, is enabling voice to become the new interface for commerce. Apple Pay is on pace to account for 10% of all global card transactions by 2025. In fact, it seems we might be on a path for every company to be a fintech company, especially the big techs. And what better place to explore this than CES?
And so, for all of my fintech friends who might like me have never made a trip to the biggest consumer technology show on earth, maybe it’s time to mark your calendars for January 6-9, 2021 in Las Vegas. It’s completely nuts. Wear comfortable shoes. And I’ll see you there!