On the 23-25 March 2015, the Latin American payments market gathered for the 7th Annual Mobile Money & Digital Payments Americas.

The theme of the conversation held across a 200+ delegation was simple – how can we make paying fast, efficient and flexible to enable the population to spend their hard-earned money exactly as they wish?

Over three days, a number of presentations and thought-provoking panel discussions explored the progress of live programmes, new technologies and how specific Latin American countries are evolving.

What the congregation agreed on through all of the conversation is that there is no dominant payment platform. Rather, the future of payments must provide a landscape of choice and diversity. Consumers should be able to pay as suits them; cash, mobile sms, NFC wallet, plastic card, cryptocurrency and other upcoming alternative channels.

What the industry needs to do to enable this is to create systems which talk to each other, are interoperable and sustainable to evolve in-line with consumer needs.

The audience of senior digital payments pioneers were asked to stand up if they are carrying cash on them – this raised some interesting debate on whether we should even be putting an effort in removing cash. If the professionals can’t change cash habits then how can we expect the general public to?

Read the full review of Mobile Money & Digital Payments Americas 2015 here