Open Banking, Today and Tomorrow

The episode is a breezy conference-floor chat that skims across wallets, super apps, ISO 20022, CBDCs, and fintech investment without going deep on any of them. The few mildly useful observations (CapEx allocation, trust as the key wallet ingredient) are surrounded by significant padding and generic conference energy.

“I mean, it is. I actually can't remember the numbers at the top of my head, but we are clearly talking about billions of dollars here in terms of the market size.”

“This is a fast changing space and we have to be on top of it to keep going.”

Every major take here is a well-worn conference circuit staple: Asia has super apps, Europe doesn't; fintech is now enabling rather than disrupting; investment is cooling due to rate rises; AI will transform fraud detection. The only genuinely spontaneous framing - 'super category apps' - was openly admitted to be made up on the spot and not developed further.

“Oh, that's a good one. I don't know, we're just making this up.”

“there was a point in time when we spoke about, you know, of course, this early 2010, 2011, when all of these Stripe, Adyen, Square, all of these large payment fintechs came about”

Sulabh Agarwal is Global Head of Payments at Accenture - a legitimate, senior industry-facing role with broad exposure across clients and geographies. However, he is a consultant and thought-leader, not an operator who has built or run payment infrastructure at scale, which limits the practitioner depth of his answers.

“Thank you so much, Shalab Agarwal, the Global Head of Payments at Accenture, for taking the time here live from Money 2020.”

“I'm saying that with finger pointing towards myself, even consulting may get disrupted with Gen AI, for example.”

The guest name-drops a reasonable number of real companies and initiatives (UPI, Aadhaar, Paytm, AliPay, WeChat Pay, Grab, EPI, ISO 20022, Open Wallet Foundation, N26, Revolut, Stripe, Adyen), which provides some grounding. However, when directly pressed for data on market size, he admits he cannot recall any figures, and no concrete metrics, timelines, or case-study outcomes appear anywhere in the episode.

“I actually can't remember the numbers at the top of my head, but we are clearly talking about billions of dollars here”

“like in India, the UPI, the Aadhaar, which is the identity, has just enabled it to happen in a certain way”

The host makes genuine attempts to probe - following up on 'control,' asking for numbers, distinguishing Asia from Europe on super apps - but consistently accepts vague or deflective answers without pushing back. The episode stays in comfortable territory throughout and never generates productive disagreement or a truly incisive follow-up.

“Do you have any numbers or any general statements on how big this is?”

“The other thing I wanted to pick on is you said super apps and you started talking about Europe and Asia”