Beyond the booth: What Money20/20 Europe 2025 taught us about the future of compliance

Ani Petrova
Jun 18
4 min read

A couple of weeks after Money20/20 Europe 2025, the noise has settled, but the signals remain clear. In Amsterdam, among the stages, startup showcases, and policy roundtables, a consistent theme defined this year’s conversations: compliance has moved to the centre of the financial innovation agenda.

This shift is not a matter of opinion - it was visible in the architecture of the event itself. The inaugural Money20/20 Policy Exchange brought regulators and financial leaders into a shared space, engaging directly on topics such as Open Finance frameworks, cross-border data portability, and the evolving perimeter of crypto oversight. These are no longer fringe issues. They are foundational debates shaping the next phase of global finance, and compliance infrastructure is the terrain on which they are playing out.

Europe is setting the pace

The European financial sector has often been characterised as risk-averse and regulation-heavy. But the 2025 edition of Money20/20 told a different story. With nearly 100 countries represented and over 450 speakers, including major figures like Evelien Witlox from the ECB and ING CEO Steven van Rijswijk, the message was unambiguous: Europe isn’t following. It’s leading.

Announcements from Mastercard and Deutsche Bank, Klarna and Visa, and a host of startups revealed a market more willing than ever to pursue deep infrastructure partnerships. In this climate, compliance is no longer being treated as a blocker to innovation, but as the strategic layer that can propel growth at scale.

It’s a trend long in the making, but now materialising rapidly: compliance has shifted from a checkbox to an enabler. Not through policy alone, but through new forms of tooling — API-first platforms, real-time risk engines, and AI-led alert triage systems — that reflect the operational pillars of modern finance.

From surface solutions to infrastructure

In contrast to past years dominated by consumer-facing fintech and UX upgrades, 2025’s startup spotlight skewed heavily toward the infrastructure layer. The eight highlighted disruptors, including ChainComply, Oscilar, and AbbeyCross, are not building for surface-level efficiency. They’re building for interoperability, scalability, and resilience.

This orientation reflects where the industry’s attention is turning: away from tools that add more dashboards, toward systems that integrate directly into institutional workflows. As global compliance teams contend with ballooning alert volumes and mounting regulatory complexity, the appetite is for solutions that don’t require behaviour change, but instead embed directly into existing processes.

It’s here that ComplyStream’s vision finds alignment. Our company’s approach to automating post-alert compliance workflows through intelligent infrastructure mirrors the market’s pivot from interface to integration. And as banks, fintechs, and regulated institutions rewire their operational stacks for longevity, such platforms are becoming essential, not optional. - Kartik Dabbiru, founder of Complystream

AI is already reshaping risk

Artificial intelligence remained a dominant theme throughout the event, but the tone has shifted. The speculative energy of previous years has been replaced by operational clarity. Financial institutions are no longer experimenting; they are deploying.

Particularly in fraud and compliance, AI is not a matter of competitive advantage but of capacity. As one financial crime lead noted during an off-stage briefing, “We’ve crossed the threshold where manual review is even feasible. Either we automate intelligently, or we fail to keep up.”

For ComplyStream, the takeaway is clear: the market is not looking for dashboards or digital front doors. It is looking for intelligent systems capable of working at the speed, scale, and nuance that empower humans to make faster, accurate decisions.

The quiet power of listening

At events like Money20/20, it’s tempting to focus on noise: the product launches, the panel quotes, the startup pitches. But the real value often lies in the quieter conversations…in the side rooms and coffee queues where operational pain points and unfiltered perspectives are shared.

This year, what stood out most was a growing honesty in how institutions are approaching compliance. There is less posturing, more pragmatism. The limitations of legacy systems are no longer seen as technical debt to be managed, but as existential threats to operational resilience.

In that context, the role of firms like ComplyStream is less about disruption and more about enablement. By integrating deeply into financial crime operations and leveraging automation to reduce friction post-alert, platforms like ours are positioning themselves not just as service providers but as critical infrastructure partners for the next wave of compliance innovation.

A sector at an inflexion point

If Money20/20 Europe 2025 showed anything, it’s that the lines between compliance, risk, technology, and growth are blurring. Regulators and innovators are no longer meeting at arm’s length but co-architecting the financial system of the next decade.

Compliance, long seen as a cost centre, is emerging as a strategic layer — one that will determine not just who stays within the rules, but who shapes the future of finance.

For ComplyStream, this is a strong confirmation. The work of building intelligent, embedded compliance isn’t just relevant. It’s essential. And a couple of weeks later, it’s clearer than ever that this is where the market is headed.