Introduction:

Following rapid changes in the payments ecosystem in 2016, we are now witnessing consolidation in the markets and among players. There are new challenges including security of payment apps, reaching target audiences beyond those in first-tier cities, and addressing questions of standardization.
In its third edition (after Bangalore and Mumbai), 50p will address the following the topics to understand the spectrum of payments and the issues that concern all the stakeholders in this ecosystem.

Topics for submitting talks:

Digital and electronic payments

• Technology challenges

  • Integration of payment services (UPI, BharatQR, RuPay, AePS)
  • Handling failed transactions and offline transactions
  • CDN and building infrastructure to scale
  • Handling failures and breaches; redressal and response mechanisms
  • Web standards for payments (Chrome payments API, Status code 402)

• Interoperability of payment methods

  • RBI’s “Master directions on issuance and operation of Prepaid Payment Instruments” Refer here
  • Building PoS terminals to maximize acceptance
  • Interchange and exchange fees

• Wallets, payment banks

  • Scope for innovation and Over The Top (OTT) services
  • Catching up to banking (Deposits, savings schemes, lending)
  • Closed loop, semi-loop and open-loop wallets
  • Authentication, security and fraud detection

• Credit & debit cards, IMPS and contactless payments

  • New technology in payments
  • Cardless payments (NFC, MSFT)

• Payments by design in infrastructure

  • Transit cards
  • NFC payments
  • Building better infrastructure and handling scale
  • Adoption issues of transit cards
  • IoT in payments: vending machines, fuel pumps, toll booths etc

• Security and authentication

  • KYC requirements, process and tech stack
  • Security vs convenience
  • PCI Compliance: Myths and Facts
  • Data security and protection
  • Fairness, Accountability and Transparency for ML in transaction data
  • Preventing bias in data driven decision making
  • Tackling socially engineered attacks, phishing and spoofing
  • Compliance, bank mandates, ISO certifications on the cloud

• Building payment products and business models

  • Just in Time lending
  • Payment bots and automated payments
  • Credit based on alternative lending data
  • P2P lending
  • Cross border payments and remittances
  • Escrow services
  • Recurring billing and subscriptions
  • Building business models for Value Added Services
  • Using AI and ML in FinTech
  • Credit monitoring and personal finance

Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies

• Technology challenges

  • Scaling with blockchain
  • Interoperability of tokens and coins
  • Designing systems to handle price surges
  • Distributed databases
  • Ripple (RTXP vs RTGS), Hyperledger (Distributed ledgers and supply chain management) and digital asset management
  • Digital identity
  • Remittances and escrow

• Building products and business models

  • Increasing user adoption and developing consumer awareness
  • Cryptocurrencies in brick and mortar stores
  • Building with distributed consensus technologies
  • Where to use blockchain?
  • Scaling challenges and optimizing transaction costs
  • Hardware wallets and software wallets
  • Financial inclusion and serving the underserved
  • Invoice discounting
  • Scope for innovation in blockchain based products
  • Blockchain in the enterprise
  • Blockchain on the cloud
  • Blockchain for distributed storage

• Investments and alternate lending methods

  • P2P lending and investments
  • ICOs, alt-coins and investments
  • Microlending

• Grievance redressal, Security and Authentication

  • Security and safety of exchanges
  • Anonymous payments

• Regulation and policy

  • Navigating the blockchain consortia
  • Regulating ICOs and token sale
  • Navigating the Indian regulatory landscape for cryptocurrencies

Banking

• Building products and services:

  • Cross border fund transfer and escrow services
  • Remittances and clearing houses
  • Central billing services
  • Using technology as an enabler for inclusion
  • Building banking products (cardless EMIs, deferred payments etc)
  • Reaching marginalized, traditionally unbanked communities
  • Lessons from blockchain in openness

• Technology challenges

  • Challenges in IT deployment
  • Overview of RTGS, NEFT - comparison to IMPS, UPI etc
  • Direct Beneficiary Transfer - Challenges
  • Security of banking systems
  • Is compliance and regulations limiting scope for innovation in banking?
  • Products based on using alternate consumer data
  • Onboarding challenges - building for next billion
  • Fully digital banking: dream to reality

• Security, authentication and scaling

  • Data analytics and fraud detection
  • Fairness, Accountability and Transparency in ML/DL

• History of banking

Payments space in India

• Regulatory challenges

  • Increasing consumer participation - activated citizens
  • Understanding regulations - Policy 101
  • Framing regulations - Fin Tech policy wish list
  • Lessons from South East Asia - building scalable payment products

• Technology challenges

  • Building interoperable system
  • Acceptance mechanisms
  • Adoption of cloud and distributed technology stacks
  • Future technology roadmap
  • Localization and accessibility of digital products

You can also propose to teach workshops on the following topics:
1. Deploying a payment gateway/wallet in your app/website 2. Building with blockchain 3. Designing interfaces for payment apps

If you are working on an area that is not listed above simply submit a proposal.

Target audience for the event, and who should propose to speak:

50p is a conference for practitioners, by practitioners. Submit a proposal to speak at 50p if you are:

1. CEOs of payments companies.
2. CTOs of payment companies.
3. Heads of technology and product teams in banks.
4. Working on DBT, UPI, BharatQR, payment integration, in a hands-on manner.
5. Product managers in payment companies.
6. Developers working in payments companies and banks.
7. Architects.
8. Data scientist – who has or is working on data analytics (and or fraud detection) – in payments.
9. Designer working on payment products.
10. Economists.
11. Working on stock markets, capital markets, etc.
12. Solving problems with remittance payments.
13. Developers in third-party organizations which build solutions for payment companies and banks.
14. Security professional working on security and auth.
15. Economic historians.
16. Cryptocurrency enthusiasts.
17. Working on Blockchain.

Format

We are inviting proposals for:

1. Full-length 40 minute talks.
2. Crisp 15-minute talks.
3. Sponsored sessions (limited slots available; subject to editorial scrutiny and approval).
4. Hands-on workshops, of 3 and 6 hour duration.
5. Off The Record (OTR) and Birds of a Feather (BOF) sessions for 90 mins each.
6. 5- and 10-min demos.
7. Panel discussions.

We accept talks on open source technology, with the following caveats:

1. If the technology or solution is proprietary, and you want to speak about your proprietary solution to make a pitch to the audience, you should pick up sponsored session. This involves paying for the speaking slot.
2. If your solution / technology is available through a freemium model, it will fall under sponsored session category. 3. If the technology or solution is in the process of being open sourced, we will consider the talk only if the solution is open sourced at least two months before the conference.

If your tech stack is closed source, you should consider proposing a talk explaining your choices in the first place; what options you considered (business-wise and technology-wise) before you made the decision to build your own solution; what is your specific use case that left you without existing options and necessitated you to build your own solution.

Selection criteria:

The criteria for selecting proposals, in the order of importance, are:

• Key insight or take away: what can you share with participants that will help them in their work and in thinking about the problem?
• Structure of the talk and flow of content: a detailed outline helps us understand the focus of the talk, and the clarity of your thought process.
• Ability to communicate succinctly, and how you engage with the audience. You must submit link to a two-minute preview video explaining what your talk is about, and what is the key takeaway for the audience.

We do not allow marketing or hiring pitches in talks or discussions. For a list of what is acceptable, refer to the guidelines below before preparing your presentation.

• YES to great technical talks
• YES to fascinating theory
• YES to innovative ideas
• YES to sharing stories from the field
• YES to open source and community projects
• NO to sales pitches disguised as presentations
• NO to hiring announcements during or after talks
• NO to swag and goodies in the auditorium
• NO to presenter branding on stage
• ALWAYS follow the HasGeek Code of Conduct

Separating editorial content from sponsorship is a hallmark of HasGeek conferences and something that our community appreciates.
If you are hoping to promote your product, reach out to developers, or to hire talent from our audience, we’d be happy to connect you to our sales and sponsorship team who can offer you suggestions in adherence to our conference editorial policies.

No one submits the perfect proposal in the first instance. We therefore encourage you to:

• Submit your proposal early so that we have more time to iterate if the proposal has potential.
• Talk to us on our community Slack channel: https://friends.hasgeek.com if you want to discuss an idea for your proposal, and need help / advice on how to structure it.
• Our editorial team also helps potential speakers in honing their speaking skills, fine tuning and rehearsing content at least twice - before the main conference - and sharpening the focus of talks.

How to submit a proposal?

The following guidelines will help you in submitting a proposal:

1. Focus on why, not how. Explain to participants why you made a business or engineering decision, or why you chose a particular approach to solving your problem.
2. Share as much detail as possible about how you solved the problem. Glossing over details does not help participants grasp real insights.
3. Focus on what participants from other domains can learn/abstract from your solution.
4. We do not accept how-to talks unless they demonstrate latest technology. If you are demonstrating new tech, show enough to motivate participants to explore the technology later.
5. Content that can be read off the internet does not interest us. Our participants are keen to listen to use cases and experience stories that will help them in their practice.

To summarize, we do not accept talks that gloss over details or try to deliver high-level knowledge without covering depth. Talks have to be backed with real insights and experiences for the content to be useful.

Passes and honorarium for selected speakers:

Selected speakers get a pass to the conference. We also pay an honorarium of Rs. 5,000 to each speaker, at the end of the talk as token of gratitude for taking the time to prepare and speak at the conference.
We do not provide free passes for speakers’ colleagues and spouses.

Travel grants for outstation speakers:

Limited travel grants are available for international and domestic speakers. We evaluate each case on its merits, giving preference to women, people of non-binary gender, and Africans. If you require a grant, request it when you submit your proposal in the field where you add your location. 50p is funded through ticket purchases and sponsorships; travel grant budgets vary.

About the curators of 50p: [This section will be updated as we confirm curators and peer reviewers for the conference.]

50p is a community event with crowd sourced content. The curators of this conference are:

1. Abhishek Balaji: who thrives on food, shelter and bandwidth. Part-time adult and full-time all rounder, Abhishek is editor, video producer and part of the content team at HasGeek. He babbles at https://twitter.com/booleanbalaji
2. Zainab Bawa: bespectacled and spectacular editor-in-chief at HasGeek. Her opinions and insights are public on https://twitter.com/zainabbawa
3. Srikanth Lakshmanan: runs Cashlessconsumr, a consumer advocate forum focusing on the new age consumer focus in digital payments.

Venue:

NIMHANS Convention Center
Hosur Road, Lakkasandra, Behind Bus Stop,
Bengaluru, Karnataka 560029

First round of proposal submissions are closed. Write to 50p.editorial@hasgeek.com if you want to submit a proposal. Proposals will be reviewed as we receive them. Do not forget to upload slides and preview video when submitting your talks.

Contact:

For questions on speaking proposals write to editorial@hasgeek.com. For information about tickets and sponsorships, write to info@hasgeek.com or call +91-7676332020.