FinTech North News and Regional FinTech Developments

FinTech North Attends DigiPay 2025 in Sofia: Exploring Innovation and Collaboration in Payments



FinTech North Director Daniel Rajkumar shares his experience and key takeaways from attending DigiPay 2025 in Sofia.

DigiPay 2025 

The DigiPay conference took place in Sofia, Bulgaria on 7th October at the International Conference Centre, attracting some 350 delegates mainly from within the payments industry. Special thank to Bob Spencer for introducing us to the organiser Raya Lacheva. 

With members of the fintech community asking us to look into smaller international events, we decided to attend and share our insights into this event.  

The kind hospitality of Genoveva Markova 

I first met Geno in Leeds at the Fintech North Social, only last week. She was visiting with a delegation of female entrepreneurs and was highly complementary of the trip. 

As a hotelier, she was only too kind to offer me a discount at the Introvert Maria Luisa and to greet me on arrival. 

Preventing Financial Crime 

A common theme at all payment conferences includes mitigating financial crime. We saw demos from Fraud Risk Management systems and were all reminded of the importance of 2FA in mitigating account takeover attacks. At this point I took the opportunity to enable 2FA on WhatsApp and Telegram. 

I was inspired to jot down some simple checks that can be automated to raise a flag and will be updating our systems to include some additional logic that can help mitigate these risks.  

From Hull to Sofia 

Owen Clater is making waves in the UK with his service to help marketeers reach gen z users through social media. His inspiring presentation included a case study for a client for whom he generated a 20x return on investment. 

Regulation vs technology 

Bob Spence did a great job of chairing the panel, with inspiring questions like What is Digital ID, why do we need it, what is blockchain? What are the challenges of digital wallets? 

It was great to have a regulatory lawyer explaining how the law aims to support the needs of society and to have a technologist visualising the possibilities enabled by these technologies. 

The balance of regulation and tech innovation is a common subject of debate. Too much regulation slows innovation, whereas to little regulation exposes the public to adverse outcomes.  

Finding a balance to this moving target is tricky. Industry consultation and regular reviews are key. Both agree on the need to mitigate against crime, with ID theft being a major problem. 

 Anti Money Laundering 

No payments conference is complete without a panel on AML. Discussing revolved around transaction monitoring and working with Blockchain. The chair did a good job to inject humour and contention, keeping the discussion lively. I was impressed by the intra-industry collaboration to protect consumers. 

Networking 

Dima from the British Chamber of Commerce was a great connector.  

It was great to see Georgi Tonchev, a regular at Fintech North events, who kindly invited me to an entrepreneur’s event after the conference. 

Summary 

I’ve been privileged to work with Bulgarians for over 20 years having employed the services from freelance professionals from Varna to Plovdiv and Sofia, so it was an honour to visit. 

We will certainly look to organise a delegation for next year. If you are interested in joining us, please get in touch with us at info@fintechnorth.uk.

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