NextGen Payments & RegTech Forum — Barcelona

Payments conferences can sound like networking fluff. This one is more concrete than that. QUBE Events’ NextGen Payments & RegTech Forum is scheduled for Thursday, May 7, 2026 at W Barcelona, and the whole pitch is basically Europe’s payments stack in transition — instant transfers, open banking, digital identity, compliance tech, and the regulatory rewiring around PSD3, PSR, AML, and the Digital Euro. (qubevents.com) ### What is this event actually about? It’s a one-day industry forum aimed at people building or policing payment systems — banks, fintechs, payment institutions, merchants, RegTech vendors, and regulators. The Barcelona page frames it as a meeting point for senior leaders and “disruptors” trying to work out what the next version of the European payments ecosystem looks like. That (qubevents.com)product design under changing rules. (qubevents.com) ### When and where is it happening? The event is listed for May 7, 2026 in Barcelona, Spain, with the venue named as W Barcelona. The Eventbrite listing gives the operating window as 8:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. CEST, which tells you this is meant to be a full-day conference rather than a light breakfast panel series. (qubevents.com)rope, the product roadmap and the compliance roadmap are now the same conversation. If you want faster account-to-account payments, smoother wallet experiences, embedded finance, or better onboarding, you also have to deal with fraud controls, KYC and KYB checks, transaction monitoring, reporting, operational resil(qubevents.com)o that overlap instead of pretending innovation and regulation happen in separate rooms. (qubevents.com) ### What are the big topics on the agenda? The Barcelona page points to three big clusters. First, the customer-facing side — real-time and instant payments, A2A flows, open banking, embedded finance, wallets, BNPL, subscriptions, and omnichannel payment journeys. Second, the rulebook — PSD3, PSR, the Instant Payments Regulation, and the broader EU AML package. Third, the tooling l(qubevents.com)ed compliance workflows. In plain English, that is speed, rules, and the software needed to survive both. (qubevents.com) ### Why does PSD3 keep coming up? Because PSD3 and the proposed Payment Services Regulation are the next big attempt to clean up the mess left by PSD2’s uneven implementation. Firms already know the pattern — rules meant to open competition also create new compliance burdens and edge cases. So a forum like this becomes a place to compare notes before those changes harden into opera(qubevents.com)l Euro planning — both push institutions to think about infrastructure now, not later. (qubevents.com) ### Who is this really for? Not beginners. The series page makes clear that the audience is heads of payments, compliance, AML, fraud, risk, plus CTOs, CIOs, product leads, founders, acquirers, and regulators. That tells you the event is aimed at decision-makers who can actually buy software, change workflows, start pilots, or reshape policy responses. It’s less “learn the basics” and more “figure out what to do next quarter.” (qubevents.com) ### So what’s the real value? The obvious value is networking, but the more useful angle is alignment. Payments teams want conversion and speed. Compliance teams want control and auditability. Regulators want resilience and consumer protection. Events like this exist because those goals now collide inside the same products. If a bank or fintech gets that coordination wrong, the result is usually slower launches, more fraud exposure, or expensive rework. (qubevents.com) ### Bottom line This forum is basically a snapshot of where European payments is heading in 2026 — faster rails, tighter rules, more automation, and less room for product and compliance teams to operate separately. Barcelona is just the venue. The real story is that Europe’s payments industry is being forced to redesign speed and trust at the same time. (qubevents.com)